How An International Service Trip Shaped A Clinical Pharmacist’s Career

A fast-track pharmacy degree, night shifts in critical care, and a formative service trip to Costa Rica—Helen Knoche's story is a blueprint for purpose-driven practice. We sit down to trace how a love of chemistry evolved into a role where timing, teamwork, and clear communication decide outcomes, and how a week in La Carpio taught lessons that still save time and suffering in a North Carolina ICU.

Helen opens up about the realities of pharmacy school—heavy on medicinal chemistry and practical math—and the less obvious skills that matter most: trust, negotiation, and the courage to suggest changes as a non-prescribing clinician. She walks us through a near-miss stroke case and shows how most medication errors come from communication gaps rather than bad intentions, and how pharmacists build safer systems by closing loops and owning the small details that prevent big harm.

We unpack the wide world of pharmacy careers: community and independent practice for accessible counseling, inpatient specialties like ICU and infectious disease, ambulatory care for chronic disease coaching, and industry roles shaping how drugs are made and delivered. Helen’s take is clear and useful—shadow, ask questions, and find the rhythm that fits your strengths.

The conversation returns to service learning with practical clarity. Working through translators to counsel patients, leading with empathy, and prioritizing education over short-term fixes transformed how Helen thinks about access and equity. Those skills carry home to rural patients who arrive in crisis because primary care is out of reach. Along the way, we share everyday tips, including why talking to your pharmacist beats guessing in the cold aisle and when the medication behind the counter matters.

Subscribe for more grounded stories from healthcare students and clinicians who are building skill, compassion, and resilience. If today’s conversation sparked a question or a memory, share it with a friend and leave a review—what part of pharmacy would you explore first?

Recommended Book:

1. Everything is Tuberculosis - John Green

I also want to thank our listeners for joining us as it is our goal to not only share with you our guest’s introduction to international healthcare, but also to share with you how that exposure to international healthcare has shaped their future path in healthcare. As true patient advocates, we should all aspire to be as well rounded as possible in order to meet the needs of our diverse patient populations. 

As a 50+ year nurse that has worked in quite a variety of clinical roles in our healthcare system, taught healthcare courses for the past 20 years at the university level, and has traveled extensively with my students on international service-learning trips, I can easily attest to the fact that healthcare focused students need, and greatly benefit from the opportunity to have hands-on experiential healthcare experiences in an international setting! I have seen the growth of students post travel as their self-confidence in their newly acquired skillsets, both clinical and cultural, facilitates their ability to take advantage of opportunities that previously may not have been available to them. By rendering care internationally, and stepping outside one's comfort zone, many more doors of opportunity will be opened.

Feel free to check out our website at www.islonline.org, follow us on Instagram @ islmedical, and reach out to me @ DrH@islonline.org

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Dr H 0:11

Well, hey there, I am Dr. Patrick Hickey, or Dr. H, as many of my students refer to me. I want to welcome you to another episode of the International Service Learning Experiential Medical Education podcast. During each episode, I will be interviewing healthcare-focused students and faculty from high school to university that have had an opportunity to participate in an international service learning trip. Additionally, I will be discussing the benefits and challenges to international service with healthcare professionals that have served abroad, as well as industry leaders in healthcare, education, study abroad, spirituality, and those living in the countries being served. I'm very excited today to have Helen Knoche as my guest. I've had the privilege of having Helen as a former student and I'm very eager for her to share with us her unique journey in healthcare. Helen graduated in 2022 from the University of South Carolina with a Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences and again in 2024 with her Doctor of Pharmacy degree. During her undergrad years, Helen joined me on a service learning trip to Costa Rica. Helen has gained quite a lot of pharmaceutical experience on her healthcare journey and presently works as a clinical pharmacist in a critical care setting in the Navant Health Hospital Network. Good morning. I'm very excited today to have Helen with me. And this is again another walk down memory lane, full disclosure. Helen's been a student of mine many, not that many years ago, but many years ago at the University of South Carolina. She graduated USD, I believe it was in 22 with her undergrad, and then went uh continued in school, as some of us have done, and uh continued to pursue her doctor of uh pharmacy. She's going to be the first pharmacy student that I've um interviewed. So I'm I'm kind of excited about that because on the service learning trips that ISL have, we normally always have a pharmacy station because we want all of our students, all of our healthcare students to develop a good general base knowledge of medications. And I know on trips I've had in the past, when I have had pharmacy students, they've relished the opportunity to stay in the pharmacy station during that experience. I'm not sure if that was Helen's experience or not, but but Helen, again, very excited to have you here today. Nice to reconnect after so many years. And if you don't mind, just tell us a little bit about yourself, um, your your degree that you pursued at the University of South Carolina and um and where you're at now.

