Rotation 7: Oral Oncology (Ambulatory Care)

Posted by Unknown at Saturday, February 16, 2019

Over the last 6 weeks I had the opportunity to experience a new (to me) kind of Ambulatory Care clinic. I worked with the Oral Oncology team to follow-up with people who were on oral medications for their cancer.

This was a phone-based clinic where we did initial, 10 day follow-up, and 6 month follow-up calls. Initial calls included medication counseling on how to take the medication, possible side effects and how to manage the side effects. We followed up with these patients after they had been taking the medication for about 10 days (and then 6 months) to see how they were doing.

This rotation required critical thinking and problem solving as each patient case was different and needed to be examined in order to know the appropriate time to contact the patient. Follow-up calls also needed to be handled differently in terms of setting up additional follow-up by the team or by clinic.

I also had the opportunity to be in the Genitourinary cancer clinic one half-day a week. This was the first time I experienced an ambulatory care clinic where the pharmacist did not have a set schedule of patients to see during the day. The pharmacist would use a custom scoring tool in order to decide which of the physician's patients she was going to see that day. When she went and saw patients she did a lot of symptom management and medication counseling. She was also available for questions from the nurses and physicians. Being in the GU clinic helped break up my Monday's, but it also allowed me to see a different format of ambulatory care clinics; and for that I am very thankful.

One of the best things about this rotation was the people! I got to work with multiple pharmacists, residents and pharmacy students who were extremely passionate about the work we were doing as well as extremely knowledgeable about the subject.

As I finish this rotation and move on to the next I am taking with me a greater confidence and ability to counsel patients, communicate empathy and adapt to different situations quickly.

As a follow-up to my last post I also wanted to talk briefly about this last rotation in terms of residency interviews. This rotation was 6 weeks long (1 week longer than the others) to allow for students to miss up to 5 days for interviews. I am very thankful that I was able to finish all of my residency interviews during the 5 days this rotation. Now all I have to do is rank the programs and wait until March 15th!