We are looking for pharmacy students, registered pharmacists to be our volunteer.
As a volunteer, you can
♦ Plan, organise our Drug Exhibitions
♦ Participate in our Drug Education Roadshows
♦ Support and design Drug Education Pamphlets
♦ Become our Drug Talk speaker
♦ Assist our Visiting Pharmacists at Elderly Homes
If you are interested to be our volunteer, please email to info@pcfhk.org.
My experience in PCF let me realised the insufficient in the old practice of distributing medicines procedure in elderly care homes and how easy it is to make prescription mistakes which leads to problems such as missing dosage and overdosing.
The introduction of SafeMed Medication Management System (SMMS) developed by PCF targets the elderly home, aiming to improve the overall prescription process by implementing technology such as electronic prescriptions and automatic packaging of medicines in the elderly care homes.
I also have the valuable chance to shadow the 'Visiting Pharmacist Service ' which allowed me to witness the importance of providing professional pharmaceutical care advice can help improve patient health management, including dispensary service and doctor follow up record. It can identify any adverse drug reaction in time that patients might experience which may be harmful.
Although the implementation of this system is still in its startup progress, I can see its potential in future due to the arise of population ageing problems in Hong Kong which is going to increase the demand of elderly care.
Rachel
University of Nottingham
Last week, I had a fruitful volunteer experience at the Hong Kong Pharmaceutical Care Foundation (PCF). It was grateful to have the opportunity to understand more about the works of PCF as well as to shadow the pharmacists at PCF, who are experienced, insightful and have strong passion to enhance medication care, in particular for geriatric patients.
Pharmacists at PCF are really nice and they are so eager to share their experiences, insights and knowledge with me. By observing the works of visiting pharmacists, I have learnt about the importance of health literacy empowerment. Drug adherence has always been one of the biggest problems in medication treatment, which is much more prominent among the elderly. A number of patients do not have clear concepts on their treatment and some of the even have wrong belief on drugs, resulting in inappropriate self-dosage adjustment or even drug discontinuation. In this case, pharmacists can play their role in providing education to patients on medications, such as the side effects management. Apart from that, I have learnt a lot by observing how visiting pharmacists apply their clinical knowledge to assess the pharmacological treatment for patients, and how they counsel the patients.
It was also insightful to learn about another special role of pharmacists in enhancing medication care: foster automation in medication management. During the volunteering period, I was introduced SafeMed Medication Management System (SMMS), which is an unique and brand-new automatic system employed in old age houses and centres in Hong Kong. The pioneering system turns manual drug management processes such as dispensing, documentation and stock management into electronic one. SMMS would definitely improve safety and efficiency of medication care in the centres, by making medication management process more systematic and organized. It would be great to see SMMS being employed in more and more centres such that more patients can enjoy a better medication care.
All in all, it was a very meaningful and rewarding experiences, from which I have learnt more about the works, as well as the skills and knowledge to be a visiting pharmacists. More importantly, it was genuinely inspiring to listen to the sharing from everyone at PCF on geriatric care and automation. It would be really grateful to volunteer at PCF again in the near future.
Marco Po
CUHK Pharmacy Student
My one-week volunteer experience at the Hong Kong Pharmaceutical Care Foundation (PCF) was very meaningful. Although it was short but I must say that I learnt a lot about the different skills required for pharmacists in order to become competent and to be able to help with the geriatric patients with their drug related problems. These problems are becoming more and more significant in Hong Kong due to the prominent aging population and the amount of medication that they are required to take on a daily basis.
The pharmacists whom I shadowed at the elderly centres were very friendly. I sincerely appreciate that they were willing to teach me a lot from their practical experience, many of which I don’t think we can learn from just reading a textbook. They were also very experienced and knowledgeable due to their time and effort in the field and interacting with the patients, from which I gained a lot of insights about practice-based scenarios and communication.
Besides the frontline geriatric counselling from the pharmacists, I also had the chance to witness the SMMS (SafeMed Medication Management System), which is one of the pioneering electronic dispensing systems being employed in HK. I think these systems should be employed more often in hospitals where the workload of dispensing is much greater, and such automated system would definitely help with the heavy workload. However, with technology come advantages and disadvantages. Thus, we require a back up just in case the system encounters any major problem, and personally I think this comes with experience, and with trial and error. The integration of technology is still very optimistic for our current practice, and I think that the future path of pharmacists will be heavily reliant on technology.
Overall, this week was a very meaningful experience, as I’ve seen and learnt a lot of new things from on field experience, particularly about the geriatric population, and these are valuable knowledge that we can’t learn from textbooks. If I have the chance I would definitely be very willing to volunteer at PCF again!
Jane Yeo
Year 3 CUHK Pharmacy Student
