A prescription's directions tell the patient how to use a medicine. Pharmacy staff read the shorthand on the prescription and turn it into clear, plain sentences for the label. To do that safely, you need to see each part of the directions separately: how much, by what path, how often, for how long, and how much in total. You also need to notice when one of those parts is missing or could be read two ways.
About 22 minutes
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Open lesson →Pharmacy work often names the same amount of medicine in different units. A prescription might say milligrams, a product label might say micrograms, and a liquid might be measured in milliliters. This lesson shows you how to move between these units without changing the amount, how to set up the math so the units guide you, and how to catch an answer that is the wrong size before you rely on it.
About 15 minutes
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Open lesson →A prescription tells you how much medicine a person should take. The product on the shelf tells you how much medicine is in each tablet or each milliliter. A dose calculation connects the two: how many tablets, or how many milliliters, deliver the ordered amount?
About 24 minutes
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Open lesson →Days supply answers a practical question: if the patient uses this medicine exactly as directed, how many days will the amount dispensed last? Pharmacies use the number to plan refills and to fill in prescription records. It also helps the pharmacy notice when a fill looks too large or too small.
About 20 minutes
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Open lesson →A medicine's strength tells you how much active ingredient is in a stated amount of product. For example, "400 mg per 5 mL" means every 5 mL of the liquid contains 400 mg of the ingredient. Once you can read a strength this way, three common pharmacy calculations follow from the same idea:
About 19 minutes
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Open lesson →A medicine reaches a patient as a specific product: a particular form, in a particular package, often with a particular device. Two products can share a drug name and still need different devices, different handling and different cleaning. Each package also carries several identifiers, and each one answers a different question.
About 27 minutes
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Open lesson →Every package in a pharmacy is in one of two places. It is either usable stock, which can be used to fill prescriptions, or it is isolated stock, which is kept apart until someone with the right authority decides where it goes. Your job as a technician is to put each item in the right place, send isolated items out only through an approved route, and write down what happened clearly enough that someone who wasn't there can follow it.
About 31 minutes
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Open lesson →A medicine's ingredient name does not tell you how to use the device it comes in. Albuterol, for example, comes in more than one form, and each form has its own device and its own rules. An instruction that is correct for one albuterol inhaler can be wrong, or even damaging, for another. Insulin works the same way. One insulin may be allowed in a pump while another must never go in one.
About 26 minutes
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Recommended first: Choose equipment and read product identifiers. Suggestions, not required steps.
Open lesson →A National Drug Code, or NDC, is the number printed on a drug package that tells you who put the product on the market, which product it is, and which package you are holding. It works like a three-part address. Read each part correctly and you can tell whether the package on the shelf matches the order. Read it carelessly, or confuse it with nearby numbers like the lot number, and you can pick the wrong strength, form or package.
About 23 minutes
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Recommended first: Choose equipment and read product identifiers. Suggestions, not required steps.
Open lesson →Every pharmacy eventually has stock it cannot use, such as expired bottles, recalled lots, or a vaccine shipment that got too warm. Getting that stock out of the pharmacy raises three separate questions:
About 28 minutes
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Recommended first: Return to stock, expired stock and reverse distribution. Suggestions, not required steps.
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