My life as a student is over...

I'm not gonna lie, I'm kinda bummed I will never sit in another classroom listening to a professor, taking an exam that I've studied endless hours for (ok ok I don't think I will miss that!), seeing all of my pharmacy school family everyday like we had the past 4 years, feeling special walking around the hospital in a white lab coat but being able to pull the "ohh I'm just a student card" when hard questions arise. Now it's over. All of it. High school. Community college. Graduate school. Time to be an adult. Arggg.

Well, since I'm behind on this whole blogging thing I wanted to back up and finish my posts about my rotations. I left you when I was on my January rotation at Atkinson's Pharmacy. This was my geriatrics rotation and the pharmacy I was at supplies medications to nursing homes and jails. I did mostly medication therapy reviews where I looked over patients current therapies and made assessments as to whether or not they were getting appropriate treatment, under treatment or over treatment, whether they had any interacting drugs, whether the drugs were suitable for the elderly population, and also made recommendations for monitoring of drug therapy, for both safety and efficacy. I also gave a presentation to nurses at various long term care facilities about the new oral anticoagulant drug on the market, Pradaxa (dabigatran etexilate). It's a medication currently being used for patients who have a heart condition known as atrial fibrillation. These patients are at increased risk of having a stroke (blood clot traveling to the brain) or a pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the lung). The risk of having these events in these patients are decreased when they are taking Pradaxa. Its a pretty neat drug to give a presentation on and I enjoyed it.

Well this was my rotation during January. I will talk about my favorite rotation next, Cardiology at Shands Jax!