I am Sarah Rawat, and I am an inpatient clinical pharmacist practicing with Baylor Scott and White Health in Austin, TX. After receiving my bachelor’s degree in biology, I went to pharmacy school in a rural, underserved, and isolated area in Virginia, where I was fortunate to help serve patients with limited to no access to medical care.
The majority of residents of the region are coal miners, suffering from diseases such as COPD, asthma, lung cancer, and severe methamphetamine and opioid addiction. I feel very thankful to have been able to work with this patient population during my training, as it has allowed me to understand and interact with people I would otherwise never have met. This experience influences the way I practice today, as it has given me a broader outlook on patient needs and a greater understanding of situations that can lead to the need for medical services.
When COVID-19 first hit the US, we immediately began preparing for the surge in Texas by revising policies on best practices in sedation and mechanical ventilation, reading studies on the role of steroids in COVID patients and stocking our pharmacies with paralytics and sedating agents. Throughout the pandemic, we constantly revised these policies and kept abreast of the most recent studies to keep on top of the virus as best we could, and we are now ramping up our vaccination program to administer vaccines to as many patients as possible.
This past year has been a whirlwind of keeping up with the most recent therapeutic developments and studies on the treatment of COVID patients both in-hospital and after they are released. We are now finally at a point where we can expand from solely treating COVID patients to actually providing vaccines and focusing on preventative care. We are currently distributing thousands of vaccine doses, coordinating vaccination clinics, and reaching out to those who are eligible to receive the vaccine.
I am extremely thankful for my journey in science and healthcare, and am excited to see where the road will take me.
