Of course, all rotations are different. Here I have included a description of a typical day on my cardiology rotation.
5am: Wake up. Try not to press the snooze button more than once. Get up quietly so my significant other can sleep for two more hours. Make coffee and breakfast (the most important meal of the day). Get ready for rotation.
6-8am: Review each of my patients for the day (usually around 4). If it is a new patient, I review their history, reason for admission, home medications, and previous hospital admissions. Then, I fill out a patient monitoring form with their labs and see what changes have been made with their medications. Review consultation notes such as infectious disease or nephrology consultations. I ask the nurse how the patient is doing and look at the patient's flow sheet to see their intake and output. Then, I come up with a plan for each of the patient's problems including dose adjustments, monitoring parameters, and medication changes.
8-9:30am: Present my patients to my preceptor. This usually leads to more follow up questions and topics I need to research.
9:30am-1:30pm: Round with the Heart Failure team on each of the patients (usually about 20). The team consists of an attending, medical fellows, a medical resident, nurse practitioners, a nurse who coordinates care, a pharmacist, and (most importantly) two pharmacy students. We discuss each of the patients and visit them in their rooms.
2-4pm: Participate in or prepare for topic discussions, case presentations, or journal clubs.
4-5pm: Nap. My guilty pleasure.
5-7pm: Prepare for the next day by researching the best medical therapy (including dosing or monitoring parameters) for my patients and looking up things I didn't fully understand on rounds.
Sounds pretty fun, right? I'm looking forward to doing it all again tomorrow.
#PharmacyStudents #typicalday #Rotation #4thyear