Medical Practices at Luton & Dunstable University Hospital - Coursework Example

Department of Pharmacy Luton & Dunstable Hospital Part one: Reflection My visit to Luton & Dunstable Hospital was much of a learning experience. My visit to the hospital was mostly interesting, and I wished I could have more placement days. My particular interest was on the hospital pharmacy. I had the opportunity to observe a lot of things and learn several things from them. There were different types of patients in the hospital wards, and the clinical pharmacists were tasked with attending to the unique medical needs of all of them. My aim was to learn some of the standard roles of a clinical pharmacist and I registered quite some success in the end. I went to two wards. The first ward was the Medicin Ward, meant for elderly patients, and the second one was the surgery ward. I got to see a few patients and my particular interest was to know the kind of attention they were given by the clinical pharmacist. For instance, there was a 72-year old patient who was suffering from diabetes mellitus type one, hypercholesteremia and hypertension. In my presence, he narrated to the pharmacist what he felt. He only talked of shortness of breath. The lesson I learnt in most of the cases is that as a clinical pharmacist, one needs to know what a patient feels by asking them. He/she shouldn’t stop at that, but go ahead to carry out examinations to discover other things that the patient may be unknowingly suffering from. On the basis of both what the patient says and the results of the medical examination, a pharmacist establishes if there is any need to change medication or not to. My visit to the hospital pharmacy taught me yet another lesson; that there are certain kinds of patients, like alcoholics, that require counseling more than other forms of medical attention such as drug prescription. This is a way of helping them to get around the drinking habit. In the case of an alcoholic, it may also be necessary for a pharmacist to change drugs because the patient’s problem may have got more complicated than what it was before. Any such change of medicinal prescription must be based on laboratory examination results in all cases. This means that a clinical pharmacist must work very closely with a laboratory technician, because he depends on his results to be able to prescribe drugs for the patients. Constantly checking with results helps to track the patient’s medical history, and on the basis of whether they are doing any better or not, medicine can be changed or retained. It ensures that patients receive the best medical attention and eliminating chances of prescription errors occurring. The case of the surgery ward wasn’t any different. The ward contained both young and elderly people. Almost everyone in the surgery ward had their unique problem, and this meant that they all needed just as unique attention. Even here, the clinical pharmacist would in some cases recommend certain medicines for the patients and advice them to stop using the ones they were on formally. This, as I got to learn, isn’t done anyhow. The pharmacist really has to be sure based on the prevailing patient conditions. Any mess here amounts to putting the life of the patient in danger. During my visit, I learnt the role Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE) desktop app plays in tracking the medical history of a patient. Checking medical history provides pharmacists with the information they need before making vital dispensing decisions. It checks a lot of things related to a patient, making any decisions arrived at in the end very comprehensive and taking into account all the prevailing factors. Some of the enjoyable bits of my visit included the kind treatment by hospital pharmacist, Dr. Batsy. He was courteous and explained everything to me in details. The hospital environment was conducive for my learning, and I was able to note the differences between pharmacy in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia where I come from. This was especially important to me because I realized that a pharmacist is just as vital in the medical sector as the doctors and nurses. In the UK, a pharmacist keeps so close to the patient and their role is patient-centered. On the other hand, in Saudi Arabia, the role of a clinical pharmacist doesn’t go beyond dispensing medicine. They are not even allowed to know the development on the part of the patient who uses the medicine he dispenses. Now with the knowledge I gained, I am convinced I can go back home and help change the way of doing things, by proposing that pharmacists be allowed to play very active roles by keeping really close to the patients, and observing their development. This would no doubt reduce patient vulnerabilities resulting from wrong prescriptions, or not changing medication in good time. To sum it all, my placement taught me that in a medical sector where pharmacists are allowed to directly reach out to the patients in the wards, there is low mortality rate because nothing ever goes wrong with prescription. Any change in a patient’s condition is detected in good time and necessary adjustments done before things get out of hand. These roles are very recognizable and patient-centered, making a pharmacist’s role just as pivotal as a doctor’s. Part two: Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Reflection, Planning, Action and Evaluation Reflection R1: What do or what did you need to learn? As a clinical pharmacy student, I felt that I needed a placement at a hospital pharmacy in order to be able to relate some of the things I have studied in class to those that happen in real practice. Luton & Dunstable University Hospital pharmacy provided me with a platform to fulfill that. The fact that the related staff at the hospital was kind to me enabled me to achieve all of my learning