Do you remember the good ol’ days of simple print advertising? The days where you sought out publications that reached your target audience, paid for an ad, submitted something well-designed for the space provided. Next, customers saw your ad, loved your product, and ran to the nearest brick-and-mortar store to purchase it. Unfortunately, many of us reading this find such a simple approach laughable, and you vets may feel a little sad at the loss of the simpler times.

Maryland, May 11, 2015

Columbia - It’s a fact of life. Most children don’t like taking medicine because of how bad it tastes or because it has a flavor they just don’t like. With FLAVORx, pharmacists are able to customize the taste of children’s liquid medicine to his or her favorite flavor. The FLAVORx app lets a person see what the best taste options are specifically for children’s medication and quickly locate a nearby pharmacy that offers the FLAVORx service.

How a child perceives and understands illness depends greatly on their developmental age. Kids change remarkably through ages and stages, and it is extremely helpful for parents to recognize and understand the differences. I hope that by breaking down the stages below, I provide a little bit of insight to parents as to what children are actually capable of doing and understanding at these points of development. Hopefully parents can use this information as a guideline to structure age-appropriate conversations and efforts when dealing with their sick children.

Advancing technology has really improved our efficiency and ability to do a pharmacist’s job, but unfortunately it overshadows a significant portion of the job which has traditionally been patient contact and care. In pharmacy school, we are trained in patient counseling, but today’s patients simply click “decline patient counseling” as a quick step in the check out process. Technology is wonderful in that it helps eliminate many of the tedious steps that infringe on our time as pharmacists. Theoretically, the more technology we have at the pharmacy, the more time we should have to spare to speak directly with our customers and build lasting relationships. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case.