Residency Prep Flashcards
(45 cards)
Tell me about yourself: Elevator Pitch
Hello, my name is Hannah Lapos. I’m a last year pharmacy student at WCUSoP to which I was able to intern at a local pharmacy which solidified my desire to serve the community through the pharmacy profession. I believe the steps of a residency program will best equip me to become a proficient pharmacist. Ultimately, the desire to advance my career in pharmacy supports my life-long purpose to serve the community
Why are you interested in pharmacy?
- Collector of stamps, quarter, nick knacks but one thing I consistently collected were bits and pieces of knowledge and information about the world around me.
- Influencing decision to double major, but career felt very terminal and had no areas to professionally grow once career
- Friend talked about the progressiveness of pharmacy. Field constantly being renovated by new developments, updates in literature, studies.
- It became a culture I wanted to be a part of.
- Mentioned I liked collecting things, but the beauty of pharmacy is that you can use the knowledge and clinical skills to build rapport with patients.
- Pharmacist is an accessible resource to the community because they have the skill sets to educate and inform patients about topics of safe drug practices, smoking cessation, or immunizations.
- They are a valuable resource for the community
What would make you a good resident? / How are you a stand out applicant
- I believe that I have a strong work ethic to take on the demands of residency.
- It came from years of putting myself in situations where time-management was crucial for success.
- Double majoring (taking on additional) -> accelerated program + work -> APPE rotations (having a dedication for your work, people entrust you with more responsibilities that would contribute to your growth) -> Having this posture would make me a good candidate.
How does this program match your ideal residency? / What about your program drew you to it
- While I did select programs that can contribute to my long-term goals of becoming a preceptor or specialize in antimicrobial stewardship and palliative care. I also wanted a program that would challenge my weakness.
- I would categorize myself as an independent and task-oriented worker.
- However, what I come to realize during my APPE rotations, while independency is crucial to the success of a pharmacist, it must be balanced with the proactiveness of facilitating an environment of open communication.
- Therefore, my ideal residency program provides opportunities for multidisciplinary engagements.
- Staff must have strong working relationships with the medical team
Short term and long-term goals
- Short-term: Antimicrobial stewardship and teaching certification, palliative care or internal medicine PGY2 (Board certification)
- Long-term: Career internal medicine pharmacists who can precept students and contribute to drug information and literature evaluations. I can also see myself working as a hospice pharmacist if I specialize in palliative care.
Research
- I didn’t participate formal research projects during pharmacy school
- However, I co-athored a research article with my classmate and professor that was published in the US Pharmacist Journal.
- Article focused on the Management of Postoperative Pain
- It was interesting researching on the strategies of assessing pain since it’s a very subjective response
- Subjective assessment tools like visual analogue or numeric rating are limited to patient’s interpretation of pain.
- Objective tools looks at behorivors and observing a patients response to pain however its limited by observer bias.
Hobbies
- Hiking and camping is relaxing. Trip that involves hammocking is my ideal trip (Mammoth Lakes)
- Reading finctional literature: Dracula (spooky, gothic), gravitate towards books with unreliable narrators Secret History and the Bell Jar (makes you question their truth and if they are inherently good)
- Keeping up with new movies but fall back to Alfred Hitchcock films
innovation
Micmicrobal stewardship presentation for UTI to inform NPs who prescribe antibiotics based on patient factors (CrCl, allergies, C&S, and severity of infection)
favorite and least favorite rotation
- Favorite: current (challenged me to be clinical discerning when formulating recommendations for therapy)
- Least: I really liked my all my rotations, however, my one of my community rotations my preceptor was on maternity leave the whole rotations. So I wasn’t able to learn from her as much as I wanted to, but I was nice being able to the staff in running the pharmacy while she was away because I was already familiar with the system having of worked Pioneer at my internship.
