Senior Project Reflection

(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your Block Presentation and/or your senior project? Why?

I'm most proud of how I was able to speak for the timed requirement on my content and research. I felt that I was able to educate my audience very well on my subject because during my activity, many referred to my presentation as what helped them complete the activity. 

(2) Questions to Consider

a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Block Presentation (self-assessment)?

        P

b.     What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)?

        P

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?

     What worked for me was how easily I was able to obtain valuable information that would help me answer my essential question. Also how I was able to get a lot of research to back up my answers that came out of the foundation of mentoring at the pharmacy. 

(4) (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would have you done differently to improve your senior project if you could go back in time?

 I would have gone back to tell myself how simple obtaining research could have been. It was as simple as asking the right people for credible sources that would've in turn led me to finding research for my answers more efficiently. 

(5) Finding Value

How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?   Be specific and use examples.

This project overall has shown me what I want to pursue after high school. I want to pursue a medical profession where i'm to benefit the community as I did during my mentor ship. I helped many patients receive proper consultation on their prescriptions, that would ensure their safety. 

Mentorship

Literal
-Hours posted on right hand side of blog
- Grace Lin, Grand view Pharmacy
 Interpretive
- The most important thing I had gained from my experience at the pharmacy was how I was able to see the actual impact that I was having there. My mentor didn't speak Spanish and I had the opportunity of assisting her with communicating information the the patients. I always would heard the gratitude that the patients had for me helping them since it was always such a hassle for them to understand their medication. It felt good making a difference in the days of others. 
   Applied
-Through my mentor ship at the pharmacy, I was able to determine the answer to my essential question. How? Well I was able to see firsthand the effectiveness of my answer in play. Seeing all the patients receiving consultation and leaving understanding their prescriptions always assured me that this was the right answer because it was having the greatest effect in the bringing back customers and making sure that patients were comfortable with the  medication that was being prescribed to them. 

Exit Interview

(1) What is your essential question and answers? My essential question is "What is the best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy?"  My answers are:
 - The pharmacist should make sure patients understand their prescriptions.
- The pharmacist should ensure profit off of each prescription he sales.
- Hiring a pharmacist lab technician to improve efficiency 
        My best answer would be my first answer. Through this, the patient care that each patient should recieve is handled better. The patient fulfills their prescription regiment which entails that more profit can be made off of each prescription distributed. This is the easiest and most effictive to ensuring profit in a retail pharmacy. 

2.  The process that I took to get to this answer would be mentoring at my pharmacy to see what was being done there to keep patients coming back and the establishment open. I wanted to take note of each step that was being taken to ensure that the patients were being handled properly with patient care and financial aspects  were being handled. I also researched through different pharmaceutical companies to see what prescriptions were being sold at and how the pharmacist could make more money off of selling them.

3. The only problems that I faced while trying to find an answer to my essential questions were how I was going to handle many patients that didn't really want to communicate with me and give me specific answers to why they kept coming back to this pharmacy. I resolved it by finding my answers in the conversations that my mentor was having with the patients to see what she was doing and also what steps were being taken with each patient. 

4. My two greatest sources that helped me answer my essential question were my mentor, Grace Lin and my book, "The pharmaceutical Industry" by Roman Espejo. Grace Lin was a great help in finding the answers for my essential question because she let me observe the steps that she was taking to keep her establishment afloat. Also the steps that were being taken to ensure that patients were being handled safely and efficiently to keep them coming back. My book was a great help because it defined the aspects of the pharmaceutical industry that I needed to see to understand how profit was being made and also how to make it while being a pharmacist. 

Independent Component 2

LITERAL

(a) “I, Ralph Hernandez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”

(b) Pharmacist Grace Lin, 
(c) done
(d) While I was doing my Independant Component 2, I was basically put in charge of dealing with all only spanish speaking patients. Since I hardly knew the language that well myself, it was quite the challenge. I would make sure that the patient would understand how much they were paying for certain items and what Grace, me mentor, had to tell them. My mentor would make sure that they knew what times and how often to take the medication no matter how long it took with the patient. Sometimes this caused things to get busy with patients and I was really rushed to make sure they didn't wait too long for their medications. 

INTERPRETIVE 

These are pictures of when I had to change the prescription filing system that my mentor has at the pharmacy & ran the register for when patients came into the store. I changed the color pin on the bags to let the pharmacist know how long the prescriptions had been waiting there so she could know when to alert the patient. 

