やっきょく- Pharmacy

At the end of November my timetable at work is due change. I will still spend half of every day in a nurses station, but the departments in which I work for the other half will change for the latter three months of my placement. This means I will no longer go to the beloved Pharmacy on Thursday afternoons or Radiology on Friday afternoons. I feel a little sad about this because I have made some good friends in these departments and I enjoy the work there. On the plus side, I won't have to go to the Medical Matters section first thing on a Monday anymore. No more lugging patient's files the size of encyclopedias for three and a half hours at a time, yay.

When I first discovered that my whole working week was to be transformed so drastically, my instinct was to worry. (What a surprise, *eye roll*). Now though, I am getting quite excited about it. I have various sources of information in the hospital, and in terms of which new departments I can expect to spend half of my week in, overall things look good. I don't want to say too much on this now because I kinda sorta have a few surprises up my sleeve that I don't want to let slip yet. Hee hee. I know something you don't know!

Anyway, I know I have mentioned the Pharmacy a few times as being my favourite department, but I haven't really explained why. Now that I only have four more afternoons there - yikes, is it only four? - it seems about time that I list a few reasons why I like it so much:
1. I'm together with May, so we can chat and I don't have to worry as much about understanding Japanese because she is essentially my interpreter.
2. We get to sit down for the entire time. Believe me, this is a God-send after a hard morning on the nurses stations.
3. Most of what we do involves packaging medications, like this...

...folding leaflets, and occasionally mixing pre-measured medicine. None of this is particularly difficult work, but is occupying enough that we don't get too bored and not too distracting so we can still talk.
4. The staff in the Pharmacy are really friendly and very appreciative of our work. They even make us origami.

5. The staff in the Pharmacy bring us tea and cakes once we have finished all the work.
6. We are allowed to leave early if we finish all the work set. We do this every single week.

So there you go, my work in the Pharmacy in a nutshell.