Burquitlam Clinic
When you walk into the building, on the right will be the doctor’s portion, and on the left, will be the pharmacy portion. My father works as a doctor and my grandmother works as a pharmacist as well as owning the pharmacy and the clinic.
Pharmacy
I stayed behind the front desk when I visited the pharmacy. Along the back wall is a sea of every kind of drug you can think of, organized alphabetically. The workday consists of handing out ordered medications and packaging containers of pills for people to take every day of the week. Another thing a pharmacist does is provide vaccines. My grandmother provided the flu shot and the COVID shot. At one point in the day, a pharmacist took a patient behind a sort of curtain to give a flu shot. Something I found remarkable is the way my grandmother knows and memorizes what every drug does on her shelf. I picked one up and she told me what that drug does and the dosage. I also saw a safe with valuable or dangerous drugs such as morphine and other stimulants.
Clinic
When I was with my father, I stayed in the doctor’s lounge with the other doctors. There were 5 rooms where the doctor and the patient met. I wasn’t allowed in the rooms so my father would help a patient and would come back to the lounge.
On a typical day, a family doctor will check updates about patients before work, for example checking blood tests that have come back or updates from a specialist that have come back. Then they would look at a patient list for the day with summaries of their problem and their past treatments which will give the doctor time to prepare what to say or do a little research about the condition. This results in a day where everything is predictable. Then the doctor will come into the office and see one patient at a time until the end of the day.
Although meeting the other doctors was interesting, the lounge was dull and very quiet. But my father will come explain what happened with the previous patient so it was interesting to see the wide variety of things that could happen to the human body.
In the environment of a medical clinic/pharmacy, I saw a lot of drugs lined up on the walls. In the doctor’s portion of the building, there were private rooms with no windows to keep the interaction between the patient and the doctor confidential. I saw a front desk with a receptionist telling patients where to go and a lobby area with chairs and me and my brother’s baby pictures on the walls.
I heard very faint sounds from a distant TV but other than that, the pharmacy was very quiet along with the doctor’s offices.
The smells were not very different than usual. However, the doctor’s lounge smelled like food because the doctors were eating lunch.
The things I felt were different. I felt happy because my grandmother was happy to see me and teach me about the elements of a pharmacy. I also felt sort of relieved and satisfied because the whole time I was at the office, all I saw were people helping others.
For me at least, the thing that would motivate me to wake up every morning would be the reactions and the gratefulness of everyone you help. As I was watching my grandmothers help people in the pharmacy, the people’s reactions were so great, and everyone was so nice. The patients were so energetic and kind which gave me a sense of a built community.
I think one element of the job that would discourage me from attending work every day would be the crazy patients who think they’re always right and don’t accept treatment to prescriptions.
One thing I found interesting is how so many people of different ages came in with problems sort of categorized by their age. The younger people would have physical injuries. Middle-aged people would have skin problems. The older people would have more pain and internal issues. I also found it interesting how everything is so orderly and calm. I guess I’m used to the idea of a hospital environment where it’s hectic and rushed. But this environment was relaxed and even though it was slow, everything was done by the end in an organized fashion.