Rotation 4: Nontraditional - Amb Care Administration

Posted by Josephine at Saturday, November 18, 2017

Block 4: Non-traditional - Ambulatory Care Administration

This rotation was truly a whirlwind rotation for me, meaning that everyday was different and I often had to shift gears fairly quickly. The hours were generally 8 AM - 5 PM, but in the world of admin, that time constraint means very little (some days I would leave early or stay later, and occasionally stay up really late to finish spontaneous rotation work).

Despite this, I was very fortunate because my preceptor strongly believes in bringing the P4 student along in everything that she is already doing. This means that I got to attend various meetings and that my schedule ended up being very fluid (some days I would have chunks of project time, while other days I would have back-back meetings the entire day). This rotation also required me to think on my feet and shift gears quickly, which were skills I hadn't really practiced before this rotation, so I was grateful to have this experience.

Unfortunately, I can't really talk about the specifics of the projects that I did (my preceptor likes to call it "admin HIPAA" due to the sensitive nature of the meeting discussions and project content). However, I can say that I did a profound amount of data collection on MiChart, a lot of data analysis using Excel, and made/edited several presentations to Michigan Medicine leadership. I also learned my fair share about the following: team dynamics/interpersonal interactions, conflict navigation, utilizing connections, giving feedback to employees, how to run a meeting (utilizing time, moving agenda items forward), how to overcome pushback from collaborators, practice change management, initiating a clinical service, project management (reporting results, informing stakeholders, process improvement, etc), value proposition, and billing.

Unlike in my previous rotation (where I mainly had context with 3 other P4s), during this rotation I was, for the most part, attached to my preceptor's side. This was a huge benefit to me because this preceptor is a pretty dynamic, forward-thinking, vision-casting type of person, with multiple connections and projects happening around the state. In a different administration rotation I might have been mainly based in a hospital, attending meetings within that institution. But during this rotation, I was able to see things happening across institutions. Consequently, I felt that I got a taste of the "progressiveness" that characterizes the Amb Care space.

Rotation 3: Health System/Hospital

Posted by Josephine at Saturday, November 18, 2017

Hi Everyone,

I's been very busy recently (with the secondary projects of P4 year - finishing up the PharmD Investigations Project with a polished manuscript, and completing the P4 Seminar). It truly feels good to be done. But as a result of being busy I haven't been able to post about rotations, so I'll start with 3 now.

Block 3: Institutional/Health System/Hospital Rotation @ a local community-based teaching hospital
During this rotation, I was very fortunate to have a variety of responsibilities. The preceptor is very organized and open to feedback. I rotated through the various duties on a 4-day schedule with three other P4 students (2 from Michigan including myself, 1 from the University of Toledo, 1 from Midwestern):

• Verification duties:
• Unverified Orders Monitor (UVOM) - sitting in the central pharmacy and helping them clear the orders that have either already been given or have been discontinued
• Anesthesia Trays
• Pyxis Cart Refills
• ACS Boxes and A-Packs
• Patient Counseling:
• Discharge counseling on Orthopedic Surgery patients
• Anticcoagulation counseling on new-starts (rivaroxaban, apixaban, dabigatran)
• Miscellaneous:
• Constantly checking MedMined (the pharmacy's surveillance system) to assess the clinical significance of each alert and determine potential interventions (renal dose adjustments, duplicate medications, adverse effects)
• Answering random DI questions

In addition to the above duties, I also was able to shadow several times (Emergency Department, Nursing, SICU, MICU, IV room). The preceptor is curious about your interests and works very hard to set up opportunities in that area. I also was required to present a journal club with all of the other P4 students rotating at this hospital (so there were about 10 students in the room). In addition, ther were miscellaneous other presentations to attend: student presentations, pharmacy presentations to nursing, as well as noon conferences for doctors (free food!)

Overall, this rotation was rather relaxing (compared to what I imagine an inpatient rotation would be like). The day was generally 7:30 AM - 4 PM (with 30 minutes for lunch). I never took work home and was not able to access the medical record from home anyway. The preceptors at this institution are very friendly and eager to teach. 

Besides all of this, the rotation was made the most enjoyable by the people! (ie: the other pharmacy students). As I said there were 3 other P4's with me (as well as a P3 from Toledo completing a 2-week IPPE). Honestly, the 5 of us had a lot of fun together, going through all the responsibilities and learning about each others' respective pharmacy schools and various interests. We would eat lunch together everyday and sometimes even hang out after rotation (I'm still in touch with one of the Toledo students even now). I think it could have been easy to simply go through all of our responsibilties without exchanging a word. But this rotation shows me that it's this camaderie-building relationship that truly makes work enjoyable (also, best way to network!). 

