Throughout our P2 year, another ambassador named Melissa and I talked about our interest in pediatric pharmacy. While attending Midyear this past December, I was able to make a contact for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. After a few months of email exchanges, Melissa and I were ready to make the 12 hour drive from Buies Creek, NC to Memphis, TN.
The two days we spent there were absolutely incredible. The pharmacy staff made sure we got a taste of everything from rounds to their retail aspect to research. I’ll try to summarize my experience for you. Rounds in this facility are collaborative with everyone having mutual respect for each other’s input. The doctors, residents, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, and nurses discuss each patient. Their common goals are making them better, comfortable, and trying to get them home, even if “home” is to the local Ronald McDonald House. Having these patients experience as much of a normal life with their families is the best medicine and is why their outpatient facility is so large.
A unique feature was how each unit is assigned a pharmacist. This pharmacist had their desk in the same area with the doctors and nurses so as to be completely accessible to the healthcare team and the patients themselves. St. Jude even has a retail side, where orders are packaged to be shipped around the country or for patients to pick up if they are living locally. One of the most interesting components of St. Jude is how a patient never has to pay for their care, including medications. Since it is a research hospital, patients also have access to the newest drugs, even those that are investigational. Lastly, pharmacists can play active roles in research studies and writing.
The best way to describe the atmosphere of St. Jude would be to describe to you a scene from the cafeteria. There are no staff or doctor cafeterias. Everyone—families, patients, doctors, researchers, nurses, hospital staff—all eat in the same cafeteria. I loved looking around the room and seeing families eating together that had become friends through their children, researchers eating with doctors, patients eating with doctors, etc. There was always positivity in the cafeteria, and the hospital as a whole. Egos are not present and in fact, most doctors and pharmacists rarely wear their white coats, so as to appear less intimidating to the patients and their families.
I will be forever touched by those faces I saw during my experience and thankful to the pharmacists who allowed us to shadow them around, soaking up their knowledge. It has reconfirmed for me that I will be pursuing a residency and hope to one day be a pharmacist that specializes in pediatric oncology.
~Beth