Applied

This component has really showed me the signifance of having a pharmacist lab technician who helps when things get busy around the pharmacy. This has helped me understand my next answer to my essential question. Which would be adding a pharmacist lab tech to the pharmaceutical team for patients. I also felt like I made an impact on the community with the hours of work I put in. I was able to help many families who couldn't speak english get their medications more easily than they previously would have. 

Third Answer

1. What is the best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy?
2. The best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy is to improve efficiency of patient consultation by hiring a qualified pharmaceutical team.
3.

• Pharmacists have to deal with patients consultation while making sure other patients get their prescriptions on time. 
• Pharmacist technicians are legally allowed to prepare prescriptions for patients.
• The efficiency of pharmacists techs shortens the wait time for patients by up to ten minutes, it was proven in a study by FC Business Intelligence. 

4.  Smith, Martin. "Improving Sales Efficiency and Effectiveness through Pharmaceutical Teams." Eyeforpharma.com. FC Business Intelligence LTD., 7 Mar. 2010. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.

5. I feel that this answer is really appropriate to answering my EQ because in a profitable retail pharmacy, patients are usually in a hurry to get their prescription while others want the proper consultation they deserve. This means that the pharmacist has a lot to deal with and his teams are essential to getting tasks done efficiently.

Fourth Interview Questions

1. What is the best way to ensure patients understand their prescriptions?
2. How do you ensure that they understood their regiment profile?
3. When is it best to check in on patients regiments?
4. How do you handle patient concern, personally or call their doctor?
5. How do you make sure that patients don't abuse their prescriptions?
6. How do you make any changes that you see fit to their regiment without consulting their doctor?
7. What is the best way to deal with prescription risks or going into detail about how abuse can be fatal?
8. What is the best method for prescription bottle information efficiency?
9. When can patients doctors be made to have a focus group with specialists including a pharmacist(you) to ensure patient health care safety?
10. What do you consider when hiring a pharmacist lab team? Mainly lab technicians.
11. What is the best way to act when a patient is uninsured?
12. What if the insurance company doesn't meet your compensation requirement?
13. What is the best way to communicate information to patients?
14. How can you best prevent patients leaving to other pharmacies?
15. What is the lowest you can receive on co-pay from insurance companies?
16. How do you manage your prescriptions prices, and when to change them?
17. When dealing with certain patients, can you adjust prices as you please?
18. How do you accept more for certain prescriptions based on what the insurance company will pay you for it?
19. How many times is it needed to check the insurance co-pay site to ensure your profit?
20. What business proposals ensure that insurance companies pay a fixed rate on certain prescriptions?

Advisory Meeting #2

What is the best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy?

The best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy is to make sure that all prescriptions bring in profit.

-Patients prescriptions always come with co-pay which amounts to how much will be paid per prescription.

-Insurance companies post how much each prescription will be compensated for on their co-pays site

-Some prescriptions will actually cost the business profit if sold to certian patients with different insurance companies. 

Source: Book "The pharmaceutical Industry" by Roman Espejo.

Espejo, Roman. The Pharmaceutical Industry. New Haven: Gale CENGAGE Learning, 2011. Print. Opposing Viewpoints Ser.

Independent Component 2 Approval

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.
     I am going to do 30 extra hours of mentor ship. 
2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.
    I'm going to keep a journal of every single hour of extra mentor ship I do. Then have a written statement from my mentor confirming everything I have in that digital journal.
3.  And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.
    I hope through experiencing these extra hours to get better answers to my essential question. They will be pivotal in making sure that I have answers and foundation to talk about during my senior presentation. 
4.  Post a log on the right hand side of your blog near your other logs and call it the independent component 2 log.
    Fo sho! 

Independent Component 1

LITERAL
(a) Statement saying: “I, Ralph Hernandez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
(b) My source who helped me complete my Independent Component, was Timothy Wong, a pharmacist from the Del Amo pharmacy in Torrance, CA. He's been a retail pharmacist for 12 years. 
(c) Digital Spreadsheet on my blog. 
(d) I completed 30 extra hours of mentor ship with my mentor. In those hours, I was able to get a better definition of what it was to run a retail pharmacy. Through it, I obtained an essential question and many possible answers to it. 
INTERPRETIVE 
Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work. 
I did a online Journal with reflections of each day of mentorship I had and its signifigance. Also with a letter from my mentor confirming what I put.   

