Enlightening, Educational, and Interesting. Encouraging But Also Sad.

Yup. This one's about pharmacy stuff too.

That is how I would describe my rotation this month at KU studying geriatrics with Dr. Eng and Jariat. (Who by the way made me laugh really hard today. She can be really funny.) We spend three and a half days a week looking through charts and seeing patients. And the best part is.......I DON'T feel like a fraud. A year ago I thought I would. I'm actually prepared for this! What? Yeah! Really. It's a good feeling, but it takes a lot of work. We also have a lot of projects, but that is what the other day and a half are for. I'm encouraged by the fact that I can now look through a chart and be able to follow what's going on. It also satisfies the nosiness in me. We are all getting along well, and I'm hoping Dr. End will volunteer to write me a letter of recommendation. He got his Pharm.D at the university I'm hoping to apply for a residency at (Maryland). That would be sa-weet.

The patients we take care of are one of three places: a posh nursing home in Olathe, the Alzheimer's/dementia clinic at KU, or the Parkinson's clinic at KU. My favorite is the Parkinsons clinic because pharmacy has a more significant role. I feel like we do the most good there. At the clinics we see some very interesting patients. They are mostly people who have been referred by other physicians to our doctors (sometimes even other neurologists) because are complicated in some way or another. This is where it gets sad. Some of these people have a poor quality of life and for some of them there is not a lot we can do. But there are other patients who we can really help. We can make life a little bit better for them. We can help them keep their memory or motor function for as long as possible. Anyway, I'm loving it and am more serious about doing a geriatric residency every day.