Fast-Track Pharmacy Journey

Helen 2:52

Yeah, good morning. It's so good to see you. Yes. So I graduated in 2024 from the University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy with my doctor of pharmacy. I did it in six years. It sometimes will take people eight years, but I was able to do it in six years from like a fast track program that I was on. And I currently am working as a clinical pharmacist in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, where I work in the intensive care units on nights, where I'm very close with the physicians on the unit, the nurses on the unit to kind of make sure the patients remain stable overnight, but also tweak anything that needs to be tweaked if lab results come back, if cultures come back, tweaking like antibiotics and stuff. And then if there are any emergencies throughout the hospital, I am the one who responds to them. So if someone goes down on the second floor across the hospital, I'm bolting over there and helping to get them back and bring them over to the ICU to stabilize them.

Dr H 3:55

Helen, what out of excuse me, out of curiosity, how does someone decide to be a pharmacist? Because, you know, in my 20 plus years of of working in in the international arena and taking students on service learning trips, I've had a good number of pharmacy students. Of course, the majority are going to be nursing and pre-med and PA, et cetera. But I've had a good number of pharmacy students, but I've never really sat down with them to find out where where did that come from? And in your case, where where did that idea to become a pharmacist come from?

Helen 4:31

I think, yeah, I think there's a lot of different reasons why people pursue pharmacy. For a lot of people, it's a generational, it's a legacy thing. Their parents were pharmacists, their grandparents were pharmacists, and so they go into pharmacy because it's not the family business, but it's it's what everybody does. And pharmacy is always changing. So there's always new areas for them to get into. If their granddad was a community pharmacist working down, making tinctures and things for patients, they may be able to be a clinical pharmacist or an outpatient ambulatory pharmacist. For me, that was not the case. I'm the first person in my family to go into healthcare. And I always knew that I wanted to do something medical. I wasn't sure what. And so my senior year of high school, I was kind of exploring the different paths. I was like, med school seems like a lot. I don't know if I could do nursing because I don't know. I have a weird thing with bodily fluids. I can't, I can't, I can't do like the phlegm when I hear that. I'm like, so I couldn't do that. And then I found pharmacy and I really, really enjoyed chemistry in high school. So working with like the drugs and knowing how the chemical structures are gonna interact with the receptors and create an effect and how like all of the like little minute differences between drugs cause very effects and side effects. I thought it was really interesting to be able to kind of like curate treatment plans for patients. And I thought that sounded really interesting. So I think so.

Dr H 6:00

When you came to college, you already knew that you wanted to pursue that avenue. Is that correct? You didn't change your your your major or your pathway at all.

Helen 6:09

I did not. I my senior year of high school, I was accepted into what was called the Gamecock Pharmacy Assurance Program. And so I applied for it my senior year of high school after actually doing like a pharmacy camp with South Carolina the year before. And I met some of the professors that I'd be working with, and I loved everybody I met. So I applied to their first year program where they would accept seniors, like a certain number of seniors in high school, granted that you pass all your classes, you maintain like a certain standard in your undergrad years. And I was accepted straight into pharmacy school without having to take the PCAP or the pharmacy entrance exam. So I knew that's what I wanted to do since I was probably like 17, 16 or 17.

What Draws Someone To Pharmacy

Dr H 6:50

For those, and there's so many that are undecided, for those that are undecided about a pathway moving forward and are kind of sort of thinking about pharmacy, what would you recommend? I mean, for example, when I went into nursing, I didn't realize that you had to be good in the maths and sciences. I I had no idea. And I was kind of gobsmacked when I got into the program that there was such a heavy emphasis on it. I guess I didn't do my homework. What would you recommend to someone as far as the pursuit of pharmacy? What strengths do they need and what can they bring to the table that will help them as far as pursuing a degree in pharmacy?

