Survival of the Fittest

So - P3 year is definitely proving to be the most difficult so far. We just got through our first round insane exam-taking with insane amounts of material and I barely survived. This is definitely where those who are on top of their game and have perfected their study technique will make it, and those who aren't, won't. We completed our first ICARE module (endo/repro) this past week and started the next one, which is heme/onc, today. Before endo repro, I never knew how complicated a girl's life can really be - birth control, pregnancy, labor, delivery, lactation, menopause...ugh, can't wait.

Aside from all of the tests, I have been quite busy with other things as well. I am a co-chair for operation immunization in APhA and we have been working on setting up some flu clinics. Also, the leadership fraternity, PLS, is accepting new members and we recently went through applications to select those who we may want to extend an invitation to. My fraternity, KE, is having an induction for some new members this Friday and also hosting a bowling event tomorrow night along with a dinner for survivors in two weeks. Class officers are meeting tomorrow to discuss events related to graduation. And we have a project for a class we are (supposed to be) working on in the mean time that I need to start focusing on. This project requires us to create our own pharmacy in every aspect and present it to the class along with to the teacher in the form of a paper.

And I gotta fit the hub and pup in there somewhere! Needless to say, fall break (this past mon and tues) was a welcome break and I can't wait for Thanksgiving break! Today we are having a meeting about rotations and ranking where we would like to be in terms of our clusters. I am going to put down Winchester because we own property here and it would be crazy financially for me to try to live somewhere else. I have heard this is a circumstance that guarantees you a spot. Should be interesting to see where everyone wants to go.

I will try to update more often from now on!

Sleep Deprived

This week has been the toughest week of my time at pharmacy school. Last Friday, my husband and I got our puppy, Lily. She is an 8 week old golden retriever mix and is definitely a handful. We got her Friday and we had our first ICARE exam yesterday. SO, in the midst of middle of the night potty breaks, hyper playing, potty training, crate training, and manner training...I also had to find time to study for the Respiratory ICARE exam PLUS a quiz in another class on the same day. Needless to say, it was the least prepared that I have ever felt for an exam. Luckily, it all turned out ok and I was able to get the grade that I wanted...I still am surprised with myself and have no idea how that happened!

Another thing that has been going on is rush week with all of the fraternities. This past week, we handed out our bids to the P1 and P2 class to people who may be interested in joining KE. Something that seems to happen during rush is that people tend to group together with their friends and join whatever their friends are joining. A lot of joining a fraternity is about joining the one that is right for you and that you would feel most passionate about. The large majority of people decided to pledge KY and PDC, and very few pledged KE. It is kind of disappointing for my pledgemaster partner and I, but I guess it means that I will have more free time that I anticipated which is great because I need to make time for the pup. Despite the low numbers, I am excited about who we are getting and I can't wait to see what KE does this semester with our events, fundraisers, and flamingo flocking in the spring. It's always a really good time :o)

Despite the exam yesterday, two exciting things did happen that made the day a bit better. First, I got an invitation to join Rho Chi, which is the honors fraternity at our school. They only take the top 20% of the class and I am thrilled that my hard work has paid off and I made the cut! The fraternity is highly thought of in our school and I am honored to be asked to be a part of it. That means that I am now in 5 organizations, and an officer in 3 of them. I never would have thought that I would be able to handle all of this time committment, but it actually isn't that bad. I still have time for myself, my husband, good grades, and now hopefully a puppy! The other exciting thing that happened was I got asked to be a bridesmaid in one of my best friends' wedding this coming New Years Eve. I was the first of my friends from back home to get married and it is exciting that now I get to go to one of their weddings and be a part of it!

Next week we have another ICARE exam, but in cardio...which I hear is more difficult than respiratory. I plan to start studying for that one tonight, so we will see how that goes. Time to get back to class!

Last Semester of Classes

So last week was the first week of my last semester of classes ever! If you got a little confused by that last statement, I am basically saying I am almost done with pharmacy school classes! The classes that I have this semester consist of: pharmacy law, sterile compounding, patient assessment II, ICARE: GI/nutrition, ICARE: neuro/psychiatry, ICARE: musculoskeletal, institutional practice elective, and pharmacokinetics and pharmacogenetics III. So although this will be my last semester of classes it will not be my easiest.

In addition to classes some of the organizations I am involved in are also busier in the spring. A major example is Kappa Epsilon. This past week has been Greek Week at pharmacy school. At SU, pharmacy fraternities are not allowed to recruit new members until the spring semester. On the first day of Greek Week we have an event called Round Robin where interested 1st and 2nd year pharmacy students get a brief introduction to all three different fraternities that we have. Then each fraternity hosts an event on its own on a separate date so that prospective members get a better idea of what each one is about. Kappa Epsilon had a luau theme on Tuesday night with plenty of good food to enjoy and various activities that allowed the interested students to mingle with existing members. Although I think we should have done the limbo before we ate all that food.


Another organization I am involved with is Rho Chi. Rho Chi is an honors fraternity that recruits the top 20% of the P2 class during the spring semester of pharmacy school. In the not too distant future we will be sending invitations to these smart pharmacy students to join. This weekend we are holding a health fair in conjunction with the APhA-ASP (American Pharmacists Association-Academy of Student Pharmacists). This health fair will be held at a local soup kitchen here in Winchester, where our target population probably does not receive proper health care. So it will be interesting to see how we can help them. I hope this will be a mutually beneficial experience, in that this under served population gets some health advice and that we pharmacy students can improve on our patient interaction skills.


