Undecided about your career path? From clinical to specialty pharmacy, informatics to ambulatory care — the options seem endless. In the Career Pearls for Students podcast series you will hear from pharmacists who work in various pharmacy practice settings to learn more about what a day in the life is like. Take away information about careers you have interest in but never took the time to learn about — you may even find something you never knew existed.
The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the ASHP official podcast, your guide to issues related to medication use, public health, and the profession of pharmacy. - Thank you for joining us for an episode of ASHP's Practice Journeys, Career Pearls for Students. In this podcast series, you will hear from pharmacists who work in various pharmacy practice settings to learn more about what a day in their life is like. You'll dive into careers, you may have an interest in, but never took the time to learn about, or you may even find out about a practice area you never knew existed. My name is Jordan Lewy, a 30-year student at Howard University College of Pharmacy, and Pharmacy Student Forum Executive Committee member. Today, I will be chatting with Dr. Zuri Hawkins-Jared. Thank you for joining us today. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your current position? - Yes, so I'm originally from Atlanta, Georgia, and I currently work as an ambulatory care pharmacist for Kaiser Permanente, Georgia, as well as a part-time or as needed PRN medical writer. For my current position as an ambulatory care pharmacist, I work with patients who have a history of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, any of those chronic health conditions to try and help to work to get those under control through mainly telephonic conversations. - Thank you. Can you tell me what the typical training requirements would be for an ambulatory care pharmacist? - Yes, so typically for an ambulatory care pharmacist, you'll have completed four years of pharmacy school, and then you can go into a PGY1 and/or PGY2 in ambulatory care. A lot of the times you'll find some ambulatory care pharmacists have only completed a PGY1 because their first one was so heavily focused in ambulatory care. Additionally, some roles will require board certification. So you can be what they call BCPS, which is the board certification of pharmaceuticals, I believe, and then there's BCACP, which is specifically for ambulatory care pharmacists. Personally, I just have a board certification in BCPS and not the other, but that is an option that is available. Say I'm looking for another role that's gonna highly or really want that particular certification. You can sit for that once you have completed usually a PGY2 or a certain amount of time in the ambulatory care space. - Thank you. Can you give us a little bit of background about your current practice site and professional responsibilities as an ambulatory care pharmacist and as a medical writer? - Yes, of course. So for my current practice site with Kaiser Permanente, Georgia, I usually speak with around 14 to 16 patients per day, either about diabetes, type II, mainly. High blood pressure, hypertension, high cholesterol. And then for some, we may even do MTM or medication therapy management. So the day, really, whatever day it is, it depends on what I'm gonna do. And sometimes they may be mixed together. So I really enjoy that, as I mentioned before, it's telephonic based. So I just get to call patients. We used to be in office, but after the pandemic, of course, everything shifted. And so we've been working from home ever since. So if that role aside from just talking with patients, I also order medications, order labs, provide them with other additional resources that we offer at Kaiser that can help to get them to their overall goal. And this is usually patients anywhere from like 18 years old, up to 75 or older, depending if they wanna be a part of our pharmacy program. And then to switch gears a little bit as a medical writer for that, I work with various different companies to provide help content on their, usually their websites. So one company I was working with recently is called Aclinate, and they'll usually assign me a couple of blogs that they need for the month. I'll write those, ascend them in, we'll do some edits, and then they will get posted to the site for their readers to read or for anyone on the internet, if they have an open forum to go in and check out, and then funnels them to whatever other information, that someone may be looking for through that post. - Okay, that's really interesting. You spoke about it a little bit, but what does your typical workday look like for you, and how does medical writing fit into your ambulatory care role? - Yeah, so for the ambulatory care, I'll kinda talk about it in the form of a week. So in one week, say Monday, I may take or have administrative time in the morning, and then from noon till about 4 p.m. I may talk with diabetic patients, usually every 30 minutes, is their appointment times. And then say Tuesday, it may be a hypertension day for me, so I may speak with 14 to 16 patients about their, what we do is remote blood pressure monitoring to see what their readings have been at home, and make medication adjustments based on how their numbers are doing. We'll also order labs and make sure they have adequate follow-up. Wednesday, I could be on MTM or medication therapy management, where I'll talk to six patients usually in those days, given about an hour for each appointment. We'll go through and perform our traditional MTM for our Medicare population, and then say on a Thursday, I could be on something we call a new member, where people come in together, and we actually help get them onto medications that are considered more formulary, and those again are like 30 minute appointments, so it could be 14 to 16 patients in a day there, and then Friday is usually another administrative time for me, so I'll take the week or that day to wrap up anything from the week, reach out to patients who needed to get some callbacks, or respond to drug information questions, whatever the case may be. In my typical hours, I anywhere from 7.30 to about four, for the most part. So for medical writing, it doesn't necessarily fit in my role at Kaiser, so I do write outside of my regular job time, so either after work or on weekends, wherever I can find some time to devote to that, and that can be