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.