Besides all this we will be finalizing our rotations for the upcoming P4 year. So as you can imagine although this will be my last semester of classes, it will be a very busy one.

Spring Semester: First Week of Classes

The semester has begun. The first week of classes was pretty uneventful...but definitely hit me hard and made me start thinking about getting focused again. All of our classes require no introductions anymore (what undergrad calls "syllabus day") - unfortunately, there are no days like that in pharmacy school. This semester we have started ICARE, which is much dreaded by the P2's. It is more intense than other physiology and pharmacology classes we have had in past and combines all aspects of our difficult classes. So far, it hasn't been too terrible..but there's only been 1 week. The classes are longer blocks of time and more frequent so the material has the potential to build up pretty easily. We will see how that goes!

Another thing that has ruled my time on the first week back is planning for rush week which is next week. Myself and another member of my fraternity, Kappa Epsilon, have been planning both our time for the night of round robin on Monday and for our individual rush night for KE on Tuesday. The purpose of round robin is for those who may be interesting in joining a fraternity to see what they are all about. Each one has a different platform that they suport and it's up to individual preference with which one you think is the right fit. After the initial night of round robin, each fraternity has their own themed party night with dinner provided on the remaining nights of the week. Ours is Tuesday and the theme we chose is Luau. Because I am a new member coordinater, it is my responsibility, along with the other coordinator, to plan this night and all that comes with it. So...needless to say we have been super busy this week designing and printing flyers, handouts and invitiation, ordering food, planning games, and much more.

Other than planning for KE rush, I have been going back to my regular hours at CVS. This semester, my weekday to work is going to be Friday and I also will have to usually work some of Saturday and a few Sundays. Another big thing is next Friday, my husband and I are going to be getting a golden retreiver puppy! We are super pumped and can't wait for this much anticipated addition to our family. My schedule at school will allow me to come home and let her out frequently and my husband also will be working from home some days of the week...so we should be able to manage with everyone else going on as well. Can't wait! Ok, time to get a head start and begin studying for the first ICARE Respiratory exam - its only 10 days away!

Preparing for serious situations and fighting breast cancer

Well I know it’s been a while since my last blog post so before it gets any later I guess it’s time for an update of what P3 year has been like so far. Last time I wrote about being in the middle of midterms. Right now is a nice time in the school year, where we don’t have any immediate exams so my days are not all about studying for an upcoming midterm. With that said though, it would be naïve to think that even though there is not an imminent exam I can completely ignore schoolwork. I still have to study new material as it is being taught and not leave it to day long cram sessions before the exam, otherwise I would be setting myself up to do poorly.

Thankfully after all the intense mid-term studying we had Fall Break, where we have a Monday and Tuesday off. Some people spend this time just catching up on sleep and life, others like me travel to other places leaving all thoughts of pharmacy school behind for a little while. I went up to visit friends in Minnesota, which although it was colder than expected (they had snow even with their trees’ leaves still being green) I had a good time nonetheless. On the way back from Minnesota I witnessed an interesting and intense situation.

My flight out of Minnesota was bright and early at 7 am. Getting there proved to be a little difficult since there was an accident on the main road to the airport, but after all my rushing and running I made it onto the plane in the nick of time. As the plane was taxiing down the runway to take off the lady in front of me started to tap an elderly woman sitting next to her to wake her up. However the elderly woman was not responding, the younger woman even called out her name several times but the woman would not come to. Then the younger woman was calling for help with a panic in her voice that I have rarely heard before. The flight attendants rushed over and the younger woman explained that she felt the elderly woman all the sudden shake and then go unconscious and how the elderly woman was unable to wake-up. So the flight attendants immediately asked if there was a doctor or nurse on board and thankfully there was. The nurse came over from her seat and saw that the lady had a pulse and was breathing. By now the pilot had been contacted and asked to return to the gate so that paramedics could come on board. At one point the elderly lady did regain consciousness and when she was asked if she knew where she was she did respond “airplane”. But when the paramedics were transferring her to a wheelchair, she lost consciousness a second time. This experience taught me that one should be confident in the first aid training and CPR techniques that one is taught. In situations like mine it may be possible that there is no nurse or physician around to help and someone else may need to step in. Pharmacists should be prepared not just for routine patient encounters but also urgent encounters such as this one.

Later on this past week I helped fellow pharmacy students with their training for the real world. In an effort to better prepare pharmacists for encountering patients first year pharmacy students take part in a patient counseling assessment as part of a communications course. They are told to look-up information about a certain drug, such as: route of administration, frequency of dosage, indication, side effects, storage, etc. One of the organizations that I am a part of, Rho Chi, had practice patient counseling sessions with the first year students. From my previous experience I know that with practice people become more confident and thus do better on the actual patient counseling assessment, which is why we decided to offer such a service to the first year students. I firmly believe that in order to improve pharmacy as a profession we need to help one another be better individual pharmacists and this was one way to do so.

Last but not least this short week ended with Kappa Epsilon’s Annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month Dinner. This is a dinner where we raise funds to donate to a breast cancer charity. We also had a breast cancer survivor come and speak about her experience. Many people work hard to put this event together as was evident by the decorations and coordination present. Breast cancer is a platform issue for Kappa Epsilon, so not only do we have this dinner but we also sell t-shirts. At health fairs we even provide informative pamphlets about breast cancer and the proper way to conduct a self-exam and other facts to be aware of in regards to breast cancer. I think the dinner turned out quite well. I even left with a free vase of lovely flowers.