Spring in Columbus

Hello!

The weather is finally starting to get warm. So many beautiful flowers and trees are starting to bloom. It is absolutely amazing! I spent Easter weekend playing with my puppy outside and soaking up the sun. Columbus has so many activities and things to do. I take for my dog for a walk each day, and this time of year is the best for walks. If you enjoy being outdoors, I would suggest going to the many Metro Parks around the Columbus area. But, if you aren’t someone who enjoys hiking and exploring, I’ve included some suggestions for you below!


Camelot Cellars

  • I’ve gone for a wine tasting, and it was an absolute blast 🙂 I would highly recommend trying it out! Try to look for a wine tasting Groupon to get the best experience for the cheapest price!

Arnold Sports Festival March 2-5

  • For those who don’t know, this festival is a huge competition for over 70 sports from bodybuilding to  equestrian!

Franklin Park Conservatory

  • Orchids Exhibition January 7 – March 5
  • Blooms and Butterflies March 11 – September 17

Columbus Asian Festival May 27-28

  • Enjoy food, dance, arts and more celebrating Asian heritage and culture
  • I’ll be there! Nothing I love more than a good festival with  yummy food and awesome culture.

Columbus Zoo

  • As the weather is getting warm, the zoo is the perfect place to go! Columbus has one of the best zoos in the country, and is definitely something you can’t miss.

Of course, this is just a short list of all the activities that Columbus has to offer in the spring! Keep your mind open to new adventures, and enjoy the beautiful weather!

If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email at sakai.22@osu.edu!

I intern… @ Riverside Methodist Hospital!

Hi everyone, my name is Victoria Williams and I intern at Riverside Methodist Hospital – a large tertiary care hospital within OhioHealth. I’ve been with Riverside just about a year now and have absolutely loved my time with them! My role and responsibilities vary with every shift and I’ve gotten to learn many pharmacy functions within a hospital setting. OhioHealth’s intern program is fairly robust. Each year your responsibilities evolve to include more and more clinical duties.

 

The first year of my internship was all about learning the dispensing and distributive processes of the pharmacy. With a pharmacy serving 800 beds, you can imagine how complicated the inner workings of such a process can be! I was first trained to dispense “unit dose” medications, or in other words, to dispense one dose of a medication per patient at a time. For routine, scheduled medications, this is done overnight in an automated process, but for new medication orders or as needed medications, this dispensing is done throughout the day. Riverside has two robots and two medication carousels to help manage inventory. I work with the robots and a barcoding system to ensure that the right dose of the right medication is sent to the right floor for the right patient. The automation involved here is incredible to witness! I could hardly believe my eyes on my first day on the job.

I was then trained to compound our sterile products – think IV bags and injections. Not only did I learn how to master aseptic technique, but I learned about the regulations regarding sterility and stability of making these products in clean rooms. This directly corresponded with the coursework in out Professional Practice Lab class. It was really rewarding to learn about these regulations in class and then see them implemented at work.

 

From there, I gained experience that benefited my communication skills – both with patients and other healthcare providers. I am trained to perform medication reconciliation in our emergency department with soon-to-be-admitted patients. Here I am tasked with talking to patients about the medications they are taking at home so that during their stay, the physician team can continue their home regimen, as appropriate, make sure any new medications won’t interact with ones they currently take, and identify any drug related problems. This is definitely one of the more rewarding roles I have at the hospital! My other communication-based position is where I staff the phone line and messaging inbox to central pharmacy. I speak with nurses and physicians and try to troubleshoot medication-related questions. When I don’t know the answer, or if the question is beyond my scope, I transfer the call to the pharmacist, but the pharmacists I work with strongly encourage me to answer clinical questions myself if the question relates to something I learned in school and I feel comfortable answering it!

 

In the second and third years of my internship, we begin to focus on clinical duties. This summer my fellow interns and I will participate in “clinical intern boot camp” where we are taught the OhioHealth-specific processes to answering formal drug information questions. During this year, we will also begin working on our intern research projects. I haven’t picked a topic for mine yet, but I‘m pursuing some questions relating to chemotherapy, antibiotic stewardship, and medication safety. I’ll have to keep you posted with which direction I choose in a future blog post!

 

I hope that helps to give you a picture of what it’s like to be an intern at Riverside! In case you were wondering, I work about 20 hours a week – generally every other weekend and half of a shift on Wednesdays every other week. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. J

 

Until next time!

 

Victoria

I, Intern: Giant Eagle

Hey Buckeyes!

Today I’m here to talk about one of my favorite experiences throughout pharmacy school… my internship! I am currently an intern at Giant Eagle Pharmacy and have been an intern there since my first year in pharmacy school. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work for such a great company these past few years, and if you can’t tell already I absolutely love it.

There are many, many reasons why I love this internship but I believe the experience I’ve gotten over these past 3 years has helped me grow tremendously as a future pharmacist. To start, I am able to interact with various healthcare professionals daily whether it is other pharmacists, physicians, nurses, or dentists. These interactions have enabled me to build upon my communication skills and learn how to interact with other professionals more efficiently.

The part that I love most about my job however is my patients! One of the top reasons why I wanted to be a pharmacist was to help other people better their lives. In my internship, I am able to build relationships with my patients which makes what I do that much more meaningful. Having these foundations has allowed me to become more comfortable with my patients, which definitely helps when counseling them. There’s no better feeling than seeing your patient after an intervention and knowing you’ve helped to make a difference in their lives.

Along with counseling skills, I am also able to give immunizations at my job! Trust me I was nervous at first, but now it’s one of my favorite job “duties”. I am able to give immunizations regularly at work, but Giant Eagle also has many vaccination clinics where I am able to volunteer and get even more experience. I have given over 400 vaccinations in the last 2 years as an intern! Like I said, the experience at my internship is priceless.

Before starting my internship at Giant Eagle, I had no idea what an “MTM” or medication therapy management was. Luckily, Giant Eagle has a special training program for interns to learn all about them and how to perform them! MTM’s allow me interact with my patients for at least 15 minutes and review all of their medications and questions they may have about their medications. These sessions truly allow me to use the knowledge I have learned in the classroom and apply it to real life situations!

Last but not least, the relationships I have built with my pharmacists and technicians over the years are something that I will always cherish. My co-workers are absolutely amazing and they are part of the reason why my job is so wonderful! My pharmacists have been a key player in my education throughout pharmacy school. They are always quizzing me, teaching me and pushing me outside of my comfort zone to become the best that I can be. I look up to them as healthcare professionals as they have shown me how to be a successful community pharmacist.

Overall, my internship at Giant Eagle has allowed me to grow my passion for not only community pharmacy, but pharmacy as an overall profession. I am grateful for the wonderful experiences I have had while working at my internship and I believe they’ve truly helped me feel more confident as a student pharmacist. If you have any questions about internships or pharmacy school, please feel free to reach out to me at Johnson.4816@osu.edu. Until then… Go Bucks!