Med Safety Rotation Recap

Today in First World Problems, I developed a sudden and extreme craving for falafel and hummus, so I had to go find some (thanks Whole Foods!). I suppose that could also fall under Vegetarian Problems. First World Vegetarian Problems?

#firstworldproblems 

Today was also a surprise day off between rotations. My medication safety rotation ended yesterday, and my advanced community rotation doesn't start until tomorrow. I was so sad to leave St. Jude yesterday. It was my favorite rotation (out of two so far...but still) and will be hard to top. I loved every second of it - even if I was exhausted for the majority of those seconds. To continue what I started with my nuclear rotations, here are some of the lessons I learned in March.....

Before I do that, let me give a quick overview of what medication safety is so those of you who aren't in pharmacy school don't get totally lost. Medication safety is exactly what it sounds like - making sure drugs are used safely in a hospital. It involves analyzing the whole medication use process and putting protocols in place that make sure patients get the drugs they need in the safest way possible. It also involves looking at how errors happen and and how we can prevent the same error from occurring again. While it is impossible to eliminate errors altogether (healthcare workers are human, after all, and humans are not perfect), medication safety pharmacists make sure that preventable errors are minimized. Now, onto this month's lessons!

Lesson #1: Meetings make the world go round

I probably spent 50% of this rotation in meetings. Some of them I could follow, some of them I had to ask my preceptor to explain afterwards. Some of them I went to multiple times and never understood anything that was going on. I guess I didn't realize that meetings happen everywhere, not just in the business world. It was interesting to see the dynamics in different meetings based on who was there and what the issues under discussion were. However, five meetings back to back in one day was a bit more than I had bargained for. Much coffee was had by all.

Meetings would be more fun if there were cats.

Lesson #2: Meet ALL the people.

While my first rotation was a sort of "closed system" where I only saw the same few people every day, at St. Jude I was meeting new people every day. I shadowed pharmacists in different areas of the hospital, so I quickly developed a set of questions to ask when we ran out of things to talk about. I think my favorite part of this rotation was meeting pharmacy students from around the country. Unlike most other places, St. Jude accepts students from all over, so in addition to myself and a few other UT students, there were girls (all the students were female except Thanh....lucky him!) from Kansas City, Rhode Island, Iowa, and Nashville. Getting to talk with each other about how our schools differ and learning about pharmacy in other places was so interesting. I hope I'll be able to keep up those relationships now that we have gone our separate ways.

Lesson #3: Before you go and blame the person, take a look at the system.

The heart and soul of medication safety is something called system level thinking. It means looking at all the parts of a process as a whole and seeing where errors have the potential to occur. And when errors do occur (because they will), you don't just focus at the person who caused the error. Witch hunts help no one and they don't fix the real problem, which is bigger than one person's mistake. You look at what led up to the error, look at all aspects of what happened, and more often than not, you'll find that something in the process didn't work the way it should. You can't fix an error that has already happened, but if you fix that gap in the process, you can prevent future errors. This doesn't just work for drugs in hospitals - it can be applied in many other areas too.

For example, if the doctors only write in hieroglyphics,
make prescriptions computerize instead of handwritten.

Lesson #4: This is a thing that I could actually do.

Up until this point, I hadn't had any experiences where I thought "I could do this as a job and like it." After a long talk with my preceptor about my future, it became clear that medication safety is something that I am actually good at, something I enjoy doing, and a field where there are a growing number of jobs. That is pretty much the Holy Trinity when it comes to choosing a career. Antibiotic stewardship, which is a part of medication safety, has always been my first love and my May rotation has a stewardship component, so if I love that as much as I loved this, I might just have something that resembles a career plan! Of course, I could hop into another of my rotations (I still have 9 more to go) and fall in love with another area, but that would just give me more options to pursue, and when it comes to picking a career, options are always a good thing!

In other news, I'm joining the #HeatItUp April Instagram Challenge! Basically, it's a photo challenge with a new prompt each day and we post the pictures to IG using the hashtag #heatitup so other people who are participating can see our photos. Should be fun and will hopefully help get my creative juices flowing!

That soul-bearing post I mentioned recently is almost finished. I've spent almost a month editing it and trying to get the tone just right. Someone recently gave me the great advice of "your blog = your rules." I have to keep reminding myself that I am writing first and foremost for myself, that I want my words and thoughts to be heard by others. My ideas have value even if people don't like what I have to say. Hopefully it will be ready (and I will be ready) to post this weekend. Then I'll be sure to have my running shoes on in case the pitchforks come out.