(See next post for Rotation 4 details)

Block 4: GenMed

Posted by Unknown at Thursday, October 12, 2017

Hi there! I just completed my general medicine rotation and it was definitely one of the busier rotations I’ve had thus far. I’m back in the inpatient setting and thankfully, I’ve already had some inpatient experience before coming in. I felt like I was more prepared starting this rotation because I had already seen some of the cases before. Despite learning so much from my critical care rotation, I still learned a lot on this rotation! I was in adult internal medicine, which comes with a wide range of cases. Some that you see every day and some that are so rare, there are no studies out there to support a standard care of treatment. I’m amazed at how much there is left to learn and that’s what I love about pharmacy. There is always something new to learn and it will be like that for the rest of your career.

Now to my daily schedule. My day would start around 7 AM when I arrive to the hospital. I work up patients until 8 AM and then I head upstairs to meet with my preceptor for a 30 minute pre-rounds discussion. Rounds started at 8:30 for my first two attendings and 8:15 for my last attending. Each attending has a different style for rounds. Some do it as they walk from patient to patient and some do table rounds. Some go with a fast pace and some take their time with each patient. You have to learn to adjust to each style. After rounds, I would go to the team room to see if the medical residents and students had any pressing concerns regarding patients’ medications. Those concerns were on the top of my list to make sure I get back to them with an answer right away. After rounds, I would go back to my preceptor for a post-rounds discussion to update him and discuss my plan for each patient. Afterwards, I would go back up to the team room and answer any questions that they may have. I would then use the next couple of hours checking levels, making dose adjustments, preparing for topic discussion, and writing notes in patients’ charts.

At 1 PM, I would go back to my preceptor and share the levels that were drawn and the dose adjustments that I thought were appropriate. I would also go through all my notes with him to make sure they were sufficient and then we would end with our own topic discussion. For the last hour of each day, one or two students from our group would present on a journal club, disease state, or case presentation. Each of us had to present at least once a week.

I truly enjoyed this rotation because I felt like it really expanded my clinical knowledge. I also loved that my preceptor knew my weak areas and knew how to challenge me. Sometimes it was a topic discussion and sometimes he would make me study and give me an exam the next day. He wanted to make sure I walked out with that knowledge at the front of my mind at all times and for that I’m grateful.

That’s everything for now! Four blocks down, 5 to go!

Rotation 3: Clinical Managed Care?

Posted by Unknown at Sunday, October 08, 2017

Hello Everyone! Back and busier than ever. I just completed my nontraditional rotation in managed care. Managed care was a setting that I quickly closed the door on because I didn’t know much about it. However, when the time came for us to rank our placements for APPEs, I realized that I should probably leave that door open in case I ended up liking it. I had the chance to explore everything before narrowing down my options. I didn’t want to be too picky. And honestly, I’m glad I had the chance to do managed care. The interesting part about my site was that it was managed care yet clinical. Classmates were telling me this about my site and I did not understand it, but now that I have completed 5 weeks there, I see how! My site focused on worker’s compensation and had a goal of reducing the opioid epidemic.

What I enjoyed about this rotation was that every week was different. I had different goals and different projects for each week, focusing on different areas of managed care. The first was dedicated to reading the different guidelines for each state. Most states follow the Official Disability Guidelines (ODG); however, quite a few states have their own disability guidelines, such as New York, California, and Louisiana. I was expected to be familiar with all the guidelines for each state.

By week 2, I knew the guidelines and I was ready to move on to the next step—IMEs. This stands for insurance medical exam or independent medical exam. It’s a document that we write after looking through an injured worker’s profile. We have to look at the medications they are taking through worker’s comp (mostly opioids) and the duration of therapy as well as drug-drug interactions. The morphine equivalent dose (MED) also played a huge role when documenting IMEs. Majority of the time, the medications are inappropriate for an injured worker and it was our responsibility to make sure the document clearly explained why the patients should not be on those medications. Once we got the hang of IMEs, we started utilization reviews (UR) by week 3. URs were similar to IMEs but shorter and less detailed. It was a brief summary of what would be in the IME.

Week 4 was when the projects started up. My co-intern (Ferris State pharmacy student) and I worked together on two projects. One was on psychotropic drug abuse, where we had to research the most commonly abused psychotropics and educate the team on signs and dangers of abuse. I loved that project because I didn’t realize how serious the problem was until I started looking at studies that focused on ED visits related to drug abuse and the numbers saddened me. I was happy to educate the team on ways to avoid abuse when working with injured workers. The second project was on Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP) where we had to create a document and a presentation educating the team on the different PDMPs around the country and their different requirements. It was interesting to see how each state monitors patients and how they approach the opioid epidemic.

