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Monday, April 21, 2008
Brrrr. Spring didn't last very long. Tomorrow is Amy's last day. Next week Jennifer, a second year student, will be starting a four month stretch here in Leader. Let's hope the weather is a bit more welcoming by then. This weekend Gord, Amy, Jennifer and myself will all be in Regina for the Pharmacist's Association of Saskatchewan's annual conference. Gordon will be speaking in a debate on Primary Care and I will be having a poster session on the topic. Amy was very busy during her 5 weeks here. In addition to the Champix and PPI studies she also initiated insulin for one patient, attended numerous hospital rounds, did a one hour medication review for a patient with high blood pressure, and was going to do a counselling session on hormone replacement therapy (but it was cancelled due to the weather). Amy also prepared a patient COPD handout that outlines the different treatment options.
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Friday, April 11, 2008
Spring is finally here! I have been busy these last few months and unable to post a blog. I am now working with my 3rd fourth year student, Amy. She is busy continuing the PPI study started by Erica and the Champix study started by myself. I will post the study results as soon as they are available.
Amy has been attending hospital and nursing home rounds regularly and she just completed a nursing inservice on creatinine clearance and renal dosage adjustments.
We will be starting in-home and in-pharmacy INR testing for our patients taking warfarin, in the next week or so. We now have a Roche CoaguChek machine and have received category nine status from Saskatchewan Lab Licensing. There will be a charge for the INR tests but we hope that this service will increase patient convenience as well as patient safety.
We are two weeks away from the Pharmacist's Association of Saskatchewan conference in Regina. Gordon will be participating in a primary care forum and I will be demonstrating our clincal and primary care work at a poster session.
The week following the conference I will be in Saskatoon for a women's health forum "Minding your Metabolism", where I will have a booth that focuses on weight loss and portion control using The Diet Plate.
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Monday, February 25, 2008
I forgot to blogg a few weeks ago and introduce the new fourth year student that is here. Erica is on her third week in Leader. She is working on a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) project, doing med reviews at the clinic and nursing home, and attending rounds at the nursing home and hospital.
Even though my proposal is at a standstill, my primary care and clinical work is progressing steadily. After the team meeting last month I started doing rounds at the hospital. Each afternoon Erica and I spent 30 to 60 minutes reviewing the charts of in-patients. The hospital really isn't very busy and often there are no drug related problems for us to handle. Last week we did resolve a drug related problem for a patient being started on IV antibiotics. The empiric dose was for the drug to be scheduled three times daily; however, this dose was too high based on the patient's kidney function so we recommended a twice daily dosing schedule. Without our intervention this error would not have been discovered and the result would have been detrimental to the patient.
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Friday, February 1, 2008
My good news was short lived :( The Primary Health Care team meeting was yesterday and it went well; all of the team members are glad to have a pharmacist on board and on site. Today, though, I spoke with the PHC director from Swift Current and she told me that perhaps by the end of April the health region will be ready to post a part-time pharmacist position. They are not interested in a contract with Stueck Pharmacy and the position will only be for work at the clinic (everything that I am doing at the nursing home and will soon be doing at the hospital will be excluded). This news has let us down, after all the work that I have done and the support that Gord has given me. If by chance I am offered the position then I would be doing less than half of what I am doing now. I think that the rest of the team will be disappointed to learn that my job will be so constrained, especially since they have come to expect so much more from me. I don't know if Gordon & Stueck Pharmacy will be willing to continue subsidizing my clinical work or not.
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Thursday, January 24, 2008
Good news on the Primary Care front. The health region received my contract proposal and although it takes time they are very interested in the partnership. I have been invited to a team meeting next week. I look forward to discussing my role on the team with the doctors and nurse practitioner as well as the other team members from Leader and Swift Current. I have been working on a poster presentation for the PAS (Pharmacist's Association of Saskatchewan) Conference in April 2008. The poster will discuss my role on the team here and hopefully I will be able to say how we plan to move forward with the partnership between pharmacists and the rest of the Primary Care Team.
Pharmacy intern, Corrine, has been busy for the past three weeks. She has evaluated 3 new drug products; Cymbalta, Seasonale, and Januvia. She produced a monitoring plan for signs and symptoms of digoxin & warfarin toxicity for the nursing home stafff (one of the residents is uncooperative and the staff are not able to do therapeutic drug monitoring). She attended a Back Pain Conference in Saskatoon with Gordon and will be attending the Sunday Seminar with us this coming weekend. She has been researching The Diet Plate and will make a presentation to the diabetes education group on Friday morning. As well, she has attended weekly rounds at the nursing home and has presented a number of medication reviews to the attending physician.
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Monday, January 7, 2008
Happy New Year.
Welcome to 4th year pharmacy student Corrine. Corrine will be with us for the next five weeks. I will be mentioning some of her work in my blog and any projects she completes will be posted in the Student Projects section of Downloads. Corrine is working on nursing home med reviews and researching The Diet Plate. Last week she reviewed Cymbalta ( a new antidepressant), while I reviewed Rasilez (a new antihypertensive). Tomorrow we are off to Fox Valley with the nurse practitioner and public health nurse for a presentation on Gardasil.
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Monday, December 10, 2007
The past two weeks have flown by, only two more to go before the holidays! Since I last posted my blog I have:
- Completed five nursing home med reviews
- Helped the nurse practitioner to start a patient on insulin and counselled the patient on how to self-inject
- Reviewed a patient's medications to determine if a specific complaint was due to adverse effects or drug interactions of the patient's medications
- Researched the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, specifically to determine what adverse effects have been reported
- Mentored a local grade 11 student who is doing work experience at the Pharmacy
Currently I am trying to finish up all my little projects before the holidays. I will be doing three and six month follow-up chart reviews of patients in the CAD collaborative. We have 3 fourth-year pharmacy students coming in the new year to work with myself and Gord and the nurse practitioner so I will be getting ready to welcome them and get them started on projects of their own.
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Monthly Archives
June 2007
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April 2008
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