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What It's Like To Be...

A Pharmacy Tech

What It's Like To Be...

Dan Heath

Curiosity, Jobs, Careers, Business, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Human Interest

4.8646 Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Counting out pills in fives, working with million-dollar drugs, and ensuring the right medication in the right dose gets delivered at the right moment with Rose Davin, a pharmacy technician in Rochester, New York. What are the layers of protection that prevent pharmacy employees from absconding with opioids? And what happens if a technician accidentally drops a pill on the floor? IF YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE: Check out what it's like to be a nurse, a veterinarian, or a hospice nurse. WANT MORE EP...

Transcript

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0:00.0

In your local hospital, there's likely a heavily protected cabinet with fingerprint-only access

0:06.7

that stores drugs that might be abused.

0:10.5

Some of the drugs in that cabinet, you'd probably expect.

0:13.9

Some, you might not.

0:16.3

Actually, cocaine specifically, we use in our surgery areas quite extensively.

0:20.9

If a surgeon's got like a 12-hour thing going on, just like a little nip just to get through.

0:25.5

Gosh, could you imagine?

0:27.2

Oh, please, no, thank you.

0:30.7

That's Rose Davin.

0:32.8

She's been a pharmacy technician for 20 plus years.

0:36.3

She's worked in both a retail setting, like in a pharmacy at

0:40.0

CVS or Walgreens, and a clinical setting, like a pharmacy in the hospital. So about that cocaine.

0:48.3

No, we actually use it in a compounding facility to make cocaine eyedrops and cocaine nasal packing for when people

0:56.3

are getting plastic surgery. We will put it in their nose so that when they are laying

1:01.7

on the bed afterwards, they're not getting blood clots going down the back of their throat.

1:05.6

So we'll use it to stop bleeding. This is so incredibly interesting.

1:13.4

Cocaine is routinely used.

1:14.0

Huh.

1:19.8

Yeah, I mean, we're not mainline in the hard stuff, but yes, we are certainly using it for medical purposes under very tight regulation, of course.

1:22.8

Music I'm Dan Heath, and this is what it's like to be.

1:37.3

In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession,

1:41.3

a mystery novelist, a stand-up comedian, a summer camp director.

...

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