Overall, this was a great rotation. I didn’t have any managed care experience before coming in so I’m thankful for this experience! The team was very welcoming and open to questions and I had a wonderful co-intern that I connected with so well. The best part about this rotation is that I l learned so much and felt like I was making a difference with each IME, UR, and project that I completed on this rotation.

Rotation 2: Less Is More In Critical Care

Posted by Unknown at Wednesday, August 09, 2017

Less is more. That was the recurring theme of this rotation. Less is more, especially in the ICU. I just finished up critical care in Detroit and “less is more” is the phrase I kept hearing from my preceptor, my attendings, and even some of the medical residents. During my first week, my preceptor and I were sitting down talking about possible interventions for a specific patient and he said, “Less is more in critical care. If you walk into a patient’s room and you don’t know what to do, the patient has a greater chance of survival if you just close the door and do nothing.” I always kept that in the back of my mind when working up patients. The exciting part was that during my second week, the new medical residents were starting their residencies. I learned that they had a tendency to take a more conservative approach with their interventions because they wanted to be safe. Because of that approach, I have had many situations where I had to try to convince a resident to discontinue a drug or decrease the dose, depending on the situation.

Because I was in Detroit, I dealt with a much sicker patient population than what we see in Ann Arbor. I would say that’s what made me most nervous when starting this rotation. It was my first inpatient rotation, it was my first rotation overall, and I was doing a specialty. Because it was critical care, I was trying to prepare myself for the worst of the worst. As I’m writing this, I can tell you that I have seen almost every type of patient out there on this rotation. From gunshot wounds and stabbings to drug overdose to cardiac arrests and COPD exacerbations; I’ve seen it all and I was learning so much.

Here is an insight to what a normal day looked like for me:

6:30 AM-7:45 AM—Arrive to hospital and work up patients

7:45 AM-8 AM—Pre-rounds discussion with preceptor

8 AM-11 AM—Rounds with MICU team

11 AM-Lunch—Post-rounds discussion with preceptor

1:30 PM-4 PM—Topic discussion, clinical questions, updates on patients

Throughout my rotation, I had 4 different attendings. Each attending had a different starting time and different pace during rounds. I had to learn how to manage my time for each attending. Towards the end of my rotation, I had to show up at the hospital at 6 AM because my attending started rounds at 7:30 AM. I needed time to work up old patients and new patients (and sometimes that still wouldn’t be enough time to prep).

I was extremely lucky with my preceptor for this rotation. He was very knowledgeable and he always challenged me. On my first day, he said, “I’m going to ask a lot of pathophysiology questions. You’re going to hear ‘why?’ from me a lot. You’ll be tired of it by the end of this rotation.” And boy, was he right! I had to explain the rationale for anything and everything that had to with a patient. Whether it was my dosing recommendations, the side effects the patient may be experiencing, why the patient is improving, why the patient is not improving—I had to explain it all. Most of the time, I didn’t know the answer. Sometimes he would explain it to me, sometimes he would make me look it up and explain it to him after lunch, and sometimes he would make a topic discussion out of it. Looking back at those moments, I’m glad he challenged me that way! Pathophysiology was never my forte but understanding the “why” behind everything allowed me to be innovative with my recommendations.

One of the things that stood out to me the most during this rotation was how the nurses and physicians appreciated pharmacists. I admired the respect they had for my preceptor and his recommendations. I enjoyed watching some of the residents and attendings lean on my preceptor for his input and really depend on him. If he disagrees with something, they will listen to him. If he has a warning, everyone on the team will make note of it when monitoring the patient. It was refreshing to see. I have been told by multiple attendings that I was lucky to placed with my preceptor because I was going to learn so much from him and they were right!

I learned so much on this rotation and by the end of the 5 weeks, I felt like there was still so much more I needed to learn. I feel like this rotation has prepared me well for my upcoming inpatient rotations. If all my rotations are going to be like this one, then I’m in for a ride this year!

Rotation 2: The Crazy World of Detroit ID

Posted by Josephine at Saturday, August 05, 2017

My Rotation 1 was community pharmacy so this ID consult service rotation was my first inpatient/hospital rotation. I will preface this entire blog post by saying it was one of the most character-building and mind-changing experiences I have had thus far in pharmacy school.

The Typical Day

6:30 AM: Arrive at the hospital

6:30 – 9:00 AM: Work up patients, check labs, solidify assessment/plan, etc.