Taking initiative
Encompass Hospital opened a new floor too increased number of beds. We were expecting 12 new patients to be admitted the day of opening. I could tell the everybody was overwhelmed with the new floor. At that point, I was already familiar with how the pharmacy ran and noticed the stack of patients we needed of interview for med reconciliation. I realized the next several days were going to be hectic. So I came in earlier to do admissions counseling and prepare the medications to be stocked into the pixis. I learned how prepare patient medication lists, so I could help with patient admissions the day of opening and physician can readily order patient’s home medications.
stress/overwhelmed
In terms of feeling overwhelmed, my parents engrained into me the concept of delayed gratifications. You’re stressed now, but the feeling is temporary. And would only contribute to your growth. Expect things will get better and there are positive outcomes for those who persevere.
clinical intervention
- Older patient with dementia-related psychosis and agitation was on olanzapine 20 mg QD.
- Antipsychotics have a BBW of increasing mortality and sedation in this patient. Patient was taking the highest dose. I informed the pharmacist about the situations and recommended tapering down the olanzapine to 10 mg to decrease mortality risk. Olazapine can be used for dementia-related psychosis but at doses of 5 and 10 mg. We relayed the information to the PA and they accepted our recommendation
Change/Adaptability
Would not shy away for experiencing new things especially if their opportunites to growth
Criticism
I needed to have more confidence when it comes to providing recommendation. I think the intimidation of having a recommendation deprives you of learning opportunities.
Failure
- Letting failure fester and have it turn into self doubt can be more damaging than the shame you feel when you’ve failed. But with every failure there’s a lessoned to be learned.
- Pharmacy school I bombed one of my first therapeutics exam. To me it felt like a failure, therapeutics was foundational to pharmacy practice. I was sad, but I strategied on how can I do better, what part of the material I didn’t understand. In a way it takes adaptability to shift your study habits in hopes of seeing the results of your efforts.
Projects I’ve worked on
- Management of Postoperative Pain
- Fluid Conservation Strategies for P&T committee
- UTI presentation for antimicrobial stewardship
conflict (how do you resolve conflict?)
Working through lunch so classmate doesn’t feel overwhelmed by schoolwork when she got home
Strengths
Ability to absorb information and pick up on things quickly.
* Learning styles is observing others and being able to mirror it
* As I get more acclimated to a system, I can work independently
* Having this skill allowed me to be with a lot more responsibilities during my rotation
* Being able to run antibiotic reports, allowed present patient cases to the staff and provide recommendations on when to stop ABX course or selection of ABX based on patient’s culture and sensitivity report.
Weaknesses
- I would categorize myself as an independent and task-oriented worker.
- However, what I come to realize during my APPE rotations, while independency is crucial to the success of a pharmacist, it must be balanced with the proactiveness of facilitating an environment of open communication. Witnessing my first code, I observed nurses, therapists, doctors, and pharmacists come to together to provide care to a single patient. They all their individually assigned tasks: initiating chest compression, pulling medications from the crash cart, or administering drips and pushes; however, their individual responsibilities came together to provide the best standard of a care to the patient. Observing the code has solidified my aspirations to be a part of that type of collective culture. Something I feel like I didn’t have a good grasp of during the didactic portion of pharmacy school. Residency challenges residents to balance the concept of being a competent thinker and the synergistic advantages of inter-professional collaboration. Overall, I am excited about improving patient outcomes through professional involvement during multidisciplinary engagements
how do you handle feedback
I welcome it, I tell me preceptors to give constant feedback because I want to be see improvement from the 1st day to the last day of rotation
meaningful patient interaction
- Stroke patient and wife, reviewing vials of meds
- Couple eating lunch and just want to know more about their medications
Qualities of a great preceptor
- Comfortable to give feedback to students
- Clear about their expectations for a student is very helpful to their success
Any rotation you wish you could have taken?
- I would have liked to take drug information or literature rotation because I found it so interesting in how cancel recommendations are made using studies
Share journal club experience
Journal club on the IMPROVE-IT trial. This trial provided supportive evidence leading to ESC/EAS cholesterol guidelines recommending LDL goal of ≤55 for secondary ASCVD prevention.
