Thanks to the connections of the pharmacy director at La Carit, today I was able to have yet another great experience involving pharmacy in Costa Rica. I went to Hospital México, which is the largest (or second largest depending what you measure by) hospital in Costa Rica. It has more than 600 beds! I started my day in "El Laboratorio de Productos Farmaceuticos del Seguro Social" or "The Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Products of the Social Security". This lab is where they make some of the nonsterile products for all the hospitals of "La Caja" in Costa Rica. This laboratory is one of the two that exists to make products solely for the 29 public hospitals that are part of La Caja. First we toured the warehouse where they store all the raw materials to make the medications in giant barrels.
Next, I went for for a tour to see the entire manufacturing process and I met some of the assembly line workers who were nice enough to demonstrate how their machines worked. Here are some photos and a video of what I saw while in the manufacturing area.
After this tour, I visited the area where they do quality control of the samples, to ensure the full batch is able to continue being manufactured. Here are a few photos of the lab technicians hard at work checking to make sure the "muestras" (samples) are up to La Caja's standards.
Later I went to one of the "floor pharmacies" in Hospital Mexico. There I learned that they have a decent sized pharmacy on each of the ~9 floors of the hospital, where all the patient-specific medications are prepared in a cart and brought to the nurses. These "mini" pharmacies receive stock from the central pharmacy which I visited later in the day. After the tour of the floor pharmacy, we got in one of the lab manager's cars and drove about 20 minutes to "Laboratoris de Normas y Calidad de Medicamentos" which they explained to me as being the equivalent of our FDA, but on a much smaller scale. I met with the assistent director and then with one of the pharmacaists there who gave me a tour of literally every single process they do there! It was fantastic! I met so many pharmacists and researchers and was able to swop business cards with a few of them. One of them was interested in having pharmacy students come to do a rotation solely at this quality control facility! After the tour we returned to Hospital Mexico where we went for a tour of the central pharmacy. I have never seen such a big pharmacy! This pharmacy was detached from the hospital, but located right in front of it. Just as there is at La Carit, there is an outpatient side as well as an inpatient side which mostly consists of stocking in the "mini" floor pharmacies in the hospital.
The outpatient side had 10 individual windows to drop off/pick up prescriptions, and rows and rows of chairs in which to wait.
After this tour of the central pharmacy, we returned to the lab and Dra. Moya, who I was with all day, insisted on taking the bus back with me to make sure I got home alright. She was like another Mama Tica! She also invited me to go with her and a group of friends on a tour of the Golfo de Nicoya this weekend! Here is a picture of her and I at the end of our day together.
No comments:
Post a Comment