Archive for the ‘PCD Programs’ Category

Last month, in July, you met fourth year pharmacy student, Gifty Kusi, who was doing a month long rotation in the drugstore. Gifty, who is originally from Ghana, will be graduating from The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy next June. Gifty told us that her unusual, but very charming name means, “Gift from God.” What a lovely name and how nice to know that her parents felt she was a wonderful gift to them.

This month, we have Ayman Saleh, another fourth year pharmacy student, working with us. Ayman came to the United States from Lebanon when he was 18 and has lived in California until moving to Ohio for pharmacy school.

Ayman is a compounding guru and has been giving me a much welcomed break in the lab the past few weeks. Ayman also clearly has the personality to be a pharmacy owner (something he hopes to become someday), as he has taken part in our craziness in the store, even wearing John Allen’s Hee Haw hat. Beyond that, though, Ayman loves to help our customers and devotes a great amount of time and attention to patient interactions.

Both Gifty and Ayman will be with us for several other weeks in the coming year as they are working together on a Partner for Promotion project in the pharmacy that focuses on compounding.

Plain City Druggist has been involved in the Partner for Promotion program over the past few years. Joe acts as a preceptor (a pharmacy mentor) for the students who work on advanced patient care service projects during their final year of pharmacy school. The students, like Gifty and Ayman, who choose to participate in this program are real go-getters, as they don’t receive any extra credit for doing this.  They do, however, learn a lot for their futures as pharmacists.  They also have to be able to manage their time well. The projects usually establish programs in pharmacies that can continue to work after the students are no longer there. These programs include diabetes clinics, OTC counseling programs, cholesterol monitoring, and other important health services that patients need. 

Our former pharmacy student, Kelly Hawk, who is now practicing in St. Louis, Missouri, did a Partner for Promotion project on smoking cessation at Schieber Family Pharmacy in Circleville. 

As I mentioned, the students who participate in the Partner for Promotion program are really motivated to be the best pharmacists they can be. Both Gifty and Ayman hope to have their own independent drugstores some day. 

For this reason, Gifty, Ayman, and third year pharmacy student, Jon McClymont, decided to attend the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) Pharmacy Ownership Workshop offered from August 19-21 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jon also hopes to return to his home in Nebraska after graduation and open his own pharmacy. 

Joe and I attended the Pharmacy Ownership Workshop way back in 1997 when it was held in Memphis. Joe was still working at Wal-mart at that time and I was in pharmacy school. Joe was trying to make up his mind about opening a pharmacy and this workshop gave him the confidence to start Plain City Druggist just two years later in 1999. 

We hope the NCPA workshop teaches our students many, many things as they journey to becoming pharmacists. We also hope that their time here with us at Plain City Druggist will also make them ready to be independent pharmacy owners.

Each year Advanced Eyecare and Sports Vision Center teams up with us to sponsor an Easter Coloring Contest (those are the 2010 winners in the picture with Joe and Dr. Miller). There are three categories in the contest with different picture entries to color for different age groups. There is an entry for kids, ages 3-4; ages 5-7, and ages 8-10.

The entry forms can be picked up and returned to Advanced Eyecare and Sports Vision Center, 302 West Main Street, Suite 100 (across from the Library), Monday through Thursday, and here at the pharmacy during normal business hours, Monday through Saturday. This year we are also going to allow people to download the coloring entry forms from the blog (see below). Just make sure if you print off the entry from the blog that you put the child’s name, age, address, and phone number on the back of the entry form.

There will be one grand prize for each winner in each age category. The grand prize will be a superb Easter basket filled with toys and games. You will be drooling when you see what we have waiting for the winners. Just look at those baskets in the picture from last year!

All coloring entries must be turned in by Thursday, April 21, to be judged. The grand prizes will be awarded on Monday, April 25. The winners will be notified by telephone. The entries will be judged by non-biased people, independent from the sponsors and their employees.

The winners will also have their photos taken with Joe and Dr. Miller and be featured in the local newspaper and here on the blog.

If you have artistic kids, please download an entry form and tell them to warm up their fingers. Click the colored link below for the correct age entry and print the picture to color. Good Luck!

Coloring ages 3-4

Coloring ages 5-7

Coloring ages 8-10

While Joe and I were at a pharmacy conference, I learned about a web site called “Fight 4 Rx.” Joe had already heard about it and had actually asked over 100 of our customers to sign the petition that is featured on the web site. Fight4Rx is a grassroots movement by community pharmacists across the country who are trying to teach their patients about the value of community drugstores.

