UPMC Beacon Hospital

I was surprised to show up at Beacon Pharmacy today and find out I was heading to Beacon Hospital instead. For the first 2 hours I shadowed Rosie, a really sweet pharmacy technician, to help stock the Pyxis machines on each floor. These machines have medications locked into drawers that open automatically and sometimes only open one little cubby to help ensure that the right patient is getting the right medication - as well as prevent diversions. We found a few discrepancies today - one pocket had a regular release tablet instead of an extended release capsule in it but it hadn't reached any patients. We also had to put in some medications that the nurses left on the machine for some reason.


For about an hour I walked around with Asier, one of the clinical pharmacists, who goes to his floors and checks the Kardex (paper medication record - no EMR yet at Beacon!) for each patient to ensure that there are no interactions, spot check the dosages (sometimes not provided by the physician - they often write "2.5ml" or something but don't give a strength). I was surprised how much of the information was familiar to me even though I haven't done this sort of thing yet on rotation. After lunch for the rest of the day I was with Yee (Asian+Irish accent = confusing). She is an oncology pharmacist and does a lot of work getting orders ready for patients to receive chemotherapy. She also does work like Asier and we looked at patient charts/Kardex's on the oncology floor. Many of the patients are just receiving palliative care (to make them comfortable rather than treat the disease) and Yee said that makes her job pretty hard because you get attached to patients and many of them do not survive long. 


I met a professor from Pitt/the Hillman Cancer Center who was visiting because this week marks 5 years for the hospital being open (about 2 of which it has been part of UPMC). He invited me to a meeting about a melanoma case being treated with a new monoclonal antibody but Yee needed some help with paperwork for patient orders so we didn't have time to make it. It took awhile to get home so I was glad I didn't stay extra for the meeting. 


I forgot to mention that last week Ireland had an inauguration for their new president! His name is Michael Higgins and he's 70 something and apparently has no real power so it wasn't a big deal for most people. The election was just a few weeks ago so it happened rather fast and Higgins is the first new president Ireland has had in 14 years! Presidents can serve up to 2 terms (7 years each) and the last president, Mary McAleese, was unopposed after her first term so was able to serve for 2. It was all rather strange to me that it wasn't a bigger deal but Emma explained it me like this: the prime minister here is like our president (more power, etc.) and the president here is like the Queen (less power, more of a figurehead). The inauguration was on a very rainy day so I'm glad I was working at the time.