Natural products used in laboratory courses at the Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy.

Ambulance sirens scream overhead as you are rushed to the hospital. Medications are administered, labs are drawn, tests are run, and interventions are made. As a patient, you are worried about your health, concerned about your recovery, but the cost of your medical care is no tangible burden. You live in a country with universal health care. This is the reality for patients in Romania. 

This past summer, I spent 4 weeks on rotation in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, immersed in their culture and observing universal health care in action. Here is what I learned.

Following her rotation experience, Claire Schumann now applies the perspective she gained in Kenya to current challenges, and does her best to widen her lens and consider the big picture.

For most of my life, I have lived in a bubble. I was fortunate to grow up in a happy home, attend a private Catholic school until college, travel on family vacations, and never worry about having food on the table, clean drinking water, or electricity in my house.

Even as a student pharmacist, I remained in a similar bubble, although this bubble was bigger than before. There were new interactions around every corner of campus and endless people to meet. I found myself in opportunities where I knew no one else and was pushed far enough from my comfort zone to begin to understand what it felt like to be uncomfortable or in unfamiliar situations. 

But then I arrived in Eldoret, Kenya, via the Purdue Kenya Partnership APPE rotation, and my bubble totally and completely burst. 

As I headed to the desert for December’s ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exposition in Las Vegas, NV, I was a ball of nerves. In the moment, it felt like a few days of first impressions and networking would either make or break all of my hard work. However, I turned this nervous energy into excitement, as I made meaningful connections and learned more about postgraduate programs. I also heard more about burnout prevention.

Since I am passionate about staying fired up for the profession rather than letting my flame dwindle down, I have decided to tackle the question, “how do you prevent burnout during APPE rotations?”

1. Stay active 
Physical activity is known to reduce stress levels. Recently, I trained for a half-marathon in order to keep myself accountable during this busy season of life. I found myself using every excuse in the book to avoid my training plan and work on my to-do lists. During times of stress, physical activity is often the first plan to go. However, carving out 20 to 30 minutes a day can not only help reduce stress, but also help reduce the risk of developing chronic conditions down the road. Therefore, this should be kept as a consistent pillar of your life no matter what responsibilities come your way.

Doing wellness activities together has been beneficial for Alyssa Rinaldi (left) and her co-residents.

The topic of burnout and its prevention has become a hot topic within the pharmacy community. “Heather,” you ask how I prevent burnout—whether I stay active, connected, and centered. Well, I will admit I am not always the best at getting to the gym, but I always stay connected with my support system. Also, I agree that these are times filled with constructive feedback. I have learned that it is crucial to quickly bounce back from feedback. I find that taking time to understand the reasoning behind the feedback (it usually is coming from a good place!) and finding ways to apply it to your practice can help to make all the difference.

I am happy to share some of the ways I have worked to prevent burnout.

Throughout his tenure as APhA CEO, Tom Menighan has made it a priority to listen to the needs student pharmacists and mentor APhA-ASP leadership. Here he is pictured with the 2019-20 APhA-ASP National Executive Committee at APhA headquarters.

According to research from Dell Technologies and the Institute for the Future, 85% of jobs the students of today will hold in 2030 haven’t been invented yet. Let that marinate for a few minutes.

We’re constantly grappling with disruption in health care, but we’re also becoming more highly evolved. We are in an age of significant advancement in medical science and complexity in therapies. Today we’ve got medicines to treat chronic diseases that used to be fatal. And digital therapies, artificial intelligence, pharmacogenomics, robotics, neural networks, and blockchain will change how we communicate and work with patients and other members of the health care team. And it’s all the result of bold innovators—the kind of innovator you can choose to become.