All that remains now are fond memories......

Yesterday was my last day of hospital placement. Woke up early with much anticipation considering that on this last placement I'll be going to the production section to "produce" some pharmaceutical product. I put on my best and even wore a tie (not necessary to wear actually, but I just wanted to make a final impression on the last day...=P).

In RAH, me and Peter Guor (most of you should know him....he came to OCF but not so regular now) were brought to the productions section, led by a Quality Control pharmacist called Nick. There were three sections in the production area, namely the sterile, non-sterile and cytotoxic areas. We did our product, Salicylic Acid and Coal Tar Cream 6%, in the non-sterile area. Believe it or not, we actually did 5kg of cream, a massive difference from when we did our labs in Pharmaceutics last semester when only 20-50g of cream were made. The large amounts meant that more room was allowed for errors in weighing out the raw materials! =)

To make the cream, we needed to make Aqueous Cream (the cream base) first from scratch. So we measured all the ingredients needed for Aqueous Cream and melted them under boiling water bath, then allowed to cool after that. While waiting for the melted liquid to turn into Aqueous Cream, Peter and me filled in heavily-staining Crystal Violet (sorta like an antiseptic just like iodine) into small bottles. Good thing we were wearing gloves that time; I would have hated my hands to get stained purple and make me look like I've just come out of a gang fight!

Now that the Aqueous Cream had cooled down, we levigated (mixed) Salicylic Acid together with the Aqueous Cream. This took quite a while and I was taking turns with Peter to do this messy step. The final step of adding Coal Tar Solution to the cream was not done by us as we had run out of time....so sad.... =(

In the afternoon, after lunch, we had an evaluation and feedback session with our Placement Tutors. This session turned out fine and everyone was happy as all of us students on placement that day confessed we learnt a lot and were lucky to have such helpful Tutors.

I wanted to take some photos during the production session but I couldn't as the Quality Control pharmacist was always around, and I couldn't take the risk of looking "unprofessional". In the end, the only picture I could take was this:

Toilet scenery

Well, at least better than nothing.....

Just as an addition to this post, I saw this bizarre thing on my way home. Angle isn't that good and I didn't want to get to near to avoid suspicion while taking this photo.

Most probably gay partners, they're holding hands....

Happy reading! =D