Continuing Professional Development For Pharmacist: Reflection On Glaucoma

This Continuing Professional Development for the role of pharmacist Reflection:

1. What do you need to learn?

2. How is this learning relevant to the safe and effective practice of pharmacy?

3. Why do you think that this learning may be useful for your future practice?

4. What have you learnt?

5. Give an example of how what you have learned could be applied to patient care in your future role as a pharmacist

6. What have been benefits of these activities to your learning?

I found that glaucoma is the second most common reason behind the blindness in worldwide and Europe is no exception. I also came to know that glaucoma could cause irreversible blindness, which means people can become blind due to glaucoma and they could never get back their eyesight again. Therefore, being a future pharmacist I need to learn details about the pathology of glaucoma. I need to learn about the level of intraocular pressure (IOP), which is directly related to the cell death of retinal ganglion. I should learn about the target age of primary open angle glaucoma. I need to understand the factors on which progress of the disease is hugely dependent. Such factors are the age of the patient when he or she is attacked by glaucoma, difference between visual function when the patient is diagnosed as well as age-matched controls. In addition, I also need to learn about closed angle glaucoma, which accounts for more than 50% of blindness in all over the world. I need to learn details about the closed angle glaucoma since, it is considered as most visually “destructive” type of glaucoma. Apart from this, I also need to learn about the symptoms of glaucoma, such as blurring of vision, redness, pain in eye, vomiting and nausea.

The second most common reason behind the blindness is glaucoma. Therefore, I believe that it is important to learn details about glaucoma. My acquired knowledge about glaucoma is helpful to determine the differences between Open angle glaucoma and closed angle glaucoma. This knowledge is helpful to learn different diagnostics process of Open angled glaucoma and closed angle glaucoma. In addition, I came to learn about different treatment techniques used in these two types of glaucoma. This acquired knowledge in the future will help me to provide safe treatment to the patients, who are suffering from glaucoma. I learnt about the IOP-lowering drugs and its correct dosages, which are helpful to treat the patient with primary open angled glaucoma. I learnt about Early Manifest Glaucoma Trial (EMGT), which helped me to enrich my knowledge about the effective pharmacy practice in the context of glaucoma. On the other hand, from EGC and NICE guideline I learnt about the minimum dosage of medicines to treat patients with glaucoma. Therefore, my detailed knowledge about EGS and NICE guidelines helped me to provide effective and safe treatment to the glaucoma patients. My knowledge about monotherapy helps me to use minimum amount of drug to the patient to achieve the best result, which is safe for the health of a patient. If monotherapy fails to achieve the goal, then use of second drug can be proved as beneficial to help the patients.  

Answers

This learning is helpful in my future practice, since this study enables me to gather detailed knowledge about glaucoma, which is the second most reason to the blindness of people in all over the world. The detailed knowledge of diagnosis of open angle glaucoma and close angle glaucoma will be helpful to diagnose patients properly. I gathered a profound knowledge about the right doses of medicines, which will help me in future to prescribe medicine to the patients according to their needs. While understanding the medicines used to reduce intraocular pressure (IOP), I came to know about many medicines that can help patients to cure from eye diseases. However, I also learnt about some drugs, which are used in treatments, but may have an adverse effect on the patients or the patients may experience side effects of those drugs. Such as Bezalkonium, this is widely used as preservative in eye-drops, but has the potentiality to damage the ocular surface. This useful piece of information enables me to take proper measures in future before administrating any eye-drops to the patients. I observed that most of patients with glaucoma are also suffering from ocular surface disease. Therefore, I assume my profound knowledge about the components used in medicines and its side effects will enable me in future to administer proper medicine to the patients.

I went through detail about glaucoma, which I think is an important lesson of my study to build my career as a pharmacist. From the deep research about glaucoma, I learnt that glaucoma can cause blindness, which is irreversible that means blindness caused by glaucoma cannot be cured. I learnt that there are two types of glaucoma generally occur among common people, one is open angle glaucoma and close angle glaucoma. The detailed knowledge of diagnosis of open angle glaucoma and close angle glaucoma is helpful to diagnose patients properly. Therefore, I learnt about the pathophysiology of this disease. I also learned about the proper diagnose system to detect glaucoma. I found that close angle glaucoma could cause more damage than open angle glaucoma. If intraocular pressure (IOP) is not dealt promptly at primary stage then it can result into close angle glaucoma. The symptoms of close angle glaucoma are, blurring of vision, redness, pain in eye, vomiting and nausea; these are considered as a medical emergency and require urgent medical treatment. While understanding the medicines used in glaucoma treatment, I discovered there are many drugs that can have reverse effect on eye sight and cause ocular surface disease. However, in pharmacological treatment I found several drugs that can help glaucoma patients, such as- Oral glycerol, which is used to remove the fluid from the “posterior chamber” and thus used in the treatment of close angle glaucoma. Use of Corticosteroids in this treatment is also proved as beneficial. Apart from this Acetazolamide (intravenously or orally, 10mg/kg), Pilocarpine (2% eye drops) can also be used in the treatment of the patient suffering from close angle glaucoma.

From my study, I have acquired a profound knowledge about glaucoma, its diagnosis and proper treatment. As a future pharmacist, I presume that my knowledge will help me out to diagnose properly a patient with glaucoma. Glaucoma is a threatening disease to humanity since, blindness caused by glaucoma is irreversible and beyond treatment. Therefore, I think it is important to diagnose and detect glaucoma in its early stages. I think that with my acquired knowledge I will be able to detect the symptoms of glaucoma and diagnose the patient in a proper way. On the other hand, I learned in detail about the possible medications that can be administered in the patients with glaucoma. This will help me in future to administer proper medicine to the patients. I also learnt about the pharmacological treatment and dosage of medicine that can be used while administrating medicines to the patients. I followed the NICE and EGS guidelines, which in turn enabled me to apply monitherapy to the patients at their first stage of glaucoma. According to the guideline minimum dosage of medicine need to be administered to the patients, since most of the drugs have side effects and can cause ocular surface disease.

While studying about glaucoma I discovered that the information about glaucoma disease is beneficial for my career since this disease is the second most reason behind blindness in all over the world. I learnt details about the diagnosis of this disease and its treatment procedure. I learnt about the symptoms of this disease, such as blurring of vision, redness, pain in eye, vomiting and nausea, which are considered as a medical emergency. I also learnt about some drugs, which are used in treatment, but may have an adverse effect on the patients or the patients may experience side effects of those drugs. Such as Bezalkonium, a preservative in eye drops can cause ocular surface disease. I gathered knowledge about the pharmacological treatment of glaucoma and I learnt that the use of Corticosteroids in this treatment is proved as beneficial. Apart from Corticosteroids, Acetazolamide (intravenously or orally, 10mg/kg), Pilocarpine (2% eye drops) can also be used in the treatment of the patient suffering from close angle glaucoma. These details about drugs helped me to enrich my knowledge as a future pharmacist. As a pharmacist, my role is not just to administer proper medicine to the patient but help them to recover from their painful situation. Therefore I encouraged myself more to follow the NICE guideline, which helped me to enrich my knowledge about the treatment of glaucoma.