An Office of My Own

First, I'd like to apologize for the long delay on posting. I will be adding my journal entries from my Honduras trip as soon as I get my journal back from my preceptor (who is currently grading it). And having August OFF from rotations was really nice to get in some good hours at work, train the new students, and update my professional portfolio with my work from the summer.

Secondly, I'd like to welcome you to the next month of my life as a pharmacy student on rotations - UMKC's DIC...

At the DIC (Drug Information Center), located within the pharmacy school on Hospital Hill, I have my own office which is really exciting. I'm starting to feel less like a student and more like a professional which is exactly what rotations help do - transition us students into the professional world.

So a lot of friends and family have been asking: what is it you actually do? In response, at the DIC I help provide drug information to patients, caregivers, and other professionals when they call or email us with drug related questions. We also do a lot of research in order to help recommend medications for hospitals and state agencies to include in their formulary (a list of medications used by the institution).

My projects/responsibilities this month:
-Journal Club Presentation: review pharmacy articles and present to preceptors/fellow 5th year students
-Project/Presentation: review and compare medications for a local hospital
-Call Duty: retrieve, research, and respond to any drug related questions via email or phone
-Friday Morning Meetings: discuss questions from the week, news articles, journal articles, print resources, etc

With this rotation, there are four other students from my class with me. It's definitely nice to have familiar faces with me for the month. I am also really thankful that our class is not overly competitive with each other, and we're all willing to help out a fellow student. Therefore, it's helpful to have others to turn to when you need an extra set of eyes to hunt down pharmacy articles and answers to drug questions. Even after three working days in, I'm glad to have the others with me as we've relied on each other to assist during research.

I have to honestly say I was not super interested in drug information before this rotation, but now I've found that I actually enjoy it. It's essentially a chance to "Google" things most of the day (though Google is not our preferred search engine for scholarly research...).

All in all, I'm really happy that I ended up at the DIC this month. The people that I get to work with are awesome and the work is rewarding. I'll keep posting as much as I can throughout this month to update you all on my experience with Drug Information.