Sitting at the nursing station on the third floor of Georgia Regents Medical Center, second-year neurology resident Karl Knights was discussing a patient who appeared to have reached the maximum dose of her anti-epileptic drug but appeared to still be having seizures.
The patient’s kidneys seemed to be handling the drug well at the high dose. “We can’t go higher?” Knights asked neuropharmacist Jody Rocker.
“That’s a good question,” she replied. “That’s something Hilary and I can look into.”
Standing next to Rocker, first-year pharmacy resident Hilary Teibel was soaking it in.
The hospital got a $40,000 grant this year to add another first-year pharmacy residency position but more are needed across the country, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists said. The grant was one of 10 awarded nationally this year by ASP Research and Education Foundation to help expand the number of residencies available.
Like medical students, pharmacists try to match with residency programs to help further their clinical training and exposure. While there are more than 1,000 residency programs in the U.S., that last year produced more than 3,000 residents, there were 1,700 who could not secure a spot to further their training, the society noted.
The process was a bit nerve-wracking for Teibel, who graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis and had targeted Georgia Regents Medical Center as her top choice.
“It is getting more and more competitive by the year,” she said. “With the number of spots available, the reality of it is not everyone who wants a residency gets one, unfortunately. You go into it knowing that is a possibility.”
Newly graduated pharmacists aren’t required to do a residency to practice but many, like Teibel, see it as the next step of their training, said Marjorie Phillips, the director of the first-year pharmacy residency program at the medical center.
“So many of the new graduates coming out of school realize for them to practice to the level they would like to, they’re going to need more than just graduating from pharmacy school,” she said.
In fact, almost all of the pharmacists hired by the medical center in the past couple of years have had residencies and many other academic medical centers are the same way, Phillips said. Those pharmacists and the residents can work in the central pharmacy at the hospital but are also out on the floors, in the cancer center, in the Intensive Care Units and Children’s Hospital of Georgia, working alongside the other caregivers, she said.
“Our pharmacists are all part of the care team either directly or indirectly,” Phillips said.
It was that broad range of services she could experience that convinced Teibel that GRMC would be a great place to train.
“It just has great opportunities in terms of the diversity of services the hospital offers,” she said. “For example, I have an interest in pediatrics and they have a great children’s hospital here.”
Residencies also offer different components such as research and teaching that interest Teibel, and she could see herself ending up in an academic medical center or children’s hospital.
That broad range of knowledge and experience, and the ability to specialize that often comes with a second year of residency, is essential to providing good care, Phillips said.
“One of the key components of residency is understanding the systems, the big picture, how they interact, and being able to take that frontline leader role in making practice better,” she said.
For instance, with the neurology team, Rocker is talking about how to get the best treatment out of the drug the patient is currently on because it is better to do that than add additional drugs. That makes it easier for the patient to stay with the drug regiment once they leave the hospital, senior neurology resident Chizoba Ezepue said. And having Rocker there helps, he said.
“We operate as a comprehensive team here,” Ezepue said.
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