9:00 – 10:30 AM: Meet with preceptor to discuss patients and go through topic discussions, would sometimes meet for longer depending on when rounds started.

10:30 AM – 6:30 PM: Various, schedule built around attending and the ID consult team (ID medical fellow + 2^nd/3^rd year medical resident + medical student + ID clinical pharmacist + me! the pharmacy student). For the pharmacy student, priority was given to rounds, which could sometimes go as late as 6-7 PM. Other things would fit in such as attending grand rounds/different lectures, working up patients for the next day, preparing topic discussions, answering any questions from the preceptor or consult team, etc.

I would typically arrive at 6:30 AM in the morning and leave the hospital around 6:30 PM… and do more work at home. Saturdays were for completing the additional work of this rotation – writing a paper, doing a journal club, etc. Sundays were for working up patients for Monday.

*Fair warning, this was not an easy rotation. It might have been easier for someone that has already had an inpatient rotation, but even as a baseline, it was very challenging.

The Main Responsibilities

1.     Patients: I would work up 2 new patients each day in an accumulating fashion (Day 1 = 2 new patients, Day 2 = 2 more new patients + 2 patients from Day 1, and so on). For each new patient, I would be required to prepare a topic discussion on the primary reason for ID consult (so, 2 topic discussions daily), in addition to an assessment and plan. The consult service itself followed perhaps 15-25 patients, but the most I had to follow at one time was perhaps ~10 (which was already a lot for me..) In total I think I did about 30 topic discussions. 

2.     Dosing: For each of the patients I was following, I was required to do dosing calculations by hand for vancomycin and aminoglycosides (no shortcuts with PK calculators).

3.     Review paper: a minimum 4-page well-cited review paper was required. The topic could be an ID topic of the student’s choice. In my case I wrote about Carbapanem-Resistant Enterobacteriaciae with a focus on new agents in development. Very exciting stuff.

4.     Journal club: As is typical in the other rotations, I was required to give 1 journal club on an ID topic, preferably comparing 2 drugs.

Why was this rotation so exciting?

ID in Detroit is definitely NOT like it would be at a small community hospital. For one thing, the consult service sees patients with more difficult to treat or unusual/uncommon infections. The Detroit patient population is also interesting (lot of HIV/AIDS and IV drug abuse.) The types of infections we encountered were also skimmed over or not really covered during P3 therapeutics. For example – in addition to a lot of MRSA, I saw multidrug-resistant pathogens (like carbapenem-resistant acinetobacters/Enterobacteriaciae), strange but problematic pathogens we never even hear about in school (like stenotrophomonas), and even uncommon disease states (like neurosyphilis).  And of course, we also got the whole slew of infections caused by opportunistic pathogens in the uncontrolled HIV population – so cryptococcal meningitis, PCP PNA, etc. I definitely learned a lot in preparing my topic discussions, that is for sure.

Because of all this, I was able to see how we might use unconventional and creative methods to treat patients. Remember those “big-gun” typically non-formulary agents we barely learned about in P3 therapeutics? (linezolid, daptomycin, carbapenems) Yeah, we used those a lot. Also used other interesting combinations like polymyxin B + meropenem, vancomycin + cefazolin, daptomycin + ceftaroline. All of this leads me to see that ID practice in Detroit is quite progressive.

I should also mention that my preceptor is very involved in gram-positive research. Therefore, part of what made this rotation so exciting is that I got to learn about how the anti-infective research being done at this institution is creative and quite literally practice-changing – no joke, I only spent a month here, but I was quickly able to see that the data coming out of this lab (and others like it) actually affects the ID treatment decisions and pathways in place at the hospital. And that’s kind of incredible.

This rotation also gave me a great opportunity to practice my vanco dosing. I say that especially because this institution doses vanco by AUC instead of by troughs. I was really lucky because through doing all of those calculations by hand, and through discussions with my preceptor and his fellows, I gained a more full understanding of vanco PK/PD. Yes, it was tedious… but it sounds like more institutions might be adopting this in the future, so it was a good thing for me to learn.

The People: A huge factor in making this rotation so enjoyable.

My preceptor is super knowledgeable about ID and clearly very passionate about the field. I will say that he’s very high in demand and also very busy, but he always made time for me; in addition to the morning discussions (sometimes going on for hours), he was constantly available through email or text or phone call. He was instrumental in getting me to think with an evidence-based mindset (see below) and helped me learn to question things like the patient's condition, how certain infections occur, the team's recommendations, why guidelines recommend certain therapies, etc. He also spent considerable time coaching me on developing my “voice” on the team – how to make recommendations and give information in a respectful way. As a student doing my first inpatient rotation, I was very grateful for that. From what I’ve heard, not every preceptor will invest quite so much in a student, so this was definitely something to appreciate.

