Hello, I’m Russell Lloyd, Director of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. As an organization, the VA is the largest trainer of healthcare
professionals in the country with over 70 percent of clinicians receiving training at a VA facility.
At the Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center, we're proud of our role in educating tomorrow's
healthcare professionals. Wilkes-Barre’s Pharmacy Residency Program provides incoming pharmacists
with an opportunity to enhance their clinical and professional skills
while gaining valuable experience in developing lasting relationships
with their peers and mentors. I’m confident that you'll find our program to be a positive career
development experience. I appreciate your interest in our program and working with our veterans.
I’m Tarannum Mansuri. I’m Associate Chief of Pharmacy, as well as the Pharmacy Residency
Director at the Wilkes-Barre VA. I’ve been here for the last 13 years and I love what I do.
The clinical pharmacy program at the Wilkes-Barre VA has grown significantly over the last 10 years.
We've been able to hire 30 percent of our graduates and an overwhelming 58 percent
of our residents stay within the VA system. The Residency Program at the Wilkes-Barre VA
is very strong and competitive yet there is a high focus on work-life balance. We
not only invest in you professionally but also personally. The best part of my job as residency
director is when I get updates from my previous residents; when I hear that they got a promotion,
they got board certified, they had a child, they got married, that brightens my day!
Pharmacy Residents bring an extra value to the educational environment in our
medical center. They interact with medical students, medical residents,
PA students, and bring more of value to the education for everybody.
Residents are introduced to multiple areas of practice in the hospital through eight core
rotations. Some of our main rotations include an Ambulatory Care Focus one (also known as PACT here
at the VA), Mental Health, Internal Medicine, and we also have two longitudinal experiences in our
core rotations. The first is Geriatrics which consists of a weekly nursing home chart review
and Staffing. So Staffing is a longitudinal experience throughout the year;
it consists of one four-hour block of staffing per week, plus three one-to-two-week blocks of
staffing throughout the year. The best part about the residency program is that
there's no staffing after hours and there's no required weekend staffing.
This means the weekends are 100% you time. During this time, you can support local restaurants,
go hiking, or other outdoor activities, or you can even support our local Wilkes-Barre/Scranton
sports teams. There's a baseball team called the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton RailRiders,
and a hockey team called the Penguins. If you'd like to go away for the weekend,
Philadelphia is only two hours away and New York City is only two and a half hours away. This
is a great opportunity to get away from work and spend time with your friends or your co-residents.
The residency program was in its infancy when I started working at the Wilkes-Barre VA.
We had only one resident on staff and we were only in our second year of the program.
Over the years we've developed to have four residency PGY1 residents on staff
each residency year and the residents have become a vital part of our pharmacy program.
The Wilkes-Barre VA takes part in continually improving our Clinical Pharmacy Program
by pushing our Clinical Pharmacists to really work at the top of their licenses.
Since all residents progress at different paces, I work with each person individually
to focus on areas where they excel, as well as potential areas for improvement that we identify
so they can achieve the goals of our program, as well as their own personal goals.
Clinically they've learned quite a bit of material in Pharmacy School and now
it's a time to differentiate what's important clinically and what we need to utilize when
they see the patients in clinic. So that coupled with sharing my experiences that I’ve had with the
various disease states over my 26-year career, I really enjoyed doing that with the resident.
The residents are assigned a preceptor for each of their projects. While the
residents hold responsibility for each of their projects throughout the year,
the preceptors are always available for questions and feedback.
My transition from resident to preceptor was pretty smooth.
I was slowly introduced to the precepting role with a pharmacy student and then
transitioned into precepting residence. I felt prepared to enter the preceptor
role with the clinical skills and tools I had learned throughout my residency.
They have a great training ground for us. As a resident we work with video preceptors who are
expert in their fields who teach us not only about pharmacy related topics but also about
being a caring and compassionate pharmacist. Resources were very available from day one at
the VA. If you have something that comes up that you are not quite sure about
there is always someone who is available and willing to help.