Helen 7:32

Yeah, so I think a lot of the same things. You definitely have to be good in the maths and the chemistries and the biologies. Because your first year of school is a lot of like medicinal chemistry and biochemistry. And so you're learning how it's if you didn't like organic chemistry in undergrad, you're not going to like pharmacy because that's what the entire first year of pharmacy school is. It's basically organic chemistry on steroids. And the math, people say you have to be really, really good at math, but it's not like calculus, it's pretty simple math, honestly. But there's a lot of it, like changing between units and calculating doses for patients based on different body weights. Because there's all sorts of different body weights. You have to calculate the doses and stuff like that. But then also you have to be good with people. You have to have a very good relationship with like your nurses and your doctors because you're coming in as a non-prescriber, like a non-practitioner, and trying to help optimize patient outcomes. And in order to do that, you kind of have to step on some toes and you have to be willing to come into your doctor, like to your physician's office and say, Hey, I have an idea. What do you think of this? And they have to be receptive to you in order for any changes to be made. So in addition to that, if you want to be a clinical pharmacist working with doctors, but if you want to be like outpatient pharmacist working at CVS or Walgreens, you have to be very, very good with patients and understanding that they're coming from all sorts of backgrounds, they're stressed. The pharmacy is not necessarily a happy place for everybody.

Dr H 9:10

Well, it's interesting that you share that teamwork aspect because when I developed the International Service Learning Course, excuse me, at the University of South Carolina, I intentionally wanted to have a good mixture of pre-professional students that were interested in PA, MD, nursing, pharmacy, OT, et cetera, because my thought process at the time was if I can get you to work together as undergrads before you go to what I call your silos. In grad school, you learn pharmacy and pharmacy school, nursing and nursing school, medicine and medical school. Then we throw you all together in a hospital and we say work together. So it is interesting that you bring that up, that there can be challenges as we try to identify each other's roles in the process. And that's something that you've seen, it seems like.

Helen 10:10

Yeah, every every single day. I am working with my nurses, my physicians, every every day. And very rarely do I actually talk to patients at this point in my career because I work in the ICU and a lot of them are intubated and unable to talk. But I have to talk with their family members about like what medications they're taking to figure out like what we need to restart, maybe what's causing problems. And so I even though I work nights, there's a like less lower ratio of staff in the evenings. I think that has allowed me to make even closer connections with them because I'm the only pharmacist they have. I'm there every night. And so there's like the three of us. And I I definitely utilize a lot of the skills like teamwork and team building and communication during this journey.

Skills For Pharmacy Success

Dr H 11:00

Well, Helen, one thing that I saw when I worked in my role as a risk manager, I dealt with a lot of medical mistakes and unfortunately the lawsuits that can occur because of those medical mistakes. In my specific role, the majority of the incident reports that I received, and an incident report for those that are listening is a form that's generated by a healthcare professional once a mistake has been made. The good majority that I saw were actually medication errors. And what I share with my students all the time is it's not bad people intending to go to work to hurt others. It's good people like you and I. But when push comes to shove and and somebody calls in sick and we double up an assignment, unfortunately, it sets somebody up to create a medication error. Have you seen much of that in your professional practice? Medication errors.

Helen 12:00

Yes, I do, I do see them quite frequently. And they range from things that are like very minute, like a duplicate probiotic was ordered with antibiotics to keep the gut, the gut biome in balance. And there's one on the order set for every single antibiotic. And sometimes a duplicate will get ordered, but that's something that the joint commission doesn't like. So we have to make sure there was only one of each. So they can be things as minor as that. But then actually, just the other day, we saw something that could have caused significant harm to a patient. It didn't, thankfully. But at my hospital, we will verify orders from other hospitals because we're the biggest one in our system. And their pharmacist built home after 5 p.m. And so we're verifying orders remotely, including ones in the emergency department. And a patient came in, she had a stroke, and they were wondering whether or not they needed to give her tenectoplase, the clock busting medication for a stroke. And that medication has very, very specific standards that have to be met before a patient will qualify for it. And one of them is the time frame in which it can be given. It can only be given within four hours of the patient's last known normal status. And as we were reviewing this, we noticed that she did qualify. The order was put in and verified by some of our pharmacists remotely, like 4 p.m., but the medication wasn't given until 6 p.m. And she fell outside of that time window. And so we're currently still trying to figure out what was going on with that, but we think it was just, it was just communication error. The medication was verified and not communicated with the nursing staff at that hospital. And on their end, they have an hour on either side of an order being put in to give it. And so it just wasn't communicated how timely it had to be given. And had a pharmacist been there, it may have been able to be preventive. But luckily the patient is okay. Nothing happened. But it could have caused serious harm in bleeding risks and increasing the bleeding risk. So, yes, I see them all the time, but they're never meant to be punitive whenever we put them in. They're meant to be process improvements. What went wrong?

