Getting Oriented

For the next six weeks, I will be doing my international Advanced Pharmacy Professional Experience (APPE) at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH). The APPE is split up into two 3-week rotations, allowing me to gain experience in two different hospital departments. My first 3 weeks will be spent in the Unit Dose Dispensing (UDD) pharmacy that services the Family Medicine wards (家庭部常). 

A day after arriving in Taipei, Taiwan, I was scheduled to start my rotation. I had not even oriented myself to the hospital, let alone, the surrounding area. Tina and I left the dorms an hour and a half early to grab breakfast and find the room and somehow arrived only a few minutes early (the dorms are located less than 5 minutes from the nearest hospital building). The first part of the day was a pretty standard orientation:  getting our ID badges, logins for their electronic medical record, figuring out the layout of the hospital, and meeting a few faculty members of the NTU School of Pharmacy. 

After orientation, I met up with my preceptor for the Family Medicine rotation, 陳文慧.  She gave me a tour of the inpatient pharmacy and went over the goals and objectives of the rotation. Every morning, I will be attending Morning Meeting at 7:40 am along with physicians, residents, and pharmacists.  From my understanding, residents will go over either patient cases or topic discussions for educational purposes.  Once a week, there is a Geriatric Interdisciplinary Team Meeting where health professionals from different specialties go over a case for a geriatric patient. At the end of each week, I will be doing formal patient presentations to my preceptor.  By the end of the 3 weeks, I expect to be able to efficiently follow 8-10 patients on the Family Medicine service. I am looking forward to observing the differences between the various aspects of pharmacy between the U.S. and Taiwan, including the electronic medical records, health care systems, pharmacists' roles, health care team dynamics, and treatment approaches.  

Let the journey begin.