needs during the visit. R2: How is this learning relevant to the safe and effective practice of pharmacy and to your own scope of practice? Particularly, I needed to learn the contributions of the pharmacy department to patient care and the particular engagements of a UK pharmacist in patient care. I knew pharmacy practice in Saudi Arabia (my country) didn’t meet the standards of practice I had learnt in class. My aim has always been to go back home upon completion of my pharmacy studies and help to change the situation in the pharmacy practice. R3: Tick one or more methods that you used to identify what you needed to learn. I did it as a personal interest and out of the desire to fulfill my career needs. As I went round the two wards with the pharmacist, I was keen to note how passionately he executed his duty and how intimate he was with the patients Planning P1: When will you need to have achieved this learning? I would wish to complete my learning by 15th, august 2015. P2: Why is this learning important to you and your practice? It was important for me to learn all this because all of these interventions go a long way in ensuring that a nation doesn’t end with many deaths arising from casual treatment of patient’s prescription needs. I learnt that prescription is an affair that should be closely monitored. This makes a pharmacist’s role a very important one. This isn’t anything close to how it happens in Saudi Arabia. I hope this placement makes me the kind of a pharmacist that my country, Saudi Arabia, hasn’t had in a long time. I will thus be the one to turn it around, so that deaths are minimized. I also needed to learn how medical history of a patient can kept and tracked. During the placement, I learnt that there is a desktop application, known as Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE), that carries out that function and much more. Keeping patient history, as I learnt, is very important because pharmacists are able to examine a patient’s condition, vis-à-vis their medical and prescription history. This helps to know the right medicine to prescribe for their present condition without putting their life in jeopardy. P3: What might you do in order to achieve this learning? To achieve the learning, I need to observe how exactly the pharmacist carries out his/her duties, see how he communicates with the patient, carries out the counseling and a host of other things that precede prescription of drugs. This is active participation. Once I have observed all that, it would be appropriated to try it all out myself to check the extent of learning. Once I saw how he was doing it, I tried to do it myself on a patient, with Dr. Batsy close to me, and the result was great. It is important to patiently interrogate a patient; their sincere response gives a clue on whether they are doing any better. It may also form the basis of changing drug prescriptions or not. Action A1: When did you complete the activities outlined in your plan? The visitations will be taking place continually and end on or before 15/08/2015, so it is not complete as yet A2: What have you learnt? Comparing with how it’s done in Saudi Arabia, I learnt that a clinical pharmacist needs to be so close to a patient, be emotionally engaged with them, and then they can open up and tell all that a pharmacist deems is necessary for him to know. I also learnt that counseling a patient can also be therapeutic. In some cases, a clinical pharmacist only needs to counsel a patient on what they need to do to stop their recurring medical problems. This mostly happens with the patients whose medical condition is caused by drug addiction, like alcoholics. Apart from administering medicine, it helps much to counsel them so that they are guided out of their addiction problem. Counseling, as I discovered, is also necessary for elderly patients who in most cases are affected psychologically by their medical conditions. I also was privileged to learn that a pharmacist’s role goes beyond dispensing medicine. He/she should play a more active role in the medical sector. They help to take some burden off the doctor’s shoulder. In many countries, generally, there are fewer doctors than other medical staff. In countless cases, patients succumb because they do not kind of attention they need. The problem is that such roles aren’t delegated. A doctor cannot attend to every patient’s need because of the overwhelming patient-doctor ratio. In countries such as the United Kingdom where clinical pharmacists are given bigger roles, maximum attention is given to the patients. Things hardly go wrong because the clinical pharmacist keeps very close with the patients. The doctors can then concentrate on the higher-level medical attention Evaluation E1: To what extent did you learn what you set out to learn at the start of this CPD cycle? I fully achieved the objectives I had set for my placement. This placement gave me the kind of insight which, coupled with my class knowledge, helps to make me an accomplished pharmacist who can impact a change in the Saudi Arabian medical sector. After accomplishing all this, I feel like I can be an educator and trainer of clinical pharmacists in Saudi Arabia. We as pharmacists, if allowed to play a more liberal role, can relieve doctors of a lot of things. In Saudi, unlike the UK, doctors are forced to rush over things because they have to do everything, from prescribing medicine to conducting medical examinations. We all that to think of, and given the large number of patients, I guess doctors are forced to be insincere and not do their best in ensuring the best possible care is given to patients. Sometimes, I have a feeling that some patients die, but they wouldn’t have died if better care had been given. Therefore, clinical pharmacists should be used to ease the pressure doctors have. This will help to save a lot of lives. Read More