The Wide World of Drug Information

Posted by Matt at Sunday, October 02, 2011

Another rotation has come and gone and I am left wondering where the time has gone. The last 4 weeks I was working with Dr. Dan Streetman completing my drug information rotation. Dr. Streetman works for Lexi-Comp, a medical software database, as one of the managers of the interactions database. Most of what I was doing entailed looking into drug interactions and writing monographs to be posted on Lexi-Comp. I was never actually at Lexi-Comp though; I actually worked from home during this rotation. I met with my preceptor twice a week to discuss my assignments and talk about upcoming projects. It was a nice break from being at the hospital all day but it took some effort on my part to keep focused at home, especially with a two year old constantly trying to help me on the computer.

This rotation really helped me refine my evidence based medicine skills, something I hadn’t done since my P1 year. I learned how to effectively search on PubMed and critically review an article. Since the rotation was focused on drug interactions I spent many hours interpreting in vitro data. I learned about pharmacokinetic parameters like Ki and IC50. I also got a good refresher on the CYP substrates, inhibitors, and inducers. Some of my assignments were actually uploaded into the Lexi-Comp database, so if you look up the interaction between warfarin and Augmentin you will find one of the monographs that I wrote.

The skills I learned during this rotation will help me during the rest of my life. As a pharmacist it will be important to effectively analyze and interpret medical literature to make the best possible recommendations for my future patients.