Guidelines On How To Fill Clerkship Log Book For Pharmacy Students In Nigeria

Pharmacy clerkship log book

There has been a couple of post on this blog about clerkship (clinical rotation) for pharmacy students. However, there is an important aspect this blog have not touch which will be covered today. It is about how to fill a clerkship logbook for pharmacy students in Nigeria.

Industrial Training (I.T) log book is similar to clerkship log book. However, the information needed is very different because the things student doing IT will learn and report is far different from what a student doing clerkship will. So therefore, this post will explain how to fill a good clerkship report.
IT log book is normally filled with prescription reading and other activities such as stocktaking, description of equipment and instruments in the pharmacy. However, clerkship logbook is filled with patient pieces of information. Let us dig deeper. Let us start from the reason for the clerkship.

Goal Of Clerkship

The clerkship is design for students to acquire clinical skills, knowledge, and professional behaviours necessary to care for the patients under the supervision of a pharmacist.

Objectives Of Clerkship

A simple objective is to develop the students’ clinical skills necessary to independently evaluate and predict drug therapy problem. This can be achieved by taking the medical history, prioritize patients’ problems, take problems notes, physicians’ orders and the prescription for medication and lastly communicate with other members of the health care team.
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To achieve the above goals and objectives, pharmacy students must take note of drug therapy problem, as that is the thing whoever wants to grade the log book will look out for. However, here is the method or pattern the log book will follow.
Considering the fact that it is normal for students to give their academic details in the appropriate pages provided, this post will skip all that, as that should not be a problem. Over now to the log book proper were weekly activities will be documented.

Clerkship Log Book

The first page will contain activities for week one. The first week should be filled with the orientation programme including an introductory note to the programme. The first two days should contain orientation programme organised by the faculty of pharmacy for all students. The next two days should contain information about the orientation organised by the hospital itself. The last day of the week can contain how students were taken to different units of the pharmacy.
Since most clerkship programmes last for weeks, the students should pick a patient case file. The patient must be an inpatient. It could be a patient who has been there for some time. Avoid a case file that has been there for more than three months before the start of the clerkship. Those that made that mistake had to start looking at the case from the beginning, which was very difficult. Better, pick a case that came some few days ago or even that day. This way, it is easy to start investigating drug therapy problem.

Fill clerkship log book

Since you will be responsible for the patient's medication care, you must first record the patients past medical records. This can be used up for a day’s space. Take note of the patients’ medical diagnosis or why the patient was admitted. These pieces of information can technically be split into different days of the log book for a week, as the space for each day is small. Include the patients’ physical examination. This can cover a week of activity.
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The next thing to do is to look at the diagnosis and the treatment plan. Write it done. State from your observation if the plan is proper putting every other thing into consideration. If it proper, continue to monitor the patient observing the patient for change either positive or negative. If not, then state how you intervene to save the situation. From this moment, each passing day, you must include the patients’ adherence level and level of improvement if any. Also, include the positive changes you think is proper to increase the level of improvement of the patient's health.
Unfortunately, in most cases, the clerkship ends before completing the case. However, the weeks spent should be felt by the hospital community. The next post on clerkship on this blog will be on how to write a good clerkship presentation in pharmacy.
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