Tappa-Tappa-Tappa

Today’s knowledge is literally at our fingertips!  Everything you’ve ever wondered about is just a single ‘tap’ away.  Like many people, when I was little I didn’t see the point in knowing how to add, subtract, multiply etc. in my head because I could always have a calculator with me.  Not that I found these problems difficult, I just didn’t understand the concept of needing to know how to answer the problem without having it be 100% correct with a calculator.  Today, I feel like I could argue the same thing with just about every subject.

Thanks to technology such as BlackBerry’s, Smart phones, and Macs notorious iPod, information on just about anything and everything we’ve ever wanted to know if just a ‘tap’ away.  Instead of now clicking buttons, we just now tap the screen and ‘poof’, there’s my answer.  Recently, my friend purchased a Mac computer and with their new purchasing deals, she received a free iPod touch.  Since she already had an iPod phone, she sold me the touch for half the price.  I didn’t really care to buy it, I actually spent a month contemplating on whether it was worth it or not (since I knew I would probably drop it in the toilet or smash it on the ground by accident within the next year).  Long story short, I bought the iPod touch, and with the help of my fantastic boyfriend, I added such applications (aka apps) to the device such as MPR (monthly prescribing reference), Epocrates, gFlash, and so much more. With MPR and Epocrates, most of the information about medications that I need to know about are now just a single tap away.

("Med gadget," 2010)

Our world is changing, but something’s will always stay the same.  I could argue ‘what’s the point in me memorizing EVERY DOSE, ADR, MOA, DI, CI, INDICATION, AND NAME OF EVERY SINGLE MEDICATION…. ‘WHY WHY WHY???,’ but in reality, I wont because I know the point.  The point is, ANYONE and EVERYONE has the ability to look up the same information that I do.  So when someone comes to the pharmacy and asks me a particular question about a specific drug, and I need to grab my iPod to answer them, I will be making the entire field of pharmacy look like an overpaid foolish profession.  It is my responsibility to know everything that I can possibly know about all prescribed AND over the counter medications.  Also, there is information gaps within these programs, and as a pharmacist, I need to know why certain ADR (for example) will happen, and not just that ‘they may’ happen.  At some point, I will have to look things up because as the world changes, the information we have on certain medications will change and new medications will be developed.  This is what makes the applications so amazing.  They periodically update themselves!  All I have to do is sit back and tap the button that pops up sporadically when it lets me know it’s ready to add the new version/information.

In my pharmacy lab class at NOVA, we have a final that is open notes.  I asked the teacher about using the computer and he basically told me that wasn’t allowed.  He had asked his supervisor several years ago about using them, and the reason we weren’t allowed to was because not everyone had the ability to use one so it wouldn’t be fair to everyone in the class (considering that there’s only 1 computer for 4 students).  After he explained this to me, I grinned and said ‘well, now just about everyone in the class has one of these (as I pulled out my iPod).  To my surprise, he looked at me and actually agreed and thought that was a great point.  A week later, he announced to the entire class that now during the lab practical we are allowed to use such applications on our iPods, phones etc. but not on the in class test.  When he announced this information, I was kind of disturbed because I felt like I should really know EVERYTHING.  Several minutes later, I then realized that this all made sense.  It’s not fair if a student got the ONE SINGLE medication that they couldn’t remember even though this student knows everything else.  If this happened in the pharmacy, the pharmacist could look it up in a book (just like students did in past practicals).  Yesterdays advantage of having access to such books is today’s weakness because the books are so inefficient compared to using a program such as Epocrates. We are now living in such a fast pace world that we expect the answer in seconds.  People treat the pharmacy like McDonalds as they pull through the drive through, hand me their order and shout at my face “GIVE IT TO ME NOW.” It only makes sense to have a practical like it would actually be like in the REAL WORLD, and in the real world, if you’re not efficient, you can get fired.

Images from:

Med gadget. (2010, February 19). Retrieved from http://medgadget.com/archives/2010/02/2009_medical_weblog_awards_sponsored_by_epocrates_meet_the_winners.html