anywhere, depending on how many articles that I need to get done for the month. I could spend five to 10 hours a week doing that as well. - Okay, thank you for sharing that. What would you say is the most rewarding part of your work? - For me, it's definitely that patient interaction in getting patients to go, whether it's for their diabetes management, their high blood pressure, their cholesterol. A lot of patients put in a lot of hard work to get to those places, and a lot of them are very appreciative, even though we're talking about maybe adding on a medication or trying to get them into exercising or eating right, it's just rewarding to see them actually reach that goal and know that they are making lifestyle changes that are gonna help sustain them in the long run. - As a black female pharmacist, are there any unique challenges that you have faced in your journey or within the positions that you've currently held? - As a black female pharmacist, I haven't been significant challenges I would say that I have faced at this point. I will just say along the way, I did not initially match into my PGY1 program, and so that for me was a pretty big eye opener 'cause you think you're gonna go through, you're gonna match and you're gonna get started. Well, and that's not necessarily how the journey went. And so then having to put myself out there, again, knowing that, hey, I'm coming around because I didn't match the first time, that can just leave you feeling discouraged, but it's such a quick turnaround that you do have to kind of shake that off and really set your sights on what you're trying to achieve and be open. So, and feel like in that aspect, I learned about being open and more flexible when it comes to job opportunities because I felt like, oh, maybe I don't wanna go to this area 'cause it may not be something that's friendly for black females or it may not be somewhere where they'll see a lot of people like me, but I did have to kind of take those things into account and just say, hey, you know, give it a chance, you never know what you'll find, you'll never know who you'll meet. And I will say my experience definitely led to the job I have. One of my preceptors used to work for the company I work for now and we're still connected. And so that was really helpful to have someone cheering for me in the background that I really didn't even know until after I did my interview and they just happened to mention it. So you just never know. - I think it's important to be open. So this is definitely inspiring to hear. Thank you. What is a common misconception, do you believe people have about either ambulatory care or medical writing? - I will start with ambulatory care in that some people, their definition of ambulatory care can be different and what that role looks like. So for me, mine is clinic based whereas other folks, they may not necessarily be attached to a specific clinic or they may work with a doctor's office, but they're coming in every day and doing it. So when you hear someone say, "I'm an ambulatory care pharmacist," really asking what that looks like and what that means because there's so many different roles that it could be very different. There's ambulatory care pharmacists who focus in diabetes like I do and then there's some that focus in cardiology and nephrology and there's so many specific areas that you can be a part of. So just don't take it for a face value when someone says they are ambulatory care pharmacist. When it comes to medical writing, there's different types. And so people also may be misconstrued about that. What I do isn't very focused heavily on, I would say like writing for a journal or writing for other medical peers. My writing is more so for the lay public. And so if you are like, "Ah, I kind of want to get into writing, but I'm not sure about having to write it for big journals and things like that." Just know that isn't the only way that you can get into medical writing or even health communications in general. So definitely being open and exploring what those options are when you come across people who say they have those roles, ask them more about it and what it entails. - Thank you. I think we have time for one more question. What advice do you have for a pharmacy student who may be interested in ambulatory care, medical writing or a combination of both? - Well, my overall recommendation to students is to take advantage of all opportunities, even if you don't think it's something that you want to do long-term. When I was in school, I knew that I was really interested in public health, didn't know how, I wanted to go about it and that's how I, by being involved, that's how I ended up finding out, okay, ambulatory care is a way for me to get into the public health space by participating in different types of health programs that are geared towards specific initiatives. So if you think about it, yes, it's pharmacy, but at the same time, you're helping the general public and their overall health and that can impact them in other ways. So definitely take advantage of every opportunity you have. If there's something that sounds unique that's coming up at your school, they're offering various different type of rotation that you just really weren't interested in, like for me, critical care and emergency medicine were not on the table, but I ended up in a residency program where I had to do both and I was able to do both. So now I definitely understand and know how to be a pharmacist in those areas. Do I want to go and get a job in that? No, but that knowledge helps me when I see my patients on the ambulatory care side, understand how they may have flown through an emergency visit or a hospital visit and how we got to where we are with them today. So definitely just be open for any opportunity that comes your way. - That's all the time we have today. And I want to thank Dr. Zuri Hawkins-Jared again for joining us today and sharing her story. Join us here at ASHP official and the practice journeys career pearls for student podcast series as we continue to explore different careers and practice settings. - Thank you for listening to ASHP official, the voice of pharmacist advancing healthcare. Be sure to visit ashp.org/podcast to discover more great episodes, access show notes and download the episode transcript. If you loved the episode and want to hear more, be sure to subscribe, rate or leave a review. Join us next time on ASHP official. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
