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 4^th 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!

A Note About the First Rotation and What is Pharmacy School Like?

Posted by Matthew Lewis at Friday, July 29, 2011

Since this is my first post, let me introduce myself. I'm Matt, I've lived in Michigan my whole life, and got my undergraduate degree here at U of M. Right now, I have a strong interest in infectious disease (ID) pharmacy, as well as transplant pharmacy (mostly because of the ID aspect). I am excited and more than a little nervous about starting my first rotation. I'll be in the pediatric (peds) critical care ward of Mott in the University of Michigan Health System. It's a world renowned system and has all sorts of awards and highest level trauma centers. Basically, if a kid is really sick, they are coming to Mott. Being part of this system and the U of M pharmacy program coupled with the complexity of these patients means I have to bring my A-game. Another part of the difficulty associated with peds is they are not adults. Okay, that is obvious, but practically all of my classwork, all the studies I've read, and all the patients I have seen so far have been adults. Drugs work differently in kids than adults, so I have to make sure I've got pediatric dosing and efficacy in mind when working here and not stuck in "adult mode". It's sort of like being a mechanic for cars, but then switching to planes; everything you learned on one does not just translate to the other. I'm sure you've seen posts from my P4 colleague Jenna, who's crazy for peds, so if you want to learn more about pediatric pharmacy right this instant, (and who doesn't?) go check out her posts.

On another topic, some people have asked me what pharmacy school is like. I think a good analogy, at least for the academic part, is trench warfare. There are periods of digging in, where you just have to keep your head down. You find a close buddy or two who always has your back. There are times where you hear the whistle to go "over the top" and charge for the next trench, which can be the next set of exams or the next year. Oh, and in times of calm we celebrate, lots of celebration. Of course nobody is shooting at us though, so that is a plus.

Outside of the classroom, pharmacy school is incredibly rich and rewarding, and sometimes as educational as our academic portion, since you have the opportunity to meet, shadow, and have personal relationships with some of the superstars of pharmacy. I am not kidding, some of our staff are known around the world, other staff members have created whole new ways to deliver medications in the body, and others still have written chapters for pharmacy textbooks used around America. You also have so many opportunities to get to know your classmates while helping out the community. We have several student organizations such as APhA-ASP, HSP, and the pharmacy fraternity PDC among many others where pharmacy students go out into the area for health fairs and presentations, as well as the occasional purely social get together like the PDC ski trip(members only) or the PharmBash Ball organized by APhA. However, whenever anybody interested in going to pharmacy school asks me, I always end with, "Pharmacy school is what you make of it.", and leading up to the P4 year, I think I've put a lot into this program and it has given me a lot, and will continue to do so this year and beyond.