Remote Area Medical event promotes interprofessional access
To see more photos from the 2012 RAM event, please click here.
Thirteen VCU School of Pharmacy students, two faculty members and two pharmacy residents took part in the school’s sixth Remote Area Medical mission event this summer. “It went really well,” reported pharmacy team leader Evan Sisson, an associate professor and SOP alumnus. Nearly 2,500 patients were seen during the three-day event, which was organized by the University of Virginia and the Virginia Health Department.
A significant responsibility for the pharmacy team this year was running hemoglobin A1C testing. About 270 patients were tested, approximately 30 of whom did not realize they had diabetes.
“One of the great things about RAM,” Sisson said, “is patient access to the entire health-care team.” Patients who were diagnosed with diabetes, for example, could be shuttled directly to internal medicine physicians from U.Va. to discuss treatment. In addition, he noted, valuable patient counseling time was available during the five minutes it took to run each A1C test.
Pharmacy students worked with specially trained nurses to present two group education sessions to patients interested in smoking cessation. The students also obtained medication histories from patients. “It’s important to get as complete a medical history as possible,” Sisson said. Having pharmacy students obtain the information was a plus; patients weren’t always sure or didn’t remember what they had taken, but pharmacy students were able to assist by identifying the drugs or drug therapies associated with particular conditions.
The result: more complete, more helpful medical histories for underserved, underinsured or uninsured patients.
The interprofessional access during RAM was an advantage. Pharmacy students distributed preoperative medications, working with dental students and dental hygienists, and helped nurses triage patients. “Students got a better sense of how the whole of health care comes together,” Sisson said, “and that you need to work together as a team.”
Knowing that students were going to be working with health professionals from many different disciplines, Sisson said, “We thought it was important to have a training session with students from other schools the Saturday before we left Richmond.” A patient case was presented during the two-hour session. Students were asked what their individual professions could do to help the patient and then were assigned to groups and asked, “NOW what could you do?”
The idea for a pre-RAM interprofessional boot camp came up when School of Pharmacy students participated in a closer-to-home mission, VSU Cares, in early June. The Mission of Mercy project took place at Virginia State University in Petersburg.
“Next year, we want to focus more on how to pull these teams’ work together so they can break down some of the stereotypes and figure out where their resources are.”
As Sisson pointed out, service learning involves service and learning. With RAM, he said, there’s a 1:3 preceptor-to-student ratio, students are trained in advance and are asked to report on their experiences during and afterward. “As we’ve been trying to organize these programs, we pick students who really want to go. … They should get something from it!”
Participating in this year’s RAM mission were Andrew Carmichael (P2, team leader), David Allen (P4), Lauren Grecheck (P2), Ashley Higbea (P4), Erika Lambert (P2), Tina Lowe (P2), Brad McDaniel (P4), Katelyn Nguyen (P2), Natalie Nguyen (P3), Rebecca Saunders (P2), Allison Smith (P3), Seth Strawbridge (P4) and Keshia Ward (P3).
Sisson was assisted by Rebeccah Collins (Pharm.D. ’00), who’s an alumna, SOP affiliate faculty member and residency director at Bon Secours Memorial Regional Hospital. Collins’ pharmacy residents, 2012 SOP graduates John Bucheit and Golby Jalali, also were on hand.
To learn more about the School of Pharmacy’s participation in other medical missions, click here.
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