Thursday, March 3, 2011

Wellpinit Clinic

Our first rotation is at the Wellpinit clinic on the Spokane reservation. From out apartment in Spokane, it's about a hour drive. Even though the drive makes the day that much longer, the drive is beautiful. You go through the mountains, see lots of deer and get to see the Spokane river.

The clinic is pretty big. There are 9 exam rooms, 1 "emergency" room where they can do small surgical procedures, an X-ray room, a lab and a pharmacy. There are 3 doctors and 2 nurses. Our pharmacists are Dr. James Jordan (the preceptor) and Rebecca (she just graduated from Pharmacy school in 2010).


At 6:45am Dr. James Jordan picks us up from out apartment. We usually arrive at the clinic aroudn 8:00am. Our day consists of verifying prescriptions that come out of the robot, restocking the robot and counseling each and every patient. The last part of the job is what we enjoy the most. The patients are awesome. They all know that we are students and they really enjoy having us there. It also feels good to feel like you are truly making a difference in these people's lives. We also do a lot of research during the day, mostly for projects that we have to present throughout the rotation, but also for doctors. The doctors in the clinic come to the pharmacy often and ask us quick questions. It feels really good to be able to answer them and feel important.

The Script Pro robot.

Lunch is between 12:30pm and 1:00pm. There is a really nice lounge with everything that you would ever need, plus, it has a great view. The first few days it snowed all day and it was surreal to sit and eat lunch while watching it snow outside. Out first day we didn't bring our lunch, so we went to the Trading Post. The Trading Post is the grocery store for the reservation.

Rebecca, our pharmacist.

The pharmacy officially closes at 4:30pm, but we stay open until we fill the prescriptions for the last patient seen. The first two days, we didn't get out of the clinic until 6:30pm. Usually, we get out of clinic around 5:00pm, which gets us back to the apartment at 6:15pm.

After we got dropped off, we have just enough energy to eat dinner, watch a little TV and check e-mails/facebook. We are hoping as the weeks go on, we'll get used to the 3 hour time change and the 12 hour work days so we can explore Spokane. So far, we've eaten out twice. Rancho Chico was our first restaruant. We had excellent service, since we were the only ones there! I guess no one goes there Monday nights at 9:00pm. On Wednesday, since we got home at 6:00pm, we decided to try out a restaraunt that Margaret had seen on Food Network, the Elk Public House. It was pretty good. We new it was fate for us to eat there since there was a sign that said "Drugs" over the door on the inside of the restaraunt! We definitely have a long list of restaraunts that we want to visit, along with a desire for trying out all the local beers.

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