Novant Health - Cardiac Surgery (Charlotte, NC)
I got the amazing opportunity to experience my third APPE rotation at Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center. Novant Health is a not-for-profit integrated system of 15 medical centers as well as numerous clinics and rehabilitation centers. Novant Health cares for and treats their patients throughout North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia. Presbyterian Medical Center, a nonprofit, 622-bed tertiary medical center, is located in Charlotte, N.C.
The rotation is centered on Cardiac Surgery and the student has to be able to apply their patient management skills by providing comprehensive pharmaceutical services. The services that are expected of students is to be able to do pharmacotherapy consults with physicians/providers, pharmacokinetic analysis, drug information and intensive monitoring of CT surgery patients. The Cardiac Critical Care Unit (CCU) is the corner of the hospital’s intensive care unit for pre and post-op cardiac surgery patients. The rotation was an amazing experience as a pharmacy student as you are usually the only pharmacist on interdisciplinary rounds that are filled with physicians, medical residents/fellows and attending’s. You have to be able to think quickly, as questions will be coming your way throughout rounds, and you only have a few seconds of time before the attending moves onto the next question. This may seem overwhelming at first but over time, it becomes second nature.
The average day began at 8:00 with rounds with the team the rounds last anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on how many patients are in the ward. On interdisciplinary rounds, we usually discuss the patient’s history and reported medications and developing a plan and discussing with the doctors on the floor. After rounds, I had to job to work up the patients that were round on and update their profile with the suggestions that we stated on rounds. This was usually followed by a topic discussion/seminar picked by fellow preceptors the topics ranged anywhere from Introduction to Vasopressors and Inotropes to Management of Cardiac “Impella” Patients. Around 2:00 pm afternoon rounds begin in the ER which lasts anywhere from 1 hour to 2 hours, and this usually brought me to the end of the day after I finished working up the ER patients and discussing pharmacotherapy plans with the providers the day would be over.
This rotation was an amazing learning opportunity because it provided a great experience to learn about cardiac surgery, something that we did not get much exposure to during classes.