Dr H 14:09

Well, and and I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, and for the listeners, I don't want you to be afraid that there's always mistakes happening in the hospital setting. You know, obviously we're not a perfect environment and we continue to learn. And as I shared on an earlier podcast, I believe it's something like 65 to 70 percent of errors in the hospital setting, excuse me, according to the Joint Commission, which is a regulatory agency, happen because of basic communication errors, as you just mentioned. And and know that when an incident does happen, we do a very thorough root cause analysis. We look at the process and we try to figure out how can we prevent this from happening again. So so um thanks for for reassuring us that nothing happened to the patient and that there is a process. And you can look back at that process and say, where did it where did we fail the patient? In this case, you said if a pharmacist had been there, there might have been a different outcome, but but still it was a positive outcome. So we're thankful for that. Uh, just a bit ago, you mentioned something about the different areas that a pharmacist can go into. You mentioned local pharmacies. What avenues do students have once they finish their pharmacy program as far as employment?

Teamwork Across Hospital Roles

Helen 15:27

There's so many things pharmacists can do. Um and I think it's always growing and always changing, especially with the way that technology is changing too. So the most traditional route that people think of is being in the community, places like CVS and Walgreens, while those are the biggest and like the most recognizable examples. There's also a bunch of like smaller independent pharmacies that you can work at. They're becoming a little bit less common with Walgreens and CVS becoming so large. But I think those are the ones that people really, really appreciate when they think about retail pharmacy. They're the probably the most accessible healthcare professional out there because they're still doctors. They still have a doctorate, they're still they're very, very knowledgeable. Retail pharmacists are probably some of the smartest people I've met because they have to know everything. Drugs that I never see anymore because I work inpatient, they deal with every single day. And so people who really love to interact with patients, they'll they're gonna love that that route. It is on your feet all day, though, um, for people who maybe don't like that. And then when you get into thinking like clinical pharmacy, there's so many different routes down in clinical pharmacy. There's inpatient, which is what I do in the intensive care unit, where you're at bedside all the time working with doctors and nurses to try and optimize and stabilize patients so that they can go home. And then there's other inpatient specialists who work in things like infectious disease and cardiovascular units. We have oncology specialists who work inpatient with cancer patients. And then there's irregular clinical specialists who work on the internal medicine units, you know, getting patients ready to discharge and go home. And then once they discharge, we have our outpatient pharmacists who they'll work in like doctor's offices. I worked with a woman when I was in school who was a diabetes expert. And so she went into patient rooms just like their doctor would to talk about their diabetic medications, their lifestyle changes, what they can do to optimize their outcomes there. And then there's a bunch of random ones when you get outside of clinical. I have a friend who is in the industry, so she's working at a pharmaceutical manufacturing company, making sure that the process from start to finish is good, maybe like making the drugs that actually make it to the patients and in some instances helping to like develop new processes and new drugs.

Dr H 17:54

Well, that's that that's huge. I didn't realize there were so many opportunities. Uh I hope there hope there's some pre-pharmacy students listening and getting excited about all the potential opportunities they have. Well, thanks for sharing all that about the pharmacy side. If you don't mind, I'd like to switch over to to our service learning trip. If you could remind our listeners uh when and where you went, if you can recall way back when I do.

Helen 18:20

I actually I was going through something because I recently moved and I found my journal.

Dr H 18:25

I just made my day again. I I've had a couple of students pull their journals out. And for those for those that are listening, one thing I did in my course was I encouraged my students to journal daily and and we would have reflections at night and and go around and see how people what they experience. But it is so heartwarming to see that that you still have your journal and you can look back on on your experience. And what was your experience?

Helen 18:50

So I went my freshman year of college, so the spring semester 2019, and we went to Costa Rica helping the community of La Carpio.

Dr H 19:01

And I believe we had a lot of uh Nicaraguan refugees there, didn't we?

Helen 19:06

We did, yes, because I think we were originally supposed to go to Nicaragua, but they had um some political unrest and so. That's right.

Medication Errors And Prevention

Dr H 19:14

Thank you for reminding me. And and and and it was a very underserved area, I remember that we served in. What what was what was your experience? Can you can you tell was first of all, was that your your first time traveling? Was that your first time in a Spanish-speaking country?

