Meaning Behind the Name

“The end of the beginning” is what the Master of Ceremonies at my White Coat called this upcoming year…the year of clinical clerkships/rotations/etc. It’s not quite the end of school, since graduation is still a year away, but it’s not exactly the beginning of the next chapter either. It’s sort of a bridge between the didactic classroom setting and a taste of “the life of a pharmacist.” The life of a pharmacist, huh? Makes it sound exhilarating and cutting edge and exciting…well that’s because IT IS!! Seriously, when I think of my future career, there’s always action hero, “save the world” music playing in the background…I wake up every morning excited to get to work and round with doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals…I picture other members of the team directing drug therapy questions at me, and expecting me to be the drug expert…I can usually answer them off the top of my head, only sometimes relying on my smart phone. I picture my future career as a life long learning path, so nothing ever gets old. Most importantly, I picture what I do as a living as something that positively impacts the life of patients everyday…whether it’s holding a newly diagnosed diabetic’s hand when they’re picking up their insulin for the first time, or saving someone on a tight budget $100 a month by switching them to a combination product for his/her asthma after completing medication therapy management (MTM), or making an important recommendation to a physician who wants to know, “What do you suggest?”

Now I understand that I have heard a lot about the pharmacist’s role in health care, but have yet to experience it first hand. I understand that it may not live up to my idealistic day dream, and that I might actually not wake up to action hero music every morning! But honestly, my career will be what I make it. The perception of how valuable a pharmacist is to everyone I interact with will depend not only on what I know, but how I communicate it. It takes well-rounded knowledge and confidence to gain trust with both patients and other health care professionals, and the road to both of those things begins now with rotations. This is why this next year is significant to me, and why I decided to start this blog to capture the highlights of “the beginning of the end” [in accordance with HIPAA of course ;) ].