STUDENTS
What I’ve Learned from MoPhE BY KATHERINE SENCION
I was on an elementary school field trip the first time I encountered a hospitalized patient. On our tour, we came across a patient in a wheelchair with both of his legs in big casts, and as a 10 year old I asked my teacher why the man looked so worried and scared. After all, it was just a cast, my classmates got them all the time. I was (obviously) too young to recognize that the patient experience is scary, especially when it is filled with unknowns and what-ifs. Fast forward to my first pharmacy inpatient experience on the floors of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and I began to catch glimpses of patient emotions. It was in this week of experiential education that I knew I wanted to talk to patients, listen to what they have to say, and work with them to make their lives healthier. So when I first heard about MoPhE, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. MoPhE, short for mobile pharmacy education, is a student-run patient counseling service at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System that provides pharmacy students the opportunity to participate in direct patient care in an interdisciplinary environment. Each day, pharmacists on the medical and surgical teams place requests for patient
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UIC COLLEGE OF PHARMACY
counseling on a variety of topics, including insulin training, warfarin and enoxaparin education, and inhaler teaching. Trained pre-APPE students are then responsible for completing each consult that day using the MoPhE unit, which is equipped with teaching aides and handouts, as well as an iPad that is used to show patients instructional videos. Students are then responsible for documenting the encounter appropriately on the patient’s electronic health record. Thus, students are not only learning clinical skills through MoPhE, but are also learning to navigate the workflow in a hospital setting, all while participating in direct patient care. So what do all the logistics mean for me? It means that I have gotten the opportunity to feel like I’m making a difference in people’s healthcare. In the short time that I have been a part of the program, I have learned an incredible amount about patient counseling. I have counseled patients with a level of health literacy that competed with my own, but I have also counseled patients who were completely confused about their disease and new medications, and I’ve learned to alter my counseling appropriately. I have also learned the importance of developing
a relationship with a patient, even if they will be discharged soon. If I can make a patient smile despite being in the hospital, or if I can ease a patient’s worries about having a new diagnosis, then I know I’ve had a successful counseling session, even if it requires me to work overtime. MoPhE has allowed me to build upon the education we receive in the college’s traditional experiential setting, pushing me past supervised or simulated environments into situations that I might have once considered uncomfortable. In the end, MoPhE is an innovative pharmacy experience that every student should have the opportunity to do, and as the program expands through the UI Health system and the Illinois Medical Center in the near future, I believe that most students will have the chance to experience this level of patient counseling in the beginning of their pharmacy education. With original and inventive experiences like MoPhE, our profession can only continue to grow and improve. I feel lucky to have been a part of this program and to be able to learn as much as I have, and I can only wish the same for my fellow future pharmacists.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015
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