Helen 19:31

It was. It was my second time out of the country, but the first time was to Belize, which they speak English there. So this was my first time with like a language barrier. And it has since really been my only time that I've been out of the country with a language barrier because school did not allow me to travel much. Yeah, and I I realized I was very, very scared over the language barrier because I retained almost nothing from high school Spanish. And we went over like the very basics. I remember when we got there about like conversational and medicinal Spanish that I have some of it still written down. I was going over it. I was like, yeah, I know some of those. But we worked with translators, which was phenomenal and such a good experience like going forward, because even in North Carolina, you wouldn't think that there would be a large Spanish peeking population, but there is, and there have been many times where I've had language barriers with patients trying to talk to them, and I've had to call up a translator and talk through someone. So I would love to learn Spanish. Unfortunately, my brains don't work that way, and languages are not my strong suit. So I I love my translators.

Dr H 20:36

What motivated you, uh Helen? Can you remember way back when? I know it was your your freshman year, but what motivated you to go with a faculty member you didn't know and a cohort of students that you kind of sort of didn't know, but got to know? What was the motivation for you specifically to go on this trip?

Helen 20:55

Yeah, I I've always loved like volunteering, giving back to my community. So it was definitely the aspect of like the service portion of it and knowing that I would be able to interact with underserved populations and really get that like really good hands-on experience before starting my like professional portion of my school. I also was excited to work with other pre-professional students in this. Sorry, I couldn't. I was excited to work with other pre-professional students because I knew that there were going to be a lot of them. They were just for like the capstone scholars. So they were people who are going to be in the same walk of life that I was. They were like everyone was about the same age, interested in the same things. And I was very excited when I learned that I was like pharmacy student because I was like, now I get the pharmacy all to myself and I get to interact with like all these pre-med, pre-nursing, pre-PA students, which was such a good experience. I'm actually still best friends with one of the girls that I was on the trip.

Dr H 21:52

Would you recommend that? I mean, it's exciting for me to hear that that you intentionally wanted to work with a lot of pre-health care professionals, knowing that that was a field you were going into. Would you recommend, I mean, moving forward, that that someone that wants to work as a pharmacist seek opportunities, whether it's international or or volunteering in somewhere in the United States, that they intentionally try to work with cohorts of students that are like-minded, not necessarily pharmacy, but healthcare.

Helen 22:24

I think so, yeah. Because I think it's very important to know who your future colleagues are going to be. The world of healthcare is very big, but it's also very small at the same time. I've heard it a thousand times over that pharmacy is a very small world. And I guess I got sick of hearing it until I actually moved into the professional space and I realized, oh, it is. Like I work with one of my old professors now. Your classmate may be your boss one day, you may be working with them as a physician in the future. So I think it's really good to expand like your mindset when you go on this trip and like talk with your other healthcare professionals or like pre-healthcare professionals, because you'll be working with them every single day. And I think it'll give you a really good appreciation for where everybody else comes from, what everybody else wants to do. And then when you're in your profession, like what they deal with on a day-to-day basis. So you can have a little bit of understanding.

Dr H 23:17

Now, this sounded like it was your first healthcare experience. You know, what was there anything that was surprising or or challenging? I mean, with your in-country experience that you can recall.

Helen 23:30

I think it it was, yes, it was my first time being like more hands-on with patients. And I think it was really it was difficult to see like where they were coming from and seeing kind of the like the health disparities that were there. Because I actually I read in my journal that I was shocked that most of our pharmacy only stocked, we stocked over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen, like painkillers and like creams and things like that. And there are things that I took for granted here. Like I have a bottle of 500 ibuprofen on my bedside table right now because I have a headache every morning because I don't drink enough water. But seeing the patients come in and knowing that they don't have access to simple medications like that, and knowing that we can help talk to them about like things that will make them feel better, and like just giving them like a week's worth of ibuprofen to go home and maybe that will help their their headaches and their aches and their pains. And that really opened my eyes to how lucky I am here and how much I want to continue to help give back to more rural communities, even at home, because Fayetteville, North Carolina, where I'm currently at, is it's a it's a larger city, but we treat a lot of very, very rural patients who either don't have access to health care or it's just it's very difficult for them for given their time off, where they live, their health insurance status. So when they come in, they really need us. And I think seeing like the ruralness both abroad kind of help bring it into perspective back home too for the patients that I see.

Dr H 25:08

It sounds like your experience in Costa Rica, specifically the access to care experience, really sensitized you for your present role because you're seeing access to care, health care issues on a daily basis. Is that correct?

Helen 25:24

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, a lot of the patients that come in are from very rural areas and they they come to the hospital because they don't have access to primary care. And so they don't really come in until it's an emergency and they need the help then and there.