I’d like to ask those of you who have never heard about this to add your name to the patient petition. Most of you know that large PBMs (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) force patients to use their mail order services and take away choices. Joe and I would like for you to sign the petition saying that you want to keep access to Plain City Druggist.

All you have to do when you get to the site is either print the petition out and have yourself and your friends and neighbors sign it or just click to send an email asking that your name be added to the petition. I clicked to email my name for the petition and the subject line of my email read: “Please Add My Name to the Petition-I Want Prescriptions at My Local Community Pharmacy.”

Please sign the petition HERE.

To combat the PBMs and forced mandatory mail order, pharmacists in New York have created “Operation AMMO,” which stands for Operation Anti-Mandatory Mail Order. To read more about what they are doing in their state to combat mail order, please visit the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York’s web site HERE.

Additionally, while we were at this conference Kimber Lanning spoke to us about the organization she belongs to in Arizona called “Local First Arizona.” What this group focuses on is asking people to shop at their local stores and stop spending their money out of town. Economic studies conducted by the group show that when someone buys something locally $73 from every $100 stays in the community supporting schools, law enforcement, local charities, and the people who work in the town. When that same person buy things out of town, only $43 out of every $100 spent stays in the local economy.

To see the studies and read more about shopping local, go HERE.

Additionally, this group supports the 10% Shift, where they ask consumers to shift 10% of what they would normally spend to local businesses. They don’t ask them to spend 10% more, only shift 10% of what they already spend to buy products they need in their own communities.

To read about the 10% Shift and calculate the impact on your local economy by making this small change, go HERE.

Mandatory Mail Order does not support local pharmacies. When businesses in Plain City choose who they want to provide their employees with health insurance, they need to make a choice that allows their employees to come to Plain City Druggist. Supporting insurance that forces a person to send their prescriptions to a company that may be thousands of miles away doesn’t just hurt us, it also hurts the whole community.

While they may think they are getting cheaper prices on that insurance, overall, they are cheating themselves and Plain City by taking money out of our local economy–money that pays our employees who then buy products from Charlie at the grocery store or Perry at the hardware; money that Joe and I spend on local taxes; money that we give to our church and local school programs and charities to help Plain City people and animals. That insurance company that forces mail order is giving no money back to Plain City for any of those things.

So think about these things the next time you have a choice. The biggest way to back up what you believe is with your money. Please use it locally. And FIGHT for what you believe in.

We recently learned about a very cool site that we will soon be advertising on. The site, called iShopCentralOhio.com, already features several Plain City businesses, including Lovejoy’s Market, ASE Feed and Supply, Yutzy’s Farm Market, Dutch Kitchen, Plain City Lanes and Pizza, and The Cheese House. If you search for Plain City, you can pull up each of these businesses and find coupons that they are currently featuring. 

For example, if you click HERE, you can print out a coupon for The Dutch Kitchen and $5 off the purchase of 2 Buffets.

Or go HERE and get $5 off your next purchase of $30 or more at ASE Feed and Supply.

You can search for businesses by categories. You can also search for Daily Coupons and sign up to receive exclusive deals by email. The site features savings for businesses all around Central Ohio. So try it out. We’ll let you know as soon as we are featured on the site and have our own discounts for our customers.

While Joe and I were at the NCPA (National Community Pharmacists Association) annual meeting in Philadelphia, we sat in on a marketing program and one of the things the speaker introduced us to was “The 3/50 Project.”

The 3/50 Project asks which local or independent stores in your community would you MISS if they suddenly disappeared?

They also state that “for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. If you spend that in a national chain, only $43 stays here. Spend it online and nothing comes home.”

The 3/50 Project asks you to choose three local businesses and spend $50 in those stores to save your local economy.

Joe and I are just starting a shop local program in the pharmacy, so be on the look out for more information on that. We will have signs, stickers, and bag stuffers explaining why we think it is important to shop locally. Additionally, we have asked our employees to “shop locally,” and we’ve put our money into encouraging them to do that. Joe has officially made the two dollar bill the local currency for Plain City. We gave each of our staff twenty-five two dollar bills with the only limit on their use being that they have to be spent in local businesses. As the weeks go by, we’re going to see if other Plain City shop owners notice an influx of two dollar bills in their cash registers. We hope this will show people just how much their money fuels our local economy.

At Plain City Druggist, we completely agree with the idea of The 3/50 Project and shopping locally. In the next month, Joe and I, as well as our staff, will be doing our best to spend $50 (in two dollar bills) in local businesses that we know we cannot live without. We’d ask you to consider doing the same. We also hope we are one of those businesses you would hate to lose.