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- Apr 6, 2008
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I'm currently working at a small hospital (120-bed) and I'm the only evening pharmacist to staff here. I didn't do residency and just went straight in for this job. I guess I got hired because nobody wanted to do the shift (12:30pm to 9pm) especially if they have kids or family.
The hospital has clinical pharmacists in the morning who go on rounds with doctors, make recommendations and clinical interventions, and handle the discharge counseling. When I come in the afternoon, my main responsibility is staffing/dispensing aka. order entry and verification of technician's work. I also get new admissions' orders and I have to verify all of those then supervise the tech when they prepare meds for these new admits. Among other duties, there are IV checks, Pyxis refills check, and patient cart fills. The only clinical stuff that I may get to work on is when morning clinical pharmacists cannot follow a late vancomycin's trough or a culture sensitivity that comes back at night. Maybe once or twice a month, I got a late evening's pharmacy-to-dose vancomycin or aminoglycosides. I occasionally get doctors called in for random drug info questions, but that's usually the non-experienced residents who have no idea what we have in stock/formulary. I just personally don't feel it's a lot of clinical stuff that I can do around here.
Anyway, since all the morning pharmacists and director leave around 4pm, I'm the only pharmacist left to take care of stuff. There's a lot of autonomy and rooms to get more clinically involved if I want, and I already started a few things:
1) I made a database of all in-house patients on Coumadin and following them with PT/INR to see how the dosing changes were done. I actually caught some misses from the clinical pharmacists, such as forgetting about d/c Lovenox when INR is therapeutic
2) I also had a database of all patients on IV antibiotics that I would follow up for cultures, labs, and renally adjust dose if appropriate.
3) I also created another database for IV-to-PO switch.
...but I now ran out of ideas...I know I'm at disadvantage for not going to residency, but I want to sharpen my clinical skills and at least remain as much as competitive against newly residency-trained pharmacists in my area. I am actually planning to take BCPS exam next year as well.
What other ways that I can do to help to build up more clinical skills? What other duties/responsibilities other clinical staff pharmacists have in their hybrid model practice that may work with my situation? I just want to get some more ideas of what I should do on my job to make it more clinically oriented...
Thanks!
The hospital has clinical pharmacists in the morning who go on rounds with doctors, make recommendations and clinical interventions, and handle the discharge counseling. When I come in the afternoon, my main responsibility is staffing/dispensing aka. order entry and verification of technician's work. I also get new admissions' orders and I have to verify all of those then supervise the tech when they prepare meds for these new admits. Among other duties, there are IV checks, Pyxis refills check, and patient cart fills. The only clinical stuff that I may get to work on is when morning clinical pharmacists cannot follow a late vancomycin's trough or a culture sensitivity that comes back at night. Maybe once or twice a month, I got a late evening's pharmacy-to-dose vancomycin or aminoglycosides. I occasionally get doctors called in for random drug info questions, but that's usually the non-experienced residents who have no idea what we have in stock/formulary. I just personally don't feel it's a lot of clinical stuff that I can do around here.
Anyway, since all the morning pharmacists and director leave around 4pm, I'm the only pharmacist left to take care of stuff. There's a lot of autonomy and rooms to get more clinically involved if I want, and I already started a few things:
1) I made a database of all in-house patients on Coumadin and following them with PT/INR to see how the dosing changes were done. I actually caught some misses from the clinical pharmacists, such as forgetting about d/c Lovenox when INR is therapeutic
2) I also had a database of all patients on IV antibiotics that I would follow up for cultures, labs, and renally adjust dose if appropriate.
3) I also created another database for IV-to-PO switch.
...but I now ran out of ideas...I know I'm at disadvantage for not going to residency, but I want to sharpen my clinical skills and at least remain as much as competitive against newly residency-trained pharmacists in my area. I am actually planning to take BCPS exam next year as well.
What other ways that I can do to help to build up more clinical skills? What other duties/responsibilities other clinical staff pharmacists have in their hybrid model practice that may work with my situation? I just want to get some more ideas of what I should do on my job to make it more clinically oriented...
Thanks!