Dr H 25:38

One thing that's come up consistently, Helen, in in my podcast, is that the students that have been on these trips feel kind of sort of depressed, or or they did feel depressed a week or two afterwards because they felt that the medicines, as you noted earlier, the medicines that we prescribed had maybe already run out, the treatments that we had delivered had the supplies had already been wasted, so to speak, or expired. And they felt that that patient that they cared for was back in the same spot that they were before they even came. But what I tried to reassure them was that the most valuable gift they gave was that of education, that we were able to educate the patients and try to empower them as best we could to take care of their present situation. Can you recall anything along the lines of uh of educating your patients, probably most specifically when you were discharging them from the clinic setting?

Pharmacy Career Paths Explained

Helen 26:39

Yeah, I remember I think we had a man come in and he had, I think it was just, I think he had a UTI, and he had he was having like a lot of pain and just discomfort. And the best thing that we did, like we prescribed him pain medications and we had to refer him to get antibiotics. But one of the like best things to treat UTIs is education and prevention. And so we were able to talk to him about like proper hygiene in order to kind of minimize the transfer of bacteria, as well as staying hydrated and things like other areas that will help prevent them because UTIs can turn chronic, they can turn euseptic, and they can they can turn into an emergency if left untreated. And they're also just very uncomfortable, and we would like to avoid them as much as possible. So I remember we were able to talk to him about some preventative measures for that.

Dr H 27:33

You rotated through the different stations, like we had pods where you would take vital signs and ask the patient's question and then present to the to the doctor. And then we had the pharmacy also. Do you feel it was a valuable experience as a as a pre-pharmacy student at that time to learn how to take vitals, to learn how to communicate with the patient and then and then present the patient to the doctor? Or do you feel your your time was best served just staying in the pharmacy station?

Helen 28:03

No, I think it's great. I think it's a great opportunity to be able to talk with the patients and work with the doctors too, because like the one of the first things I teach in pharmacy school is how to take a blood pressure. I've never yet had to do it on a real patient because if I'm the only person in the room who knows how to take a blood pressure, there's nothing wrong. But it's good to know because like my friends have come to me and they're like, Can you take my blood pressure? Like, one more because they've I have some hypochondriac friends. So it's it's a good skill to know. But then also just like physical examination signs, because while I'm not I'm not a physician, I'm not a diagnostician. If I hear something that may like trigger alarm bells like flank pain and knowing that like palpitations of the flank, then I know that they that may be indicative of like a more serious UTI. And public physicians should know that too. It's always helpful to have like an extra set of ears to know what's going on and maybe be like, hey, have you thought about this potentially? So I think it's definitely valuable to be able to be in the examination setting in that regard, but also being able to talk to patients because depending what path you go down, you're gonna be talking to patients every single day. I worked at Walmart for three years in the pharmacy, and I was talking to patients every single day about their medications, about how to take them, about questions. And they would come up to me with the most random questions sometimes. So it was good to have like that experience to relate back to my patients.

Dr H 29:30

Tell him when you look back at your experience in Costa Rica on that trip, what what were your what were your take homes from that experience? What what were the values if if you look back on it? I mean, can you kind of sort of connect the dots between where you were then and and where you were now?

Helen 29:50

Yeah, I think um it definitely it definitely opened my eyes a lot to like healthcare disparities, both across the world and even here at home. And it's made me very it made me very passionate about continuing to serve under underserved communities to the point where when I was in pharmacy school, I was very involved and eventually became the president of an organization that helped to serve our underserved communities in Columbia through healthcare education and just like distributing supplies that they may need. And so being abroad and like seeing everything, like the healthcare infrastructure there definitely made me a lot more passionate about helping to serve our underserved communities. And I would love to continue to go abroad once I have like my career a little bit more under my feet since I just started back in July as like an actual practicing pharmacist.

Dr H 30:46

Once I'm a little bit more stable in that, I would love to continue to go abroad and do what I can to well you know it's so nice to hear that you've you've got such a great service heart where you had done service before you got to college and started that program that you indicated in the in the School of Pharmacy, and that you want to continually pay it forward. And, you know, uh I was very blessed to to work with students like yourself. And I'd like to think I did plant a seed that your service heart doesn't stop once you graduate from your undergrad or or even from grad school. And through my podcast, I've already spoken with a few other of your peers that are situated, they're now working in a practice, and they too feel the same as you, that they'd like to go back and do something. So that's so nice. And and in your own way, you already are paying it forward by working with with your patient populations in your community. Helen, what would you say to someone that's listening that's that's kind of on the fence about going on a an international service learning trip? You know, they're they're they're kind of weighing the cost, they're weighing the benefits, they're maybe a little fearful of going out of the country, maybe into an area where it's a language they're not used to, foods they're they haven't had before. How would you try to convince them, if you could, that this trip would be life-changing for them?

