Free Beer Tour...WHERE?

While in St. Louis visiting, my family makes it a point to visit the Anheuser Busch plant and take the Budweiser Tour. Today, I went on my sixth or seventh tour or the facility and feel like I could almost give the tour myself. The whole beer making process is explained and you get to see the facilities were all the beer is made, fermented and packed. The Clydesdale horses and dalmatian are also on site to visit. The tour is fascinating, fun, interesting, historical and great with samples at the end!

Vacation Block, Here I Am!

Finally....Enjoying my one and only vacation time for the year!

Wish I could say that I was going on an adventurous trip across the world. Instead I have interviews, presentations and job searches filling up my few weeks. I have to start all this planning in order to potentially have a job in May after graduation.

However, this weekend I am doing something almost as fun as a world adventure...I am visiting my sister, brother in law and my cutest, most favorite niece in St. Louis!

Pharmacy Residencies and Fellowships

So what does all this verbage about residencies, fellowships, PhD work, that you may hear pharmacy students talking really mean?

The purpose of the residency (general or specialized) is to further develop you expertise as a clinician. The PGY1 is a more broader focus and the PGY2 has evolved into specialty practice to further develop skills to specialize in a particular field (i.e. psych, neuro, critical care, cardiovascular, etc).

A fellowship is meant to develop the skills of the individual as a researcher. Typically they market the capacity of developing you into a skill set necessary to be a principal investigator. Fellowships provide specialized training and experience within the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries while enhancing the role of pharmacists within industry.

Otherwise the PhD route gives you time to develop that skill set over the 1st 2 yrs and you have the remaining 2-3yrs to continue development and apply your work.

Iowa Pharmacy Board Says Marijuana is Medicine

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy Tuesday declared that marijuana is a drug with medicinal purposes. In doing so, it agreed to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II under Iowa law.

The board found that while marijuana has a high potential for abuse, it is now considered to have accepted medical uses. Schedule I drugs are those that have no proven or accepted medical use.

But the board denied a request from petitioner Carl Olson of Des Moines that it promulgate rules on the medical use of marijuana. That is beyond the scope of the board's authority, chairman Vernon Benjamin said.

While the board can regulate drugs and pharmacists, it is up to the legislature to approve the medicinal use of marijuana, he said."We can't set any penalties. We can't set any guidelines on how marijuana's going to be produced, what standards are going to be. And I think all those kind of things are things the legislature's going to have the ultimate say-so about anyway," said Benjamin in remarks reported by local media.

The ball is now in the hands of the legislature, which so far has failed to act to pass a medical marijuana bill.

(by Phillip Smith, November 02, 2010)

GOOD or BAD?

-As a human, I could care less if people want to harm their own bodies as long as they are not harming me.

-As a pharmacist, this adds to the liability, regulation and monitoring responsibilities of our job.

Happy Halloween!

Happy HALLOWEEN!

Hope it is 'spooktacular'!

I miss trick-or-treating.

If I could dress up in any costume, it would be...Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz since I have never been 'myself' before.

Congratulations!!

CONGRATULATIONS

Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez!!

You mean so much to me as you do to so many other people. I am not loosing a sister but gaining an invaluable brother in law! Thanks for making me apart of your wedding and for being apart of my life.

I LOVE you both so much.