Clinic Weeks 4 & 5

    

Clinic weeks 4-5 gave us valuable interprofessional experience.  Ben and I were tasked with preparing a short presentation about changes to the CDC STI treatment guidelines to deliver to the medical staff at the Arapahoe Clinic.  We presented these updates to the medical staff on Thursday morning of our penultimate week in Wyoming, which was followed by a lively discussion between the medical providers about their opinion on the new treatments.  The modifications to the guidelines included a regimen for chlamydial infection that required more adherence from the patient and counseling from the pharmacist, but they did not seem concerned about switching a one dose regimen to a weeklong regimen to eradicate infection.  We later ran into a doctor at the Riverton clinic and got to pick his brain about his opinion on the guidelines, his comfort with staking patients to more complex antibiotic regimens, testing for bacterial eradication (common for some STIs), and expedited partner therapy.  We were later asked to edit the clinic policy document regarding STIs, which gave us more experience in technical writing, policy creation, and researching guidelines.  I really recommend asking prescribers about treatment policies in clinic since it gives the student an idea on how prescribers think and how to give feedback as a pharmacist, and updating a policy gave us a lot of power to present updated guidelines to prescribers and advocate for evidence based treatment.  

                In the midst of this little project was answering the continuing call of vaccination, including providing second doses to patients we had seen at the beginning of the rotation.  Giving shots provided us with the opportunity to use and master the pharmacist patient care process of collecting information about the appropriateness of the vaccine in the individual patient, assessing patient vaccination histories, all the way up to giving the vaccine with perfect technique and recording for EHR and billing purposes. Working through a list of questions while answering patient concerns was a valuable way to demonstrate our care and altruism while advocating for the COVID-19 vaccine.