After spending a whole month in Germany, we're finally starting to pick up a little tiny bit of the language, but it's still slow progress. It's hard to believe it's already been a whole month! Things are flying by; we have continued to meet with representatives from different levels of healthcare. This last week we met with Velbert's Vice Mayor, the county commissioner, and the leading addiction medicine physician in Germany. These meetings were good, but alas are not the focus of this particular blog. We have been able to spend a little more time in the pharmacy recently and have started to learn the specific details of a community pharmacist's practice.

I think the best way to describe the life of a German pharmacist is to describe how it is different to that of a pharmacist in the U.S. First of all, they make teas. No, you didn't hear me wrong, they practice homeopathy. In fact, a rather large part of their collegiate studies focus on homeopathy. Part of our time here was to be introduced to the practice. We learned about 15 different herbals, what parts of the plant they come from, their active components, and their effects on the body. This is only a small fraction of the hundreds of herbals that German pharmacists are required to know. Another interesting difference is the practice of product analysis. Before any medication is used by the pharmacy, they must chemically verify the identity of the drug. When we started to learn about this practice, it took us all back to our undergraduate studies. To say the least, it has been a while since we have done an acid base titration or a thin layer chromatography analysis. I know I said that I was going to tell you about the differences, but it was comforting that we aren't completely divergent. We compounded a few products and other than the fact that they make more beauty products and a higher volume in general, the practice of compounding here is generally the same as it is in the United States.

Finding common ground is nice, but let's return to the differences. The pharmacy technicians here, or rather the Pharmaceutical Technical Assistants (PTAs), are more highly trained and have received 2 & 1/2 years of post graduate education. This means that though the pharmacist is still legally responsible for everything going on the in the pharmacy, the PTAs can also do EVERYTHING the pharmacist can. This includes chemical analysis, creation of homeopathic teas, compounding, and the pharmacist's pride and joy in the US... counseling patients.

We are still creating our video to show you a glimpse of our time at the pharmacy, but it's a work in progress. We are almost done in Germany; just one week to go and then back to reality. We'll try to get up one more post before we all scatter.

Thanks for reading.

Adam, Lisa, Anna, Tammy, Jamie, Anne, Trina, Michelle, Angela, Stephanie, and Amy

Tschuss!