A Week in the life: A P2 Student

Hello everyone! One of the common questions we get as ambassadors is what our normal weeks look like as students at Ohio State. To give you and idea, of both how classes are and how we fit in everything else, I am going to walk you through what a typical week looks like for me! One thing to note – everyone’s schedule is different so this is just one possible schedule out of many.

Monday: 

-Lecture 8:30-11:30 – Monday started off with a lecture on the pathophysiology of Arrhythmias. While the material was pretty heavy, it helped that it was taught by a pharmacist who works in the Ross Heart Hospital and is a specialist in the field.
-Professional Hour 11:30-12:30 – All PharmD students have 11:30-12:30 off every day. This professional hour, I ran across the street to BistrOH to grab a quick bite with friends.
-Lecture 12:30-3:30 – We finished off Monday with a lecture on the pharmacology of anti-arrhythmic drugs and the medicinal chemistry behind how these drugs work. Throughout the lecture, we had a variety of patient cases to help us visualize how these things are applied in real life.
-Interprofessional education event 5:30-8:00 – A special event, this was a session with other health professional students focused on the opioid crisis. It was really interesting to hear the viewpoint of my future colleagues and really helped me to realize how much we will all need to work together to solve the crisis.

Tuesday:

-Work 7:00-12:30 – As mentioned in my last blog post, I work with the OSU Wexner Medical Center as an informatics intern.  Tuesday morning, I worked with some of our pharmacist specialists to standardize how we make patient progress notes. I was amazed at how diverse a range of specialists we have right across the street from the college and it was really interesting to hear from all of them how they work through their cases.
-Lab 12:30-3:30 – Lab is my favorite part of the week, class wise. Our second year lab is focussed on hospital pharmacy so this week we were compounding sterile IV bags of ceftriaxone. We also have a heavy focus on communication skills in lab so I practiced presenting therapy changes to a physician. It was great to be able to practice with one of our TAs acting as a physician and now I feel ready to do the real thing on one of my rotations.

Wednesday:

-Lecture 8:30-11:30 – More lecture! This time we learned about the therapeutics behind treating atrial arrhythmias.
-Professional Hour 11:30-12:30 – This professional hour, I went to a meeting of a brand new student organization. Bringing our grand total to 18, this new organization focuses on specialty pharmacy. They had a guest speaker who had a lot of insight into the field but most importantly – they had free food.
-Lecture 12:30-3:30 – To round out the day we talked about Venous Thromboembolism from another faculty member who also practices at the Wexner Medical Center. While we only had him for a few hours, we learned a ton about the topic and worked through some patient cases that made the material so much clearer.

Thursday:

-Work – 7:00-12:30
-Professional Hour 11:30-12:30 – This professional hour I mostly studied but also shamelessly used the excuse of supporting a good cause to get some tasty baked goods! During professional hours, student orgs sell everything from white coats to t-shirts to cupcakes. It’s a great opportunity to support some of our charities and satisfy your sweet tooth at the same time.
-Workshop 12:30-3:30 -Thursday workshop was focused on patient cases for Arrhythmias and Venous Thromboembolism. Using a team based learning approach, we talked about all the considerations that need to be made in treating these disease states. All the different specialists were there so we got to see how the team works together to prioritize and manage complex patients.

Friday:

-Workshop 8:30-11:30 – Friday workshop will focus on pharmacogenomics. I particularly am looking forward to this since it’s such a cutting edge field that even a lot of practicing pharmacists don’t know much about. The fact that we get exposure to it so early on is very exciting.
-The Circleville Pumpkin Show 2:30 -??-  Since the week can’t be all work and no play, me and some of my fellow Phi Delta Chi Brothers are going to blow off some steam at the famous Circleville Pumpkin Show! I’ve never been so I’m not entirely sure what is in store but I’ve heard they have pumpkin flavored versions of literally anything you can think of. I can’t wait to see what all I can find!

So there you have it, a week In the life of an OSU student. It’s pretty jam packed with a lot of exciting things that spice things up between lectures. I hope this gives you an idea of what it’s like here!

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