Service Trip Setup And Context

Helen 32:10

Yeah, I think I think it's worthwhile for anybody who's even thinking about going to pursue, because it changed it changed my life not only in what area of like patient populations that I want to serve, but also in the friendships that I walked away with. So I think going in with an open mind and saying that, you know, it it is scary to go to a country and work with patients that you don't speak the same language as. But if you're gonna go into healthcare at all, you're probably going to run into a patient who doesn't speak English and who you're going to need to utilize a translator for. And it really helps teach empathy from that regard because they're scared, they don't know what's happening. And you need to be able to communicate that with them effectively. And so I think it's it's very, very valuable to see that patient population and be able to utilize your tools before you even enter the professional world. You mentioned food. We have like rice and beans every morning, and we say it in the convent, and those notes could cook. It was it was very, very good. And like I said, I walked away with some of my best friends. I ended up rooming with two of the girls from our trip for the remainder of my undergrad. And one of them moved out to Wisconsin. She's doing public health, and she's still my best friend. I talked to her every day.

Dr H 33:29

It is an amazing, and I appreciate you bringing that up. It is an amazing bonding experience. And and and I've shared on the podcast many times how blessed I am to be able to work alongside my students in the clinic setting. And and by doing so, we we change that teacher-student relationship and we become friends. I mean, when you're when you're working side by side, eating at the same table, spending long days together, it's inevitable that that's going to happen. And and you do bond, and and and it is unique. And and you you you mentioned that that the pharmacy world is small. I think the healthcare arena also is small in that we experience things that others can't understand when we're dealing with death, dying, pain, and suffering on a daily basis. You know, the people that we work with, we we we we tend to develop very deep and lasting relationships because we share something that that is very unique. And and I appreciate you sharing that you continue to be friends with the people that you met on that trip, which is which is huge. Helen, one of my students brought up earlier at the end of the uh podcast interview that she wanted to share a few books with with us that that she had read. And I haven't prepared you for this. Are there any books that you have read during your healthcare journey or anything in the world of pharmacy that you would recommend that that people read to just enlighten them a little bit more about what they should be knowing as far as healthcare goes?

Helen 35:03

Yeah, actually, I did just read a book in February, which I don't it's it's a very popular book. I don't know if people have mentioned it before. It's not necessarily pharmacy, but it's everything is tuberculosis. Yeah, I I I love John Green, so I listen, I read and listen to him all the time. So when he released a book about tuberculosis, I was like, oh, that's that's kind of up my alley. I see tuberculosis from time to time, but then seeing like it's rampant across the world when it's it's curable. And the uh biggest, the only barrier to curing it is resources and the fact that it's hard to get resources where they need to go because there are so many disparities. And so I I read that, I figured it had been brought up. It's it was very popular, but I did. I bought it as soon as it came out, and it is amazing.

Dr H 35:55

But Helen, any uh last words you want to share with our listeners today uh about your pharmacy journey or about the service learning trip that you're on and and uh how it contributed to where you are today?

Helen 36:07

Yeah, I think you know, if there's anybody out there who is listening and is on the fence about whether or not they even want to do healthcare versus going on this trip, I think looking into it more and is definitely worth your time applying and looking into like how you can be able to go on this trip if it's something that you want to do is definitely, definitely something that I would recommend. It it changed my life, not just personally, but also professionally and opened my eyes to a whole new patient population that I may not have otherwise necessarily gone to treat. And I have lifelong friendships from it. I still have my journal that I actually use this journal to take a bunch of pharmacy school notes and like rotation notes. So this has turned from my Costa Rica journal into my entire like pharmacy rotation journal. So I have everything in this little book. You can tell it's well loved. So yeah, I think if you're on the fence, I think it's I think you should just for the trip.

Dr H 37:06

What about for your profession pharmacy? I I I know you've you've talked a little bit before, but any any last uh recommendations on on those on the fence about pharmacy.