Letter confirming hours. Click Here
APPLIED
How did the component help you understand the foundation of your topic better?  Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 
Through the extra 30 hours of mentor ship, I got a very defined idea of what being a pharmacist means. At my mentorship, I was able to see clearly what it was to maintain patient care. I saw my mentor make sure that patients understood their prescriptions, which ended up becoming my first answer to my essential question. I also was able to see the financial aspect of being a pharmacist by seeing the insurance companies co-pay sit, which shows how much profit is made. Which I plan to make a second answer out of. 

Lesson 2 Reflection

1. Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your Lesson 2 Presentation and why?
    -I'm most proud of how I was able to make sure everyone understood the information I presented.during the activity, I was able to see that they had comprehended what I said and could justify their answers based on what I said during the presentation. 

2. Questions to Consider
       a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Lesson 2 Presentation (self-assessment)?
               P
  b.     Explain why you deserve that grade using evidence from the Lesson 2 component contract.
               - I feel I deserve a P on the presentation because I hit the talking time and met all the " For P consideration" Requirements. My activity engaged the entire audience. I referenced my mentor ship. Lesson props were present( Prescription bottle). I asked some people in the back if they could hear me and they confirmed I was loud enough to hear in the back. 

3. What worked for you in your Lesson 2?
        - I feel I had an easy time hitting the required 10 minutes because I had so much information to talk about and didn't ever feel like I was running out of things to talk about. Probably all the research. 

4.  (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your Lesson 2?
     -I would have created a PowerPoint which would have all my content in bullet points so that people have a better visual of what I'm trying to talk about. I felt that others with powerpoints did really well with not reading off them and just using them as a reference. I would have liked to have that. Mabe for senior project. 

5. Finding Value
What do you think your answer #2 is going to be?  
   - Probably " Pharmacists should maintain profit with prescriptions" 

Third Interview Questions

1. What is the best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy?
2. How do you make sure patients are handled efficiently?
3. How do you ensure that customers continue to come in? 
4. What is the best way to sell prescriptions and maintain profit?
5. What is the best way to fit prescriptions to their patients? 
6. What are the best technologies to use to satisfy your patients the most?
7. How would you help patients learn the effectiveness of completing prescriptions? 
8. What is the best way to handle a patient who is clearly an abuser of prescription drugs?
9. What is the best way to organize patient’s files so it can easily be found?

10. What is the best way to ensure patients they are receiving the best care possible? 

Blog 11: Mentorship 10 Hours

1.   Where are you doing your mentorship?
      I'm doing my mentorship at the Del Amo pharmacy in Torrence. 
2.   Who is your contact?
      My mentor is Timothy Wong, a retail pharmacist. 
3.   How many total hours have you done?
      In total, I have 50 hours including my summer mentorship. 30 of which I am using for my Independant Component 1. So I need 40 more to hit my mentorship hours goal. 
4.   Summarize the 10 hours of service you did.
       When I was doing my mentorship, I was really trying to get a good Idea of what a profitable retail pharmacist does. Since my mentor qualifies, I figured i'd ask him questions about what a good pharmacist does and how best to do it. I ran the register while he would talk to patients and show me what he needed to do to make sure this patient was handled properly so that they would keep bringing him business. 
5.   Email your house teacher the name of your contact and their phone number confirming who they should call to verify it.  
     SENT. 

Blog 10: The Holidays

1. What did you do over the break with your senior project?

    I made a few stops to my mentors pharmacy to ask him about things he thought would be helpful in answering my essential question. I also stayed at the pharmacy to observe my mentor at work and see if I couldn't find out an answer myself. 

2. What was the most important thing you learned from what you did and why?  What was the 
source of what you learned?

      The most important thing I learned from mentoring over the break was the importance of making sure that patient records are efficiently managed so that refills and prescriptions are handled more efficiently. The source of this would be my mentor actually dealing with this inefficiency when I stopped by. 

3.   If you were going to do a 10 question interview on questions related to answers of your EQ, who would you talk to and why?

      I would want to interview Kenny Quach. He was my interviewee for interview 2 and he knows the pharmaceudical business pretty well.