[SOLVED] The Effect of COVID-19 on Clinical Pharmacists
How COVID-19 affected the job of clinical pharmacists, including residents. As an example, how it affected the communication between the clinical pharmacist and patients. We had to reduce the interaction and keep social distancing as much as possible. On the other hand, We had to make some changes to the medical computer system, like adding the patient’s room phone number to ease the communication. Another example is how we switched all our meetings to be online; this can be advantageous because more clinical pharmacists can participate and attend without leaving their work station. We allowed to work remotely for better social distancing and allow parents to be with their kids when school was closed. We had to do flexing and decrease the working hours due to the financial burden, but that increased the clinical pharmacist’s overall tasks because they need to cover more floors and patients and duties to have the same level of patient care. This type of work needs high levels of flexibility and adaptability. The importance of transparency as protective measurements, any updates were shared through the weekly meetings. Also, this pandemic was an excellent opportunity to create opportunities to conduct trials and research, especially that we started using a different medication (approved medication for unapproved indication). Pharmacy residents have challenges now with the learning experience. As an example, most of the patient rounds became online, and communication became challenging. In conclusion, I want to list the challenges and the opportunities that the clinical pharmacists and the resident are experiencing during this pandemic. I would appreciate it if there is a paragraph about students. Most hospitals did not allow them to come to the hospitals and most of the internship became remotely, But our hospital was allowing students to come and learn with some restrictions.