Helen 37:16

I think if if you're interested in pharmacy, it is definitely something to delve into, reach out to someone maybe and the a school that you're looking at, or go to your local pharmacy and talk to a pharmacist about if if they have time. They're very busy. But I remember you actually sent me some some students when I was in pharmacy school to talk to you about like what their interests were and what they wanted to do. And don't know if any of them actually ended up pursuing pharmacy. But just look at your idea of what you want to be doing. And I bet there is something in pharmacy for you if that's what you want to do. Because again, the landscape is always changing. And if that's what you want to do, I think ask yourself a couple of questions, look into it a little bit, and there's definitely something there for you.

Dr H 38:03

Because I I see a lot of students that go through school and they don't do what you just recommended. They don't reach out and ask people that are already in that career path, tell me about a day in your life. You know, what recommendations do you have? And and uh I hope that they're not sorely disappointed once they graduate and go into their future professions, because as you noted, you should reach out, you should talk to someone. Because I think all of us in healthcare want anyone coming into our field, into our professions to do as well as they can, but also most importantly, to make sure they've chosen the correct pathway that they want.

Language Barriers And Translators

Helen 38:37

I think if you if you know a pharmacist and like if you have a connection anywhere and you just reach out to them and say, Hey, I'd love to come and shadow you for a day, as long as like the company allows it. I don't know of a single pharmacist who would say, absolutely not, no. So it's always worth asking, like, if you want to do something, if you could shadow. I did that before I went to pharmacy school. I shadowed at a local community pharmacy, and it was a great experience. I think pharmacists in general are very well, very nice people. That's a that's a great recommendation.

Dr H 39:07

I really appreciate that. And and one last thing I want to share with you, as you know, my wife Carol and I have traveled extensively, and we've backpacked through 88 countries around the world in three year-long trips. But along the way, we occasionally would get sick, and we consistently always went to a pharmacy, no matter what country it was in, and we would describe to the pharmacist what our symptoms were. And the pharmacist would then prescribe a medication. So we never went to a medical doctor, we went to a pharmacist. So everywhere and anywhere around the world, we were able to contact pharmacists, it could have been just somebody on a corner pharmacy, but they were always so nice to take the time to listen to us and then to prescribe to us the medicine that we needed. And that always stands out in my mind. I mean, I I just respect pharmacists so much. And to this day, when I have a medical problem, instead of shopping, going down the aisles and looking at all the ingredients, which I do a little bit, I always go to the pharmacist and I say, I'm I'm challenged here on which medicine to take. Here are my symptoms. What do you recommend? And that's the way we should do it. I mean, as you noted earlier, pharmacists are smart people. They put a lot of time in school and they have great people skills and and they do a great job of interacting with the community. They're part of the community. So for the listeners that haven't taken advantage of pharmacists, please go up and talk to your local pharmacist. Let them know who you are, tell them what your symptoms are. Because when you do go to a pharmacy and you're walking down that aisle and you have a cold, oh my God, there are so many, there are so many medicines there. It's confusing. Well, guess who's going to help you with that confusion? Your pharmacist. You'll go to the pharmacist. I mean, is is that not right?

Helen 40:59

No, I think that's absolutely right. Especially because some people don't realize that there are different things to treat different symptoms. If you have a cold, there's, well, what kind of cold? Is it viral? Is it like just postnasal drip? There's so many things that different medications are gonna help those symptoms. And I do have a tip if you get the pseudofed that's over the counter, like the phenyprin, it's not gonna do anything. You need the stuff behind the counter. And you won't be able to know that unless you have talked to your course.

Dr H 41:25

There you go. Thank you. Well, it's been it's been uh I've learned a lot talking to you this morning. This has been great for me, and it's been so nice to reconnect. And uh, you know, I I I have the advantage of having your resume. I'm just blown away by your resume with all the things that you've done in school, after school. And I I know that your your patients in the intensive care unit, even though they can't speak to you uh because they're intubated, I'm sure they'd be very thankful for what you do. And I know that the families that you do speak to who are very scared, I'm sure, are are relieved by your comforting words and you put them in a better place. So so thank you for all that you do for patients and their families. I feel very blessed that that we our paths crossed in in school, and I'm very eager to follow your path as you move forward in your profession and uh appreciate your time today.

Helen 42:17

Thank you. It was so good to reconnect. I've missed you.

Dr H 42:21

Great. Well, thank you so much. You have a great day. I want to sincerely thank our guest Helen for her willingness to join us today on the International Service Learning Experiential Medical Education podcast. But most importantly, I want to thank Helen for the passion that she has shared with us, specific to her own unique journey in healthcare. As a clinical pharmacist actively engaged in her community, Helen has touched many lives of patients and their families and continues to pay forward through her work with underserved communities.