Clinic Day 2 (7/25) || Ryan Huynh

Risen from my slumber, I dressed myself and stumbled to the dining area, where an array of Vietnamese breakfast cuisines was prepared in a buffet style. Gutting for the rice and chả lụa, I stuffed myself to last me the day, placed a trà sữa đá in my hands, and hopped to the bus. As I counted off my team members, ensuring their attendance, I observed as many continued collecting hours of sleep as I soon followed ensue, preparing to conquer another day.

Upon arrival at our clinic site in Cầu Ngang, which was in a large facility within a school, we settled in and soon dispersed into our assigned roles. For today, I was assigned to the pharmacy team. Expecting to learn about each medication by following an organized layout of their placements based on the body system they affected, I quickly learned that each medication was placed randomly throughout the table with no common theme. Was I scared? Nah. My expectation coming into pharmacy was that I would learn about medications, but it turned out to be an elaborate time puzzle to fill out prescriptions as they came in. It almost reminded me of the good old days with Papa’s Pizzeria but not really. I was excited more than ever before and patients haven’t even walked in yet. Nevertheless, some preparations were required.

Starting the first half of Day 2 off was assembling general pharmacy bags, which consisted of one dầu gió (“essential oil”), one natri clorid 0.9% nasal drops, one antiparasitic medication, and one package of milk (either yogurt, soymilk, or regular milk). Every patient would receive these basics along with the medication prescribed to them by one of the on-site doctors. In our team of 5, we established an assembly line of sorts, with me and Josh opening the bags and everyone else assembling them. In the span of seven minutes, we filled three boxes with bags, which proved to be enough to last us until lunch.

Our next task involved distributing gabapentin pills into small plastic bags with 30 in each bag. I observed as each one of the pharmacy team had a different counting method, with one nameless 16Ger counting it out, another counting in 3s, and another counting into a box, then pouring into the bag. As a trendsetter, I obviously had my own method of counting 5s until I reached 15 and then repeating that until the bag reached 30. Yes, bright and early in the morning and I already decided to overcomplicate something.

Finally, the doors opened and we were operational. Aidan Tran gave the volunteer team a rundown of how exactly to fill in prescriptions, which medications we needed to limit on, and a quick tour of the chaos before us, which included the locations of the most common medications dispensed, including Calcium D, Paracetamol, Multivitamin, and Glucosamine. Even so, the 20-30 other medications were frequently requested, which created what I called earlier the “elaborate time puzzle”. Luckily, with many patients opting to explore the clinic and especially the optometry station, prescription orders came in relatively slowly, allowing us each enough time to attempt to fill out orders on our own and get a feel for the terrain in a sense.

I started off by working with another volunteer named Joshua Nguyen, who turned out to be 16 years old and hands down one of the coolest guys I met. Josh and I would take orders together and attempt to fill out without requesting aid from Aidan. With every successful order we filled on our own, we’d hype each other up and smell the dầu gió (which, yes, is typically done when you're sick or congested). That soon became a ritual whenever we had down time and finished filling up orders.

The rest of the first half consisted of us filling up prescriptions. There were some rushes from time to time and even more down time than that. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re all fast learners or patients were more spread out time-wise, but pharmacy was less of a jungle than I thought it would be. Granted, Aidan took on the bulk of the work as he was our resident expert on pharmaceutical medication topography, but we were all tackling each rush together. I was finally getting a feel for where each medication was located and was feeling very satisfied with each complete prescription order. With our prescription orders completed for the AM shift, the next thing to tackle was lunch.

What was for lunch you ask? Some would say canh chua, but I went for a classic: soy sauce and rice. Filled up on that, I grabbed a soy milk from the beverage vendor that chú Andy hired and entered the second half of the clinic day hot and ready. I started by helping create more bags, serving as the designated plastic bag opener again. After that, we mentally prepared ourselves by sniffing more gió. With the first orders that were coming in, we were blazing through them with even better accuracy than before. That was until it reached around 2:30. Around this time, prescriptions from optometry patients came in, a massive influx of patients walked in, and our supply of prepared bags was running low. The chaos I was forewarned of finally came.

When I tell you I was in the zone, I was completely in the zone. Complete flow state. I was balancing between locating medication, accepting optometry prescriptions, requesting and directing new volunteers to help with bags, and aiding the pharmacists with any requests they may have. I was so deep into the flow that time skipped itself to 4:15 in an instant, when the rush finally started to die down. Looking back at the entire pharmacy experience, although there weren’t many patient interactions besides accepting orders, I felt satisfied filling medication orders as many of these people may never have had experience with so-called “western medicine”. Being able to learn and challenge myself while aiding those in the community is a perfect pairing for me, and I was living that through pharmacy. Although I wished I took the time to observe as patients received their medication, one moment from that entire experience I’ll remember is the massive crowd of people waiting outside, relying on the pharmacy team to receive their medication and how that sense of responsibility pushed me through the rush. Each order was just another order for me to fill, but for each patient in that crowd, that order meant everything.

With the clinic day over, some went back to the hotel while others, including myself, stayed back with optometry until they were finished an hour later. By the time we arrived at the hotel, our farewell banquet celebration was approaching fast. Grabbing the only remaining semiformal outfit I had, Andrew (my roommate) and I zoomed to the banquet hall, which just so happened to be on the first floor of our hotel. There, we chose our seats for the night and watched as the festivities began.

The banquet started off with a couple speeches from Calvin, Jordan, and Dr. Bui directed towards thanking each organization, provider, and advisor for the collaboration on MEMO’s clinic. Organizations like UMC, the Saigon Dental Team, and CardiacLife Foundation were spotlighted and present that night. During that time, food like beef stew, canh chua, fish, and chicken were served. Although the food was decent, what stole my attention the most were the performances, all of which I will keep as a 16G secret.

With the festivities and nightly activities complete, I returned to my hotel room, where exhaustion overwhelmed me as I knocked out immediately on my bed, resting to continue our mission for one final day.

Pharmacy team wrapping up for the day!

Clinic Day 2 Pharmacy Team + Chris

Banquet Hall