Back for P3 year

Hi!

Monday was the first day of my P3 year here at BJD School of Pharmacy at Shenandoah University. It almost seems like it has taken a while to get here but then again it seems like just yesterday when I first got to Winchester.

I came from the suburbs of DC, where life was different for me. I didn’t come straight from undergrad, I decided to work in a pharmacy for a year before I came back to school. I went to school outside of DC (kindergarten through all of undergrad). My undergrad years were at a big state school right outside of DC that was very different from SU. So when I first got here I remember wondering: would I be able to adjust to a small private school in a smaller town. Now without any hesitation I can say that I think I have adjusted quite well (although I will be the first to admit that I miss the DC area, but being only 90 minutes away, that’s easily remedied).

What I came to realize over time was that a smaller school allows me to really get to know the people around me, from my classmates to my professors. That individualized attention was something I found lacking in a big university. Now here at my third year of pharmacy school, when I walk by former professors they say hi to me by name (whereas in the big university at most I would get was a smile from a former professors when I would walk by).

Monday morning started bright and early with what was supposed to be laptop exchange. As P3s we trade in our poor abused laptops for a new school issued laptop. We were told to be at the laptop exchange at 8 am. So shortly before 8 am, I and other pharmacy classmates were in line waiting…and waiting. Finally at 8:15 someone came by who was able to at least reach the laptop guys and then informed us that they were on their way and would be there in 15 more minutes. Well 15 more minutes went by and still no laptop guys. Since our 9 am class would be starting soon, I figured I’d go to class and just switch my laptop later.

Our first P3 class was Patient Assessment I, which was about patient documentation and SOAP notes. SOAP notes…something that as a pharmacy student you will not be able to escape, so make sure you are comfortable writing them. At first, writing a SOAP note is like being thrown a mix of useful and useless information that you have to dig your way through to find the relevant information to correctly write it. With more practice it should seem less and less like a puzzle.

In between classes I along, with many others switched our laptops and rushed back to our next class which had already started. But it was okay since our next class was Professional Practice Management, which was just a nice and quick review of the syllabus and schedule to come. We were done before I even had time to get distracted.

Last class of the day was ICARE Endo/Repro, which is a part of a sequence of classes where pathophysiology of diseases and the relevant therapeutics are taught. These classes are not to be taken lightly (aka no starting to study the night before the exam). The first lecture of this course covered diabetes, a disease state which seems to be increasingly common. Anyone who has worked in the retail setting has probably seen at least hundreds of prescriptions related to this disease state. I personally have helped out at a few of our school’s APhA diabetes clinics so knowing more about this disease state makes me feel that I will be better informed to help future patients.

So that wraps up most of my first day of P3 year and I already feel like it is only going to get busier.