Pharmacy Nights and DEA Surveys

This week, I had the opportunity to travel to Duluth for MPhA’s pharmacy nights. Pharmacy nights occur in the fall and the spring across the state. It provides the opportunity to meet up with friends, learn about current pharmacy topics, and receive continuing education credit. For the Duluth pharmacy night, I was responsible for bring the materials from the MPhA office, helping to set up the event, and register people when they arrived. While at the registration table, I was joined by a pharmacy technician. Between greeting people, she was able to share with me issues that are currently affecting technicians. In particular, people are interested to see what changes will come from the Board of Pharmacy’s proposed new rules package. Once everyone arrived, Dr. Uden presented current information about asthma management. Then, the president of MPhA, Brent Thompson, provided an update on current legislative issues in pharmacy.

I have also spent time this week compiling information from the DEA Take-Back event that occurred on September 25th. At the site I attended in Clear Lake, there was a total of 177 pounds of drugs collected. The top medications turned in were Arthrotec, alprazolam, metformin, gemfibrozil, and omeprazole.Overall, there were over 4,240 pounds of non-controlled medications collected and 435 pounds of controlled medications in the Twin Cities. The busiest take-back sites in the Twin Cities were St. Louis Park, the State Fairgrounds, and Burnsville. At the State Fairgrounds, there were approximately 3759 generic Vicodin tablets, 2333 generic Percocet tablets, and 1204 generic Tylenol with Codeine No. 3 collected.

Surveys were sent to volunteers to learn how things went at each of the sites. Hopefully the results from the survey will help future take-back events run even better. Respondents replied that things that went well included work flow and the relationship between the participating organizations. Many people commented that it was interesting to be able to talk to the DEA and law enforcement. Things to improve for next time include learning more about the site before the event and creating more advertisements to inform the public about the event.  Unfortunately, some of the sites held the event outdoors and volunteers were unprepared for the weather.  All volunteers are happy that they participated in the event and would like to help out again in the future. It seems like the take-back was a success!