Rapid-Fire Reviews...

Posted by Unknown at Thursday, April 25, 2013

As a result of a long-winded bout of writer’s block, I’m in debt several blogs! Here’s some rapid-fire reviews of my latest rotations.

Ambulatory Care at Briarwood Medical Group with Dr. Marcelino

After rolling off 3 clinical rotations at UMHS, my ambulatory care rotation was a huge shift in pace. At the hospital, my norm became working up patients the night before, catching up on any new information in the morning, and picking up new patients during the day. Often, I’d follow a patient for several days, and then they’d be gone – for good. Conversely, in an ambulatory care clinic, you know exactly which patients are on your schedule days or even weeks ahead of time. While patient volume was often high, reaching 15 patients a day at times, knowing schedules ahead of time allowed me to pace myself with work-ups. The thing I liked most about this rotation compared to some of my other ones was the rapport I got to build with the patients. Follow-up visits are often scheduled at two-week intervals, which mean that I got to follow a patient’s progress with controlling their diabetes and hypertension over 2-3 visits. The staff at BMG was phenomenal, and it is clear taht the physician-pharmacist relationship established in this practice is one of mutual respect and utility. Dr. Marcelino’s patients are very grateful for her involvement in their care. She has high standards for her P4 students, and it’s a great rotation for anyone looking for a good challenge. 

Drug Information (Lexi-Comp) with Dr. Streetman

This was an untraditional rotation if there ever was one! My weekly routine involved writing from home, and meeting with Dr. Streetman and my co-colleague twice a week to discuss progress on various projects. These projects included anything from researching and answering questions that Lexi-Comp received about drug interactions, updating old interaction monographs, or drafting new monographs from scratch for interactions that were never entered into the database. I had 3-5 projects “open” at any time. Some of them were longer-term projects that I chipped away at all rotation, and others were time-sensitive assignments that required fairly quick turnover because someone was waiting for an answer from us at the other end! The most satisfying aspect of this rotation was having my direct words published on a reputable database. My work on this rotation is forever immortalized! Until another P4 comes and updates it with hot-off-the-press research years from now, that is.

Institutional

Last but not least was my experience down in UMHS’s very own B2 pharmacy. I spent a week each at Mott’s, the central B2 pharmacy, sterile lab, IDS and had an admin week in which we attended various meetings and prepared a CE presentation which my classmates and I presented to the pharmacy technicians in our final week. Throughout the rotation I found myself thinking, ‘Wow, I wish I had had this rotation first! I certainly would have appreciated having faces to go with all the people who are working hard to prepare the medications I was recommending on my various rotations at UMHS. It was a nice full-circle to finally be able to see some of the medications I had never physically seen. I never knew that tigecycline was bright yellow! Kathy Kinsey and all of the preceptors involved with the rotation did a great job of making sure we got a varied experience at all of our sites. It certainly was a great rotation to end with!