Drug-Making at High SPEED

By the end of the year I'll probably be able to make drugs at the click of a finger, if today's pharmacy lab is an indication of what the rest will be like. We had to produce three drugs - ear drops, an ointment and a saliva substitute, and we were to make them within three hours. Fair enough - one hour per product. The only thing though is we had to share some equipment such as the computer to type up labels and the weighing machine (whatever it's called!) to weigh stuff, as well as having to get the tutor to sign off each product we measured to ensure it was accurate. That proved to be tricky at times! I spent quite a bit of time waiting for others to finish using equipment, and we only had one computer working at our bench of five, so that caused a bit of a backlog. However, I was assigned bench monitor for this week which meant I had to stay behind till the last person finished so I'd be last to leave anyway!

To catch up to others though I had to run around finding drugs, measuring things and pouring things at breakneck speeds (OK I'm exaggerating now!)! At the end of the lab my tutor told me that I may need to work a little faster next time, and I told her about the lack of equipment and she just told me I might have to look around for spare equipment or jump ahead of other people. Hopefully it won't be like that for our assessment!