Kristal Dowse, PharmD, has served as an official preceptor for UNMC and the UNMC College of Pharmacy since 2018. She works as a pharmacist with CHI Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, Nebraska.
Can you describe your path to becoming a preceptor for the UNMC College of Pharmacy?
My pharmacy path started as an RHOP (Rural Health Opportunities Program) student at Chadron State College. During pharmacy school, I worked in the inpatient pharmacy at UNMC. What an amazing experience that was.
After I finished pharmacy school, my first position was a pharmacist at a critical access hospital, Providence Medical Center, in Wayne, Nebraska. I had many pre-pharmacy students from Wayne State College come through for shadowing hours. I knew early on that precepting pharmacy students would be one of the best parts of my job.
In 2005, I took a staff pharmacist position at Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, Nebraska. Still more opportunities presented to precept students here. In 2018, I moved into the clinical coordinator position and officially became the UNMC preceptor for our site.
Can you describe your practice site, including the location? What special things do the students get to learn from you?
I work at CHI Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney. We have a unique site setting, because we are the only level 2 trauma center between Lincoln and Denver. We also have our own life-flight services. We have a very large service area – north up to the Nebraska-South Dakota border and down into northern Kansas, west to North Platte and beyond – a service area that is the size of the state of Indiana. We have a robust orthopedics service line, cardiothoracic surgeon, neurosurgeons, cardiology. We see all kinds of patients, from the neonatal intensive care unit to geriatric patients, from people who are critically ill to routine surgical patients.
Our pharmacy is open 24/7. Our students get opportunities to see our pharmacists working satellite on our critical care unit. They complete patient profile reviews and attend multidisciplinary rounds every day. We have an outpatient cancer and infusion center. Students get an excellent opportunity to see our process on chemotherapy compounding and safety checks. We have new clean rooms that are compliant with USP 797. Our students see all that goes into the monitoring, documentation, competencies and cleaning processes of a pharmacy clean room.
We have been building our patient discharge education services. Students have the opportunity to jump in and provide education to our patients. Our pharmacy team is engaged and always excited to have our pharmacy students learn from them. Our pharmacy students feel like a part of the team while they are here.
What is the most rewarding part of being a preceptor for the UNMC College of Pharmacy?
It’s very rewarding to have pharmacy students on site and to show them how fun hospital pharmacy can be. A day in hospital pharmacy is never the same. Our pharmacy students learn a lot from us, but in exchange, we learn from them as well.
If you could give one message to UNMC pharmacy students, what would you say?
There are so many facets to a career in pharmacy. Let me show you hospital pharmacy – you just might love it.