Right now, my SQL skills are at the basics: selecting, filtering, and joining data. But I’m already thinking ahead to what small, portfolio-friendly projects could look like. Some ideas for later: These are future goals, not current work. However, learning SQL now lays the foundation. It’s a lot like starting a new clinical specialty: you…
Category: Learning Journal
Small Wins: My First SQL Query That Made Sense
Today, I ran my first SQL query that made complete sense. It wasn’t fancy, just selecting a few columns from a dataset and filtering for a certain value, but it worked exactly as intended. That little “yes!” moment reminded me of when a patient’s INR finally comes into range after days of adjustments. Right now,…
Thinking in Tables: How SQL Changes Perspective
One thing I didn’t expect when starting SQL was how much it would change the way I see data. As pharmacists, we’re used to patient charts, medication profiles, and lab reports; often presented as separate pieces. SQL forces you to think in tables and relationships: Learning about joins showed me how these pieces could be…
The SQL Learning Curve (and Why it Feels Like Pharmacokinetics)
Learning SQL has reminded me of learning pharmacokinetics for the first time. There’s a language, a structure, and certain rules that you can’t ignore if you want the right outcome. In the early lessons, I’ve been experimenting with: Right now, these are just exercises with practice datasets. But in clinical terms, I can see how…
Starting SQL: Why a Clinical Pharmacist is Learning It
As a clinical pharmacist, most of my day revolves around patient cases: verifying doses, adjusting therapies, and reconciling medications. But behind all of this is data, and I’ve always wondered how much more effective I could be if I could pull and shape that data myself. That’s why I’m learning SQL from scratch. I’m starting…