Continuing Education

   Most people who hold a professional license have to do continuing education. There is a certain amount of cedit or hours that need to be done every year or two in order to renew the license. There are many ways to get CE (continuing education) Some go to seminars or classes put on by colleges, drug comapines or professional organizations. You can also get CE by subscibing to publications that send you lessons once a month. There are some poor unfortaunte souls who have to take "live credits" which means it has to be a seminar or something where there is an acutal teacher. I'm lucky  because there is no live CE requirement. I can do it all on the internet from home.
  I needed to do some CE so I could renew one of my licenses. I looked through my file of lessons that I had not yet completed. There were many and the topics were varied. As I paged through them I realised that I have some very strange interests. I put them in order of ones that are most interesting to those that are least interesting. Allow me to share my list.
  Medical Marijuana I put this at the top of the list becuae it has been in the news so much. I'm on the fence when to comes to medical marijuana. On one hand, if it is a useful treatment for various conditions then I have no problem with it. On the other hand I have also seen first hand the effects of recreational pot use and there  is nothing good about it. I'm not convinced that it's being made legal for medical use. The fact that federal law still has it classed with substances like crack cocaine and herion are a mystery to me. As Minnesota does have a medical marijuana program it would probably be a good idea to learn about it in case I have a customer who is enrolled in the program.
  Opioid prescriptions Balancing use with misuse This is another one I was very excited to see. One of the things that has bothered me in the last few years is reports of people,particulaly celebrities, dying of opioid drug overdoses. Where are all these drugs coming from and how are these people able to obtain them? Wasn't there a single doctor or phamacist that could see what was going on? It looked like a good lesson.
  Antibiotics in pregnancy and lactation  I was happy to see this one. We have several pregnant customers so any CE of this type is valuble to me. I was also looking forward to some kind of education on the new risk catagorization system.
  I did a CE lesson called "Depression Treatmant: More Ups than Downs".  I like any CE dealing with the treatment of mental illnesses. Depression in particular is the third most common chronic condition I see. I like to be able to help those customers of mine who may be struggling to keep thier depressive symptoms under control. This was a helpful CE.
  There were two CEs dealing with pediatric conditions. One was the new guidlines for treating asthma and the other was about how to treat coughs and colds. Although most of my customers fall into the geriatric category, I do have grandchildren so it is still useful.
  The last one on the list I chose simply because of the name. It was "Hepatitis C Treatment: Gone Viral". Who says that pharmacy geeks don't have a sense of humor?
  Now that I have made my list it's time to get stared working on them......