Sunday, June 3, 2012

Pharmacists bring skill-sets that no one else has!

Posted by ayumi :) at Sunday, June 03, 2012


Hello, hello! My name is Ayumi, and I am super excited to share fun tidbits about my life as a 4th year UofM pharmacy student with you :) Please, get excited!

My FIRST rotation:  Pediatrics Infectious Disease (Peds ID from here on down)
I would like to first start off by mentioning these 2 fun facts about myself… 1. I am not fond of kids. 2. ID was/is still definitely my weakness in therapeutics.  So now you’re probably thinking, “oh man, worst rotation ever for Ayumi!”  Well, I know I was definitely thinking that since the day I found out my rotation schedule in March.  I was so nervous and so scared that I was going to be such an embarrassment not knowing nearly as much as I felt like I should know.  And I’m scared of kids (yikes!), so that adds another layer of stress…  I am happy to say that now that I am about to start week 3, even though I still feel inadequate in what I know and not ready for the “real world” per se, BUT it’s absolutely NOT as awful as I imagined it to be!  What great news! 

I think the terms ‘rotations’, ‘P4’, ‘rounds’, and every other word associated to this year were really daunting and overwhelming to a lot of us.  I was obviously pacing back and forth the night before day 1 (and maybe even day 2 and 3 and 4) just because everything was so new, and I didn’t really know what to expect.  It’s not that I didn’t go to class for the past 3 years, or that they didn’t teach us what we needed to know, because I did go to class (almost) every day and the school did prep us with the basic essential knowledge.  Right?  I think it was the fact that this year was an unknown, something you can’t quite grasp until you’re actually living the moment that scared me.

Now on to the actual rotation itself.  Peds ID is actually really great.  I can tell you that I have already learned so much more in just these 2 weeks than I have in the past 3 years in pharmacy school about pediatrics diseases and dosages.  Unfortunately we don’t get enough info on anything pediatrics related in our therapeutics class, so I have been reading A LOT.  I started a USB drive with all my articles saved under different headings so I can easily pull them up when I have to do a topic discussion or a mini write up on a certain topic.  I’m being pretty organized thus far, so hopefully I’ll keep this up!

My typical day consists of meeting with my preceptor for roughly an hour (going over patients, topic discussions, really just her explaining a lot of things to me that I missed in my work up), going on rounds with the ID team (an ID attending, fellow, med student, pharmacist, and me! Ahhh) which can take anywhere from an hour to three hours depending on the day, working up patients, and maybe have a meeting or a conference sometime in between.  My hours are pretty great.  I try to get in by 8am every morning, and I usually can leave by 5pm.  Some days I’ll stay later to finish up researching/reading articles, but that hasn’t happened too often yet.

The Peds ID team is fantastic! The ID team is a consult team, so whenever there's a patient with a complicated ID case, the Peds ID Team gets called and comes to the rescue!  The Attendings are all about teaching and including you (as the pharmacy student) in all the discussions, and they even taught me how to look at CT scans last week!  The Fellows are great at explaining each of the patients, and I have been super lucky with the med students I've encountered these past few weeks to be nice and helpful as well.  I really like this feeling of being part of a team, and knowing that pharmacists are a vital part of these groups.  We bring a skill set that they don’t have.  We are THE experts on drugs, and a lot of people come to us for answers, which is wonderful, and it makes me so happy that pharmacy has come this far! Yay! We are so helpful!  I can’t wait to learn more so I can be smarter and better equipped for the adventures to come!

And now back to reading up about cystic fibrosis…

Have a wonderful week!

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