PHARMABRIDGE TRAINING EXPERIENCES AT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA From 1st August to 29th August 2014 –

PHARMABRIDGE TRAINING EXPERIENCES AT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

From 1^st August to 29^th August 2014 –

By Linu Mohan P,

Asst Professor, Dept Of Pharmacy Practice, Alshifa College of Pharmacy

   Cedarville University School of Pharmacy,Ohio state,USA

  

Mr  Linumohan  at Ambulatory care clinic, Dayton.

With an aim to strengthen pharmaceutical services and pharmacy education, in developing and transitional countries, through coordinated support from pharmacy establishments  in developed countries, International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP),every year conducting a Pharmabridge training programme.I am very glad to apprise you that, I could successfully complete this training during August 2014 at United States of America.

My Pharmabridge training in different pharmacy settings at USA in collaboration with Cedarville University School of Pharmacy was really exciting and actionable experience. The training enabled me to learn more about real life clinical pharmacy activities, experiential training of Pharm D students in a developed country and I procured a golden opportunity to attain a deeper understanding of international standard of pharmacy practice.

My days at the Cedarville University School of Pharmacy, campus was really appreciable asit is located in a lovely area of southwest Ohio, and is committed to the development of the “whole person”. From their student life initiatives to their curriculum design, all the structures and strategies have been developed to produce graduates who will possess the expertise and character needed to engage their professional, social and political spheres of influence.

Since it was a time of starting a new academic year, the school arranged various faculty development programs for their teaching staff which include, staff development program, Pedagogy, Team Based Learning /Problem Based Learning, etc. It was a wonderful learning experience for me to understand different teaching methodologies. As a part of this, the school also arranged seminars on certain topics useful for teaching staff which include Google tricks and tips, Copy right and ethical classroom use, Higher Learning Commission quality initiative etc.

At the end of the three days orientation program, academic advisors were selected from faculties, for a group of three students whose responsibilities include assisting the student in identifying educational goal, his/her talents and abilities in a timely way. The main aim of this was to create and support dynamic educational partnership between the staff and student that helps the student to achieve their personal, educational and intellectual goal. I personally felt this type of orientation will be highly useful for Indian students.

I was lucky to attend a two days training  on Medication Therapy Management which is a new concept adopted by the pharmacists in USA for improving patient care and therapeutic decision making. By definition it is a systematic process of collecting patient-specific information, assessing medication therapies to identify medication-related problems, developing a prioritized list of medication-related problems, and creating a plan to resolve them.

The get together of international faculty and students, was an opening for me to meet and share ideas on advancement of pharmacy practice. Understanding of Pharmacy Practice Experiential part for each year of professional pharmacy program was amazing, since the Indian Pharm.D program is not having a strong experiential aspect. I believe the experiential part can be adopted in India to develop the professional students who meet international standard. In USA during the four year of professional Pharm.D program, (after the completion of two year of pre pharmacy course), the experiential aspects are divided in to Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience (IPPE) and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPE).

The Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience program provides direct training in independent and chain community pharmacy in first year, then training in a hospital pharmacy in second professional year. During the third professional year, the experiences will be pharmacy focused service learning opportunities. It also includes medical trips, rural health promotion and screenings, indigent clinics, free pharmacy experiences, and education at local elementary and secondary education institutions.

During the fourth year of the Pharm.D program, students have nine months of full-time Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiential rotations. Each rotation is one month in length and includes advanced community practice, advanced health systems pharmacy, ambulatory care practice, and adult acute care practice. It allows the student to train with real-life experiences in several areas of pharmacy practice emphasizing problem solving, clinical skills, and practice skills. Each student is supposed to have professional attitudes and values and all must be integrated and applied.

The drug information center of the university is known as center for health information and global health education. It is having lot of data bases and sources of information. Access pharmacy, Dynamed physician’s tool, Cochrane central register of controlled trial, Lexicomp online, Medical Latina is some out of them. The drug information center is also connected with other libraries throughout the state of Ohio.  It was a new experience for me to familiarize with different databases with given temporary user name and password. Since I was using only Micromedex in India it was a different experience for me to understand about usage of new database.

During the training period I had visited Nationwide Children’s hospital in a town known as Columbus. It was a specialized hospital for children. This provided me a chance to meet and interact with different pharmacists specialized in specific area such as clinical pharmacists, drug safety pharmacist, pharmacists in drug dispensing and pharmacists in clinical trial. There were some discussion on the real job nature of all these pharmacists and I realized that the opportunity for pharmacist is really wide. The only thing is we should be specialized in a specific area of pharmacy with cyclopedic up to date knowledge. I had visited the outpatient pharmacy, inpatient pharmacy, satellite pharmacy and main pharmacy of the hospital and I observed the work flow of each site. At central pharmacy I could see the magic of robotic drug dispensing which I learned only from text books. It was stunning to see the integration of technology in health care for developing maximum patient care.

It was really fascinating to know that with a service mentality the teaching faculties of many pharmacy schools at USA are involving in pharmacy practice activities in some clinics. They help physician and other health care professionals in the clinics with their clinical experiences along with their students. Such clinics are specialized area to monitor the patients on coumadin (warfarin) therapy and the patients with diabetes located near by the pharmacy schools. I had visited these clinics for a couple of times along with the teaching pharmacists of Cedarville. Here I could observe the activities like patient counseling for Diabetes and dose management of patient under Coumadin therapy, easily handling by pharmacy faculties.

One of the most interesting and new area during my training period, was my visit to Informatics division of Children’s Medical Centre, Dayton, which provided me a chance to learn about  application of software in health care system developed by a company named Epic. It is actually the integration of information technology and its application in health care system. I was exposed to various aspects like electronic health records, pharmacy automation, electronic prescribing, computerized physician order entry etc. At this informatics division the registered pharmacists known as pharmacy coordinators, who control and support  all the pharmacy related activities of the hospital including the procurement of drugs,billing,dose determination, medication related issues, monitoring ketogenic diet, renal toxicity issues,antibiotic stewardship, anticoagulant therapy  and anti convulsant therapy, formulary management etc, of the hospital with the help information technology. They also support the pharmacy by helping in some pharmacy automation procedure. Depending upon the needs of the hospital pharmacists, the core team of informatics division manages the technology aspects for better patient care.

I had visited different community pharmacy premises to master the work flow of community pharmacy in USA. It was informative to understand the prescription refilling, label printing and dispensing of drugs in community pharmacies.

Wholeheartedly I thank Dr Agathe Wherli, the Pharmabridge coordinator, for having given me a chance to attend the training. I hope the Pharmabridge training will really help me to promote comprehensive education development and achievement of competencies in Indian pharmacy practice. This training will definitely help me to train my Pharm.D students and Master of Pharmacy students, and to develop young pharmacy professionals with international standards in India.

Community Pharmacy at Ohio state