Life as a Pharmacy Resident at Bassett
A Day in the Life of a Pharmacy Resident at Bassett
Learn what a typical day as a pharmacist at Bassett can look like across a variety of different settings you would rotate through as a resident.
A Day in the Life:
Ambulatory Care Pharmacotherapy E-Consult
The pharmacotherapy e-consult service gives physicians an "on-demand" clinical pharmacist — a readily available source of expert pharmacotherapy knowledge to help optimize medication regimens for their patients. On any given day, there are always new e-consults waiting in the queue. These tend to be complex, multi-layered questions that span a wide variety of topics. A few examples: designing a benzodiazepine taper for a high-risk patient, researching a drug-information request for an unusual clinical scenario, or investigating a suspected adverse drug reaction and recommending alternative management. Working through these consults lets you dive deep into a broad range of subjects, reinforcing core therapeutic concepts while providing an organic, never-ending source of learning.
When working up an e-consult, developing your own workflow is vital. The first thing you read with every consult is the provider's written request — the specific thing they are asking your help with. It might be a single word, one sentence, or a short paragraph. Before going any further, the next thing I always ask myself is: what is the "real question"? Sometimes a request only seems straightforward. The written question may be "what is the renal dose for this drug?" when the real question is "is this drug appropriate at all?"
That is the heart of this service. The ambulatory e-consults will constantly give you something new to think about, surface questions you never considered, and — as a graduate pharmacist — offer you the chance to strengthen your foundational pharmacotherapy knowledge while building the lifelong learning skills that define an expert clinician.
Mitchell Miller, PharmD, BCACP
A Day in the Life:
Ambulatory Order Intervention Service
The Ambulatory Order Intervention service is one of the more distinctive parts of our program — and a great example of pharmacists practicing at the very top of their license. Each day, you'll work a multi-step order transmittal (MSOT) queue in Epic, reviewing high-cost medication orders and, where clinically appropriate, converting them to preferred, lower-cost alternatives aligned with our Health Plan formulary.
At first glance this may sound purely administrative, but the clinical reasoning runs deep. Every intervention starts with a question: is the alternative truly therapeutically equivalent for this patient? You'll weigh formulation differences, pharmacokinetics, indication nuances, prior therapies, and patient-specific factors before making a recommendation. Some conversions are quick; others require you to reach out to the prescriber, build a clinical case, and document your rationale.
What makes this experience rewarding is seeing your work create value on two fronts. Clinically, you're ensuring patients receive safe, effective, evidence-based, and uninterrupted therapy. Financially, your interventions reduce medication spend in a way that is tangible and measurable—value that, quite literally, helps sustain the residency program itself. It's a daily reminder that thoughtful pharmacy practice and responsible stewardship go hand in hand.
Mitchell Miller, PharmD, BCACP
A Day in the Life:
Anticoagulation Management Service
Each day in the anticoagulation clinic offers a unique opportunity to provide both direct and indirect patient care. The bulk of direct patient care occurs in the morning, with the nurse and pharmacist(s) partnering to care for chronic warfarin patients as well as those newly initiated on therapy. Patients are seen in person at the clinic or managed asynchronously. Under a collaborative practice agreement, the pharmacist orders and interprets labs, adjusts medication therapy, and provides patient education. This includes perioperative anticoagulation management for a complex, high-risk patient population.
In addition to collaborative management, the pharmacist provides therapy modification recommendations, such as transitioning patients to or from direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) and determining appropriate hold durations for patients on DOACs with impaired renal function who are undergoing procedures.
Much of the afternoon is spent completing anticoagulation consults, responding to provider questions, performing inpatient reviews when requested, and carrying out other anticoagulation stewardship activities. The pharmacist is continuously involved in system-wide quality improvement initiatives, including developing standardized best-practice guidance, building and optimizing order sets, participating in educational initiatives, and presenting outcomes at regional and national forums.
Throughout these activities, the pharmacist collaborates with the interprofessional team to optimize evidence-based anticoagulation therapy across all aspects of patient care. Overall, this specialty role fosters pharmacist autonomy, allows pharmacists to practice at the top of their license, and, importantly, facilitates meaningful relationships with healthcare providers and patients alike.
Amanda Winans, PharmD, BCPS, CACP
Fady Abdelmalek, PharmD
A Day in the Life:
Oncology Pharmacist
Each day in the Cancer Treatment Center brings new experiences and challenges. Oncology is dynamic; even though there are set regimens to follow, each is unique based on patient specific factors. The day starts at 7:30 to do a second review of the infusion schedule to see if any changes were made. Pharmacy-led huddle occurs before 8:30 where the pharmacist discusses with the nurses where each patient is in treatment, presents any findings, and asks pertinent questions that can affect the patient’s next treatment. Throughout the day, the pharmacist verifies chemotherapy, supportive care, and immunotherapy orders, oversees compounding with compliance to USP <797> and <800> standards, and is asked many drug information and regimen questions nurses, practitioners, and patient care coordinators.
The oncology pharmacist has great learning opportunities when working up new patients starting chemotherapy and / or immunotherapy and helping build new treatment plans. These opportunities allow the pharmacist to learn about new regimens and medications as well as suggesting edits to a regimen that are more in line with current guidelines. The work environment at the Cancer Treatment Center is collaborative among all disciplines, and the pharmacy team’s impact is greatly appreciated.
Sindhu Nair, PharmD, BCOP, BCSCP
A Day in the Life:
ICU Pharmacist
No two days in the ICU are ever the same, which is one of the things I love most about being a critical care pharmacist. My day starts with reviewing patient charts, labs, cultures, and any significant overnight events.
I round with a multidisciplinary team comprised of physicians, medical residents, nurses, respiratory therapists, and other members of the healthcare team. I provide recommendations on antibiotic therapy, sedation, pain management, anticoagulation, vasopressor support, and medication dosing.
The rest of my day is often unpredictable. I may be responding to emergencies, troubleshooting complex medication issues, answering clinical questions, or helping tailor treatments as patients' conditions evolve. The ICU is fast-paced and challenging, requiring constant critical thinking, teamwork, and adaptability.
Fran Burman, BS, PharmD, BCPS, BCCP
A Day in the Life:
Hospital Pharmacy Manager
As the Hospital Pharmacy Manager, my day-to-day focus hinges around one core responsibility: ensuring safe medication use system-wide. I directly support all pharmacy staff and operations in a 180-bed rural teaching institution, where no two problems, let alone days, are the same. One morning might revolve around addressing high-acuity patient needs on a general medicine service, while that same afternoon might require troubleshooting a workflow issue in a procedural area, or coordinating pharmacy, nursing, and provider teams to ensure a smooth handoff for a complex transition of care. That interdisciplinary coordination — collaborating with other health professionals — is where some of the most meaningful work happens.
This role is also unique in its reach. Beyond the hospital walls, our inpatient pharmacy team supports medication use and administration across more than 65 clinic locations, ranging from ambulatory procedural areas to our various school-based health programs. Each setting has its own workflow, its own patient population, and its own set of challenges. Integral to my job is understanding those differences well enough to support each site effectively.
Underlying all of this is a commitment to safety and compliance. Developing systems that are fully compliant with The Joint Commission, USP <797>, the Board of Pharmacy, and other regulatory bodies isn't an annual scramble, rather continuous and built-in to how we operate. Incoming residents will support these vital roles, offering a glimpse of what it takes to keep a large, geographically spread-out system functioning as one. It's a reminder that delivering excellent pharmacy care depends not only on the clinician at the bedside, but on all of the infrastructure and personnel who make that care possible.
