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This Profile in Personalized Medicine highlights Claire Wheeler Lewis, RPh, of Wheeler’s Custom Compounding in Lexington, Kentucky. The pharmacy has been a PCCA Member since 1996.
Just last week, we received a card from a pet owner. Her dog had recently passed away, but she wanted to thank us for our kindness and our willingness to make medications for animals. She said, “I got to have an extra year with my Sophie.”
In 1996, my father, who was the pharmacist and owner of Wheeler Pharmacy at the time, said to me, “We’re going to join PCCA and start compounding. We leave for Houston for training in a month.” I replied, “Why? I hate compounding!” My preconceived notion was based on my old pharmacy school compounding lab and my lack of understanding as to WHY medications would even need to be compounded. Thanks to PCCA’s initial training, I soon fell in love with compounding and how it benefits patients! It became my specialty, and I opened Wheeler’s Custom Compounding in 2012.
Being able to help patients who can’t be helped by other means.
Seek as much education as possible and always continue learning. Compounding is constantly evolving; you have to keep up!
It was at a PCCA event when I realized that not only did some pharmacists do a lot of compounding, but they owned successful pharmacies that were compounding-only. Never in a million years could I have imagined that compounding could be big enough to support a pharmacy on its own. That realization planted the seed and eventually led me to open my very own compounding-only pharmacy.
Definitely LoxOral®! It makes compounding capsules, especially progesterone capsules, so much easier.
Concierge Congress. The programming and activities are always top notch. Whenever I leave for Concierge Congress, I tell my staff, “I’m going to be with my people.”