The ID fellows that co-precepted me are part of my preceptor’s anti-infective research lab. I think it was a huge benefit for me to have context with them because since they are pharmacists too (completed PGY1 and/or PGY2), they were able to teach me about a variety of things – PK/PD (this was huge), therapeutics, pharmacology, navigating interdisciplinary team dynamics, practical advice on rounding, midyear, residencies, LIFE in general etc. Not to mention they were really fun and down to earth.

And… the ID consult team! I really loved being at this hospital. The attending physicians are very good at precepting, not just the medical students/residents/fellows but they would ask me questions too! The residents and fellows are also really receptive to pharmacy input. There is a clinical pharmacist (ID specialist) who generally rounds with the team and became a sort of informal preceptor for me. He helped me learn to consider the whole patient and how to ask the right questions, and was also also available during the actual rounding time on the floors in case I didn't understand something from the pharmacy perspective. Something that I didn't expect was that I got pretty close with the medical student that rounded with me. She taught me quite a few things from the medical perspective – not to mention it was also easier to ask her questions when everyone else was busy doing other stuff.

What were the challenges?

This rotation was a HUGE test of my time management and emotional resilience. First off, my preceptor challenged me to only take information from the primary literature for my topic discussions and drug info questions. It was so difficult for me at first because if you think about it, that kind of rules out resources like textbooks, class notes (didn’t really use these anyway...), and UptoDate. But I got faster and more efficient at doing those lit searches (feel like a pro now). Looking back, I’m grateful that I was pushed to consume the literature in that way because I feel like I have a good method now for answering any questions I might have in the future.

As expected, making ID-related interventions on the ID consult team is a challenge. It’s humbling to know that I was among experts and I most likely knew the least out of everyone there. However, I quickly learned that there are ways to still catch the things that others didn’t think about – for example, a couple of the interventions I made had to do with renal dose adjustments of antibiotics. So this is encouragement for anyone else who feels like they are struggling to make interventions – keep pressing on!

This next challenge was unexpected - I will say it took me like 2 weeks to overcome being intimidated (don’t laugh!). I mentioned above that I realized I was among experts. Additionally, some preceptors are very big and well-known people in their respective fields. My particular preceptor definitely falls into that category. And then there’s me, a tiny little pharmacy student who knows next to nothing and has never had an inpatient rotation. I definitely let that hinder my confidence a lot. But I eventually got comfortable enough to see that preceptors are real down-to-earth people too who really want to see their students grow and learn. I’m speaking to anyone reading this who feels crippling self-doubt, lack of confidence or discouragement – it’s okay and natural to feel that, but it’s also worth it to work towards loosening up and learning under a growth mindset. Definitely something I’m trying to develop as I go along.

I also want to say that I grew a ton personally. The reason I’m sharing all of this is because I want to be real here. I still remember during that first week, I drove home crying because I didn’t think I could handle the rotation (it was raining a ton and thankfully I didn’t crash into something). I was overwhelmed, sleeping like 4 hours a night, feeling like I was a disappointment to everyone including myself. Basically I felt like the biggest hot mess ever. In hindsight, I realized that I placed unreasonable expectations on myself – thinking that if I didn’t become some sort of ID expert after my month in Detroit, then something was wrong with me and I wasn’t working hard enough. But I realized the more important thing for me as a student might not necessarily be to focus on retaining and regurgitating all of that knowledge, such that I would get it right and win at life all the time. Instead, perhaps the more important thing is to learn how to ask the right kinds of probing questions. Because in the end, I’m pretty sure that the discipline of learning how to ask the right questions will set the foundation for further growth and learning.

OVERALL, this rotation shows me that some of the best things are indeed hard-won. This was an extremely challenging but exciting and rewarding experience. The reason why I say that this rotation was mind-changing is because of how unexpected it was. I went into it thinking that ID was kind of a static field, without the fast-paced changes I had come to see with something like Heme/Onc. Thankfully I was wrong. ID is one of those fields where you have to be very up to date all of the time. Resistance is a very real concern. And any recommendation you might make regarding an antibiotic now, has the potential to affect other patients in the future. To me, that’s kind of exciting and it makes me hungry to learn more…I'm a week out from this rotation but I already miss it so much. I would definitely recommend ranking an ID rotation in Detroit for any student that might be interested. 

If there are any questions, just shoot me an email (jsphntan@med.umich.edu)! And for a different take on this same rotation, please see a previous student’s post (Jared Borlagden).

For now, it’s off to rotation 3 – health systems!