Hazard ARH Cancer Center (Hazard, KY)

As a student at ACP, you only get to “officially” garb up once to do hazardous compounding as a part of the lab curriculum. Imagine being able to do this all day every day! Here at the Cancer Center, I have been right in the middle of everything. I helped with everything from priming tubing for IV bags, actually getting to mix hazardous drugs under the supervision of a pharmacist, to counseling patients on their regimens. To anyone who has an interest to learn more about oncology or loves a hands-on type of approach to learning, I highly recommend you to consider this rotation as a part of your APPE experience!

A typical day at this rotation would begin with going into the anteroom to scrub down and gown up. We put on our shoe covers, hair nets, two separate pairs of gloves, and gowns to begin the process. Then we go into the non-hazardous compounding room to prime tubing for IV bags that each medication goes in. After we finish that, we have to wait for each patient’s individual lab work to come back before we start to make their premeds and mix their chemo. Sometimes treatments are held if a patient’s CBC levels are out of wack, and the doctors wait until those levels return to a safer level before they allow the medications to be given. Once we get those results back, we begin to mix each patient’s chemo and send it out to the nurses once finished.

The typical rush lasts until about one o’clock each day and then we are able to come out of the sterile rooms and sit in the office space to do other work. Since these infusions take a long time to be given to the patient (sometimes 3-4 hours for single medication), the chemo is usually mixed in the morning so patients aren’t at the Cancer Center all day long. After the rush, we are fed lunch each day. This is a luxury we get because drug reps come from all over to give us the information on the drug they are selling, and when they come, they bring us food.

When everyone has finished lunch, we would go back into the office space and if we had any new patients starting a new treatment that day, they would ask me to go and counsel them. I would counsel on side effects they were likely to experience, what to watch for at home, and lifestyle changes that might need to be made or changed. I usually talked to a few patients every week, and it was great patient counseling practice. This would usually conclude how a typical day at the Hazard ARH Cancer Center went.

Overall, I would stay at this rotation for the next five if I could! The environment, the people, and the learning experience cannot be matched. The pharmacists you work with are super personable and knowledgeable, the techs are experienced and friendly, and the nurses and doctors are fantastic! For anyone looking for a fun, educational APPE experience, this is your place to go.