Interviewing my mom, a previous inpatient pharmacy technician.
Q: What kind of doctor/nurse are you?
A: "I was a inpatient pharmacy technician and I spent some time in controlled substance auditing."
Q: What is your specialty?
A: Controlled substance auditing is essentially analysing how much of a certain drug is wasted, distributed to paitents, etc. It is so controlled to prevent drug abuse from hospital staff and making sure you have enough medicine for specific patients. (Mom) Also oversaw various medication systems.
Q: What body systems do you work with?
A: Mom never interacted directly with patients,but did a lot of pharmacy interventions(ER medicines, chemotherapy, dialysis, IT support for operating rooms, and more).
Q: How long have you worked in this career field?
A: Mom worked in the medical field for 9 years, 2-3 of them in controlled substance auditing.
Q: When did you know you wanted to work in the medical field?/What made you want to work in the medical field?
A: Mom liked the science of how drugs worked with the body,and needed the stability and health care of the job.
Q: What is one rewarding thing about your career in the medical field?
A: Mom like helping people and seeing babies go home healthier than when born.
Q: What is something you struggle with while working in the medical field?
A: There is a lot a bureaucracy and strictness, which sometimes hurts patients rather than helping them.
Q: What is some advice you might give someone who wants to work in the medical field?
A: To do research before choosing a specific job because there are so many interesting niches.
Q: If you could change careers, what might you want to do?
A: My Mom is currently a data scientist. After she had an oppourtunity to go back to school, she was able to apply skills from being a pharmacy technician to data scientist. She is going for her masters degree, and now works in health geography.
Conclusions
The medical field is interesting. I learned a bunch of other miscellaneous information from this interview. My Mom was pretty happy in her job, but she has now found something that better fits all of our lives. The field has a bunch of different niches and this was a cool look into the people holding up the industry behind the scenes.
The hospital my Mom worked at had an extensive program that cared for newborns that were addicted to drugs and alcohol. If a mom drank or did drugs while pregnant, the baby would be addicted when born. I found that interesting, I'll probably never be a mom but it's a fascinating concept. I never really thought about it before, but we definetly need to watch what we're teaching new generations. The fact babies are addicted to substances straight out of the womb makes you step back and realize how flawed certain parts of our species is.
Interviewing my Mom was fun, and I like learning more about my family. She talked about how a couple of times, she'd be running down halls to reach operating rooms to run certain machines. STEM isn't nessecarily my cup of tea, but I admire anyone that has the mindset to do all of these cool things. I would never be able to cope with someone's life on my hands. Doctors are cool, but the people running the show behind the scenes deserve more credit. They are saving lives, even if it's less direct than on the operating table.
Image from Time.com
Image from NBC