Adult internal medicine advanced pharmacy practice experience: check.
Next up: pediatrics. (So basically another internal medicine rotation.)
Adult internal medicine wasn’t all that bad, after all. Yes, I stayed busy. No, I did not stay up past midnight studying or working on projects. Seeing new patients and different disease states was great. Feeling like my input during the medical rounds was not always welcome was not-so-great. In general, the first-year medical residents were very grateful for any insight I could provide, but the attending physician rarely appeared to appreciate my input. This actually came as a surprise to me because my friend who rounded with the same attending during our last rotation developed an exceptionally good relationship with the attending. My friend was really involved in the team and her questions and comments were always met with thoughtful discussions. That didn’t happen with me, and I’m not exactly sure why, but I (usually) didn’t let it bother me. I made the most of what opportunities I was given: opportunities to teach the medical team about aminoglycoside dosing and monitoring and opioid pharmacology; opportunities to counsel patients; and opportunities to analyze complex patient cases and make clinical pharmacy interventions or recommendations.
I had two favorite patients by the end of the rotation: JP (aortic valve endocarditis and opioid addiction) and LG (DVT, probable PE, possible multiple myeloma, and heparin-induced thrombocytopenia). They both have had prolonged hospitalizations and are still at BMC now. Happily, they should both be discharged within the next week.
I look forward to meeting more amazing people and seeing other medically interesting cases during my pediatrics rotation. Although I had originally requested to have the PICU/NICU clinical specialist as my rotation preceptor, I am glad that I was placed with the MCPHS faculty member who specializes in pediatrics. He already sent us an outline of the assignments we will be completing and topics we will be discussing during the upcoming rotation, and it looks like we will have plenty to keep us busy. This faculty member is also supporting my project to develop educational materials on the vaccination of preterm infants, so it should be easy to keep in touch with him as that project develops.
Both my poster abstracts were accepted, so now I have to start putting together the posters for Midyear in early December. I still haven’t committed to going to Midyear. I’ll make the decision after the local Clinical Skills Competition next Monday. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I would very much like to win the local competition. It would be a nice thing to put on my cv, and it would make the decision of whether or not to attend the Midyear Clinical Meeting an easy one.
In other news, my medication-related falls manuscript was accepted with revisions! I should be working on those revisions right now as they are due November 7th. As you can see, though, I am preoccupying myself with other activities during my three-day break from rotation. Hopefully, I won’t be scrambling at the last minute next week to finish up. The reviewer’s comments were a bit daunting at first, but since I have gotten started, I don’t think it will take too much time to address all the concerns, after all.
Sadly, I did not make time to watch the Red Sox win the World Series yesterday, but I did set aside time to change the oil on the car, get my teeth cleaned, and make Peter’s Halloween costume.
After first telling me that Halloween is “too scary,” Peter admitted that he would like to be a cat. I did not want to spend money on a costume that he may or may not decide to actually wear, so I pulled some random fabric and stuffing out of the closet and went to work on my sewing machine. Happily for both of us, Peter did decide that wearing cat ears and a tail is fun. I checked out some Halloween-themed picture books from the library to try to convince my scaredy cat that trick-or-treating is also fun. We will find out this evening whether he would like to trick-or-treat or whether it is still too scary.
I have 180 pieces of candy ready for the trick or treaters, but looking at my notes last year, I needed over 200 pieces to keep the trick-or-treating caravans at bay. Fingers crossed that we don’t run out! I will probably have to restrict the caravans to one piece of candy per person, which really means not allowing the trick-or-treaters to select their favorite candy from our assortment. (There are always a handful of kids who will grab a handful of candy if you proffer the candy basket for them.)
To balance out all the unhealthy Halloween candy, I’m heading over to my friend Stefanie’s blog for some healthy fall food inspiration for tonight…
Gallipot Words 