An's Final Reflection

Post by An Le, PD4

I still can’t believe 5 weeks in Uganda is almost over. Everyday, I am thankful for having this incredible learning opportunity to kick-off my last year of pharmacy school.

Looking back to our rotations at the Infectious Disease Institute, Nakasero Hospital, Kirrudu Hospital, and community pharmacy, the entire experience provided me different activities to apply and gain more research and clinical knowledge. At the beginning of the rotation, one of the most challenging parts for me was to have a better understanding of the pharmacists’ roles in Uganda. However, through our visits and conversations with different health professionals, we started to recognize the similarities and differences of the health system and the roles of pharmacists between Uganda and the United States. The main difference in the pharmacists’ roles is the majority of pharmacists in Uganda tends to be more involved in the supervising role instead of directly interacting with patients. I would also want to say that the hospitality of the health professionals in Uganda contributed to our positive experience. At each institution, the health professionals were so willing to teach us how care is provided here in Uganda, yet, they were also very eager to learn about the U.S. health system.

To wrap up this rotation, I got to spend the last couple days at the Neurology unit with patients who have traumatic brain injury and other brain-related conditions. Here, I got to work along side with a pharmacist, Winnie, who has worked so hard to let other health professionals understand the roles of pharmacists in clinical pharmacy. Following her was such a rewarding experience, as she taught me so much on how to approach each patient case and how to work effectively with the care team. She always made sure that I learned something new while being with her. We had a small debrief at the end of the day, so we could go over the important points we saw during rounds. These conversations were very helpful, as they helped me solidify the acquired information during rounds.

Throughout my time in Uganda, a couple things that surprised me the most is the numbers of research studies being conducted and the motivation of using evidence-based resources and recommendations in spite of being in the resource-limited settings. During one of my conversations with Winnie, my assumption about the practice completely changed when she told another Ugandan pharmacy student that pharmacists in Uganda have to use research literature as evidence when making recommendations to other health professionals. When I reviewed the literature for my proposed project on pharmacogenomics in sub-Saharan Africa, I was amazed by the number of initiatives and projects that have been invested in genomic studies.

An, Melanie, and Joe present to pharmacy staff at Nakasero Hospital

Joe, Melanie, and I also had an opportunity to give a presentation on minimizing dispensing errors and proper handling, storage, and dispensing of hazardous medications to the pharmacy staff at Nakasero Hospital. While preparing for this presentation, I realized that we started becoming more aware of the cultural settings to ensure the presented information is appropriate and beneficial for the staff at the hospital.  We talked about what the hazardous medications the hospital currently has on the formulary and other work flow at the pharmacy, so that we could select the information that would be applicable.

View from Speke Resort

Through our journal club presentations, case presentations, and literature review for our final project, this rotation really helped me improve my research skills and understand what it takes to successfully work in research field. Prosperity once told me that “Research is always connected to each other. You have to look at other studies to understand what other questions that still need to be answered”. Indeed, there are still a lot of research questions out there that need to be answered to improve patient care and treatment outcomes. I’m hoping that one day I will get to work in a position where I can combine both research and clinical aspect, so I can provide patient care from a different perspective. I believe the clinical knowledge will help me understand what research questions need to be answered to promote better health outcomes.

I will definitely miss the hospitality of the Ugandans, the beauty of the Ugandan wildlife, the wonderful matooke, and the completely different timing schedule. I’m hoping that one day, I’ll get to come back to this country and work along side with other professionals within the research area to improve patients’ health services and treatment outcomes.