Rotation 9 (Community)

Posted by Sarah Choi at Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Rotation 9: Community

It’s crazy to think this is my last blog post. My last rotation was at a community pharmacy, and it was definitely very different from what I expected. I worked at a chain retail pharmacy for half of pharmacy school, so I thought I knew what to expect. My experience really goes to show that each pharmacy is run differently since they have different procedures, technologies, and ways of dispensing. This community pharmacy puts an emphasis on patient counseling, with a separate window for patients to pick up and talk to pharmacists or pharmacy students. In the time that I wasn’t filling, dispensing, and counseling patients, I was working on other projects. I had a chance to contribute to the analysis of 340B cost savings at the pharmacy, work on drafting some procedures, and work on various quality improvement initiatives.

This rotation was also very different because of the social distancing/stay at home requirements to flatten the COVID-19 curve. A large part of this pharmacy’s patient population were students, so there were less patients in general. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, I still had some opportunities to counsel patients on their medications, and it was really beneficial to be out in the community seeing how patients and others were affected by COVID-19.

And with that, I’ll have to say goodbye now. Thank you so much for reading! I hope my posts gave you a glimpse of what P4 year is like and what opportunities/rotations you’ll have. If I had one piece of advice for anyone reading, I would have to say, be ready to make mistakes and to learn, and don’t be surprised when you realize after three years of studying the main reason you wanted to become a healthcare provider in the first place.