When you enter the profession of pharmacy, there's so many different things that you can do, and a lot of people just aren't aware of that. You know, I think most people are aware of community pharmacists, you know, they may not be aware of pharmacists work in hospitals. They may not be aware of pharmacists working in ambulatory care clinics, and so there's a lot of different options. Pharmacists work in pharmaceutical industry. So there's many different things. Clinical pharmacists, really, historically have been pharmacists that are really interested in taking care of patients in hospitals that are really sick. But there are other areas of Clinical Pharmacy as well. There are some specialty areas of Clinical Pharmacy, like Pediatrics, what I do, where you specifically help take care of children. I look at all the pediatric patients that are in the hospital, and, you know, review why they're there, and look at their medications and make sure that their medications are correct for what they're here for, the doses that they're on. Always check for drug interactions, and side effects, and kind of anticipate what might happen with the medication. We also monitor the patients to make sure they are responding to the medicines like they're supposed to. And so that's that's just part of what we do.
Essentially, an ambulatory care pharmacist is somebody that deals with chronic disease state management. So patients in the outpatient realm, let's say you're going to your normal primary care provider, to have a follow up appointment. You maybe have diabetes, heart failure, COPD, you're current smoker, you have some type of infection, or you've just gotten out of the hospital and you're transitioning to the outpatient realm. That's where an ambulatory care pharmacist would be. I would say the most rewarding part of my job would be interacting with patients. So starting to develop a relationship with them. And I feel the most gratification when I talk to them about what their medications are doing, why? Instilling that motivation behind and you just see their eyes like the understanding.
Our student started COVID-19 vaccinating back in December, working with a local health care system. And since that time, we've worked with long term care facilities. We've worked with health departments, and right now, community pharmacies or a lot of who's vaccinating. And so we've been in a number of community pharmacies working right alongside their team. So today, we are in Greene County, Tennessee, and it is designated as a rural county. And so with our mission, it's really nice to be here today. We're partnering with three community pharmacies to give vaccinations today. So our students are getting to work alongside those really impressive pharmacist, and their teams, while also helping this important public health piece that pharmacists have come to the center of right now.
My role today I'm more of a triage. So we've got it set up in stations. We've got a P4 student who's actually helping kind of direct patients when they first come in the door, making sure that they do have an appointment, making sure that they've got their information. They come to us we kind of make sure that they've not had any symptoms of COVID. We check their temperature and then we direct them to the appropriate pharmacy. Like I said, this is an event hosted by three separate pharmacies and so they each have their own patient list and we're directing them to that appropriate table, so that way the pharmacy can get their information to to actually bill it later, and kind of keep a record of the vaccine. This is why I went pharmacy school. We want to help people here. Nothing wrong with helping people elsewhere. But this is where we are, and that rural focus was really that was me-- That's really why I wanted to go to pharmacy school to begin with.