Even though through the world has changed after the Covid-19 pandemic we still are able to provide
patients with the most comprehensive health care using telemedicine and virtual visits.
Covid hasn't really changed the way I precept in that I still come to the VA
and precept with residents face to face to help them improve their clinical skills.
The pharmacy team, which would include pharmacy residents, is an integral portion or part of
our interdisciplinary team both in the intensive care units as well as on Four
East of our Med Surg unit. The interaction between the pharmacy staff as well as the
pharmacy residents is integral to patient care, a culture of safety, and overall
clinical evaluation treatment of patients with very complex illnesses.
Pharmacy residents are a part of our culture.
They integrate well within our primary care teams along with their preceptors.
Clinical pharmacy when I had first become aware that we have clinical pharmacists here that were
able to assist us I thought oh great you know they're here for us to give them a phone call if
we have a med question they'll be able to answer it quickly but it's so much more than just that.
I feel that the Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center is a unique site and that we can
offer all different levels of care from acute care to ambulatory care and even long-term care.
I feel that this provides us the ability to produce well-rounded pharmacists upon
completion of their training. We are proud to serve our veterans every day.
We have a newly renovated IV room to meet with the standards of USP 797 and 800.
We provide residents with unique setup where they become proficient
in both outpatient and inpatient setting, including competency and aseptic technique.
Our goal here is to assure the best customer service. As part of staffing duties,
residents gain the knowledge, experience, and attitude to serve our veterans.
We have a strong background here. We have very good clinical pharmacists that have
been here quite some time that all have their own specialties and they also do PACT care and almost
everything that clinical pharmacists could do so the program is very strong. We have a multitude
of different things for you guys to do and the preceptors are very receptive to having residents.
One of the main reasons why I love the VA is because of all the elective options that
this program offers. Some of those include Academic Detailing, Diabetes Management,
Pain Management, Antimicrobial Stewardship, and there's going to be a new one offered next year
called Pharmacy Informatics. In addition to that, we have a partnership with the local college,
Wilkes University, where we do a precepting and learning program and we actually get to
participate in events at the university as well as aid P3 and P4 students in their education.
So, for the next residence year we're going to be offering a new elective in Pharmacy Informatics.
As a resident, if you take this elective, you will get exposure to the national drug file,
the national formulary, how to manage our local drug file,
how to run reports and analyze those reports, and some experience with a lot of the different
pharmacy applications and packages. I think that the informatics elective is something that's new
and not offered in every single residency program. If you had asked me as a pharmacy student
if I would have thought I would have been doing this I would have said
absolutely not but I love it and I’m very excited to offer it next year.
Without the added team members from pharmacy, we would be sorely wanting to manage pain in
these individuals. The Pain Pharmacists bring unique perspective to the management of these
patients. They are intimately involved in opioid weaning and medication recommendations and work
closely with the pain team, as well as the primary care physicians referring to us.
Our residents are given an opportunity to take a hands-on approach to patient care and as a result,
both our inpatient staff and our veterans have been very complimentary of the
interactions with our residents. I have had many patients tell me how grateful they are
for the time that was spent with them individualizing their treatment.
Our residents play an active role in medication management, but they also provide counseling
and education to our patients to help them achieve their treatment goals.
A lot of these residents actually sign on with us after their residency is completed
and now I work with them as a co-worker, so I saw that resident from a student
to a resident and now is one of my co-workers. That not only shows how much positivity we give
here at the medical center to our residents, but it also promotes exceptional patient care.
We have a very comprehensive residency program that integrates well throughout the medical
center. Each year our pharmacy residents become part of our pharmacy family making
it very hard to say goodbye. Fortunately, we've been lucky enough to keep them on
board and have been able to hire several of our pharmacy residents. We'd love to have you here!
So, we hope that you will apply and come to meet us in the future! Thank you!
The Wilkes-Barre VA will open new doors for you! Scan the code to get more information.