What do pharmacists really need to know about urine?

Scripts


It's continuing education time again.

For those of you not in the biz, we are required to prove that we have been attempting to keep up before we can renew our licenses each year. How hard we have to work to prove it varies from state to state. The requirement here in this state is minimal. If all I did was make the state board happy every year, I would be sadly uninformed.

The computer age has made the process so much easier (and more relevant in my opinion). When I was just getting started back in the stone age, we had to either go to a boring, expensive lecture or find a print lesson, take the quiz, and mail it in. You really had to pay attention to who was sponsoring the correspondence lessons. They very often were thinly veiled advertisements for drugs.


The expensive day-long lectures have either pretty much gone away, or I'm just not on the mailing lists anymore. There are still plenty of 1 hour lectures out there, but I rarely go for moral reasons. These are sponsored by drug companies, and the lecture is following a dinner at one of the expensive restaurants downtown. You want to know why drugs cost so much? Because big drug companies spend as much on this crap as on R&D. And they spend even more lobbying congress. (Getting down off my soap box now)


Now I can sit down at my computer and chose from at least 50 different lessons to take online. This means I can get credit for gaining knowledge I might actually use. Yipee! Back in the old days, if all I could find to get credit was a lesson titled "Unrinalyis: A Guide for Pharmacists", I would have to learn about urine.


For my cont. ed. this year I've got the quizzes on pressure ulcers and zinc for colds under my belt. The pressure ulcer article had some detailed info that I doubt I will ever use, but I wanted to know what the current treatment recommendations are. The zinc lesson was timely because I just self-treated with zinc for a cold. The lesson says that studies are mixed, and further research is needed. My own research has been very positive. There are always zinc lozenges in the house, and my colds rarely get past the scratch throat phase before might zinc stops them in their tracks.


I've got about 6 weeks to finish, and 6 online quizzes should take care of my requirement. My license doesn't expire until November, but I want to send it in early. The Dept. of Health got a new computer system for license renewals over a year ago and is still having trouble processing the renewals in a reasonable amount of time. That's government oversight for you.