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Pharmacy: Protecting your health, career

  • Published
  • By Airman Kai White
  • 1st Special Operations Medical Group
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. --  The right medication at the right time can save a life, but what happens when it’s taken at the wrong time?

To prevent you from finding out, the pharmacy staff ensures you receive the right medication and know how to take it correctly.

“The biggest piece, as far as taking the medication, is that it is prescribed for a specific disease, state or injury,” said Maj. Zack Finney, 1st Special Operations Medical Group pharmacy flight commander. “We want to make sure patients are taking those only for the allotted time they need for that injury.”

Once a patient signs in at the front window, the prescription becomes active and several behind-the-scene checks begin to verify the correct medication is provided and it does not negatively interact with other prescriptions.

The staff double-checks the doctor’s instructions for the prescription. Next, they verify the patient doesn’t have any known allergies to the medication and that a similar medication hasn’t already been prescribed. Once cleared, the staff ensures the label prints correctly, fills the order and releases it to the patient.

Medication that is dispensed from the pharmacy is labeled with an expiration date. This date signifies that the prescribed medication is only valid for the member during that time period.

Finney warns that service members who continue take certain medications after the prescribed expiration date, will test positive for narcotics during a random urinalysis.

“It is against regulations to continue taking medications or save it when you are not under the usual care of a physician,” said Finney.

Not only can using these medications be harmful to your career, they can be harmful to your health.

“If patients are taking these medications after the intended use, there is potential for herbal, over-the-counter or other prescription meds that have been prescribed in the interim, to have unintended side effects,” said Finney.

Finney explained that unused or expired medication can be misused or incorrectly disposed of and is one of the biggest problems in both military and civilian medicine.

“Medications can interact and have strengthened or harmful side effects that physicians or pharmacy staffers won’t be able to check for; elevating health risks,” said Senior Airman Jordan Plummer, 1st SOMDG pharmacy front line supervisor. “Also, they are self-prescribing it, so it might not be the right medication they need to be taking. They need to go back to the doctor… you can’t just go off of medical websites,” said Plummer.

That is why the pharmacy provides a MedSafe prescription disposal box.

“It’s another step toward helping out the patient by making sure they have a safe place to put their unwanted medications,” said Plummer.

In addition to protecting the member’s career, it helps protect the Earth.

“We are trying to get away from disposing those in the toilet or trash as they end up in our water systems and in our environment,” said Finney. “Doing it this way allows the medications to be properly disposed of in a manner that is easy on the patient.”

During a patient’s pharmacy visit, the staff works to keep the patient’s health and career safe during the entire process that starts with filling the prescription all the way through disposal of any leftover medication. 


Watch this video: Learn more about how to use prescription medication correctly