Well, that was fun.

Posted by Matthew Lewis at Wednesday, August 24, 2011

My NICU rotation is all but wrapped up, and I learned a great deal about being a clinical pharmacist. Yes, there was drug information learned like pharmacokinetics of caffeine or proper medication selection with neonatal abstinence syndrome (that's when mothers have to go through methadone withdrawal or a child was exposed to illicit drugs). More so on this rotation, I learned process. How to go about researching, writing, and organizing a topic presentation. How to figure out what to expect when you initiate drug therapy and which of those results have a clinically significant meaning. My preceptor is incredibly knowledgeable about her specialty, especially since she has been with neonatal medicine close to when it really became its own branch of medicine. To fully appreciate that fact, consider that now we just give a baby caffeine to help it remember to breathe. My preceptor started her career shortly after they abandoned mechanical bed shakers.

However, this is all drawing to a close. By Friday night, the first rotation will be done and gone. Due to my desired career path, it will be a very long time before I need to drudge up the medication lessons I learned here. The process lessons I learned, like how to investigate and build the patient's story, I will take with me to my next rotation, which is transplant pharmacy.

Transplant pharmacy rotation is one of fields of pharmacy I am highly interested in going into,and I ranked this rotation very highly. Where I knew next to nothing about neonatal intensive care medications, I come into this rotation with a decent background. Although we were hardly taught about transplant medications in class, my pharmD research project is in this area and my summer workplace supplies transplant meds to patients, so I have a better knowledge on these than my average classmate. I am also glad to be back into working with adults, since I can talk to them and my classwork applies to this population more.

In other news around pharmacy school, we had our first seminar session where we learned a little bit about the P1-P4 mentoring program and then had an info session on the APhA pharmacy convention, commonly called Midyear. I can't wait for both of these things to start. The mentoring will allow me to help somebody have an easier time in pharmacy and really get their new career going. Midyear will help me get my own career going. It's scary and exciting at the same time.

P.S. Sorry about the lack of pictures. It turned out to not be an option after all. Have to respect patient and family privacy!