So I'm a little behind in updating my blog with my 4th year pharmacy rotation experiences.


It feels like I just started 4th year, but I am already on rotation 4 of 6.
And let me tell ya....I'm ready for a brrrreak. Good thing a 2 week Christmas Break is coming and that my next block after that is my vacation block, which means 6 weeks with no rotations! By that time, I will only have 2 more to go and then graduation (May 22nd). And hopefully my last 2 rotations are going to be a little bit easier. Thank the Lord that I am almost done with all of my brain-crunching, critical-thinking-skills-requiring ones.
So going back to APPE ROTATION #3, with which I got done in mid-November.
By the way, here are the links to posts about all of my rotations so far:
My 1st APPE (Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience) Rotation [Part 1]
My 1st APPE (Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience) Rotation [Part 2]
APPE #2 (2nd Pharmacy Rotation)
The rotation site was Advocate Health Center or Advocate Medical Group (I still don't know what the difference is and why they use two different names)...which is part of a very large health system network throughout Chicago. In addition to multiple Advocate clinics, there are also 4 large Advocate hospitals around here. My current NICU/Peds rotation is at an Advocate hospital as well (same parent company).
So within this Advocate Health Center site, the pharmacists run what's properly called "The Advocate Anticoagulation and Medication Therapy Management Clinic" or in street language "The Coumadin Clinic." I'm sure some of you have heard of coumadin clinics...or at least of the drug coumadin (warfarin).
So as you can tell by the lengthy name of the clinic, there are 2 major components of care that these ambulatory care pharmacists specialize in: 1) the Anticoagulation part and 2) the Medication Therapy Management Part aka MTM

Wow, I got a little carried away (LOL). Enough pharmaceutical education here.

<-- This is the INR testing device. You just put a drop of blood on a test strip, kind of like with diabetic glucose testing.
Now, the non-anticoagulation part of this rotation was Medication Therapy Management (MTM - a buzz word in the pharmacy world nowadays). Doctors would refer their patients to see the pharmacists at the med management clinic if patients were on multiple diabetic meds, or multiple blood pressure or heart failure meds and their disease states still weren't controlled (their blood sugars and pressures were still outrageous and dangerous). So we optimize their medication therapy regimen and follow up with them frequently.
Of course, for persons with pre-diabetes, we teach them to recognize symptoms of high blood glucose (picture below).

patients that were nice
patients that were indifferent
patients that were grateful
patients that were ungrateful
patients that had a terrible attitude
patients that were easy
patients that were complicated
patients that raised my blood pressure and heart rate SANCTIFIED ME
In the end, all of the difficult patients I had, I offered them up for my sanctification, like a good Catholic would, haha! So it all worked out. I didn't take anything personally.
And of course as always, there were plenty of lovely (sarcasm) projects for me to complete over the course of the rotation.
Working on my patient case presentation late at night. It was on Crohn's Disease.

And this is one of the power point slides from my presentation.
THEEEEE END
(yes I leave you with pictures of inflamed intestines)
And for a sneak peak of my current rotation, read my latest 7 Quick Takes post, where I explained what I do and why it makes me sooooo fired up and excited!
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