Page Content

Curriculum

The PGY-2 Pharmacy Residents in Critical Care at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota.

PGY-2 critical care residents devote much of their time to comprehensive training as a member of the interdisciplinary team. A breadth of learning experiences has been designed to increase and refine clinical competency, provide evidence-based pharmacotherapeutic care plans and develop confidence as an independent practitioner.

Direct patient care services allow a resident to provide patient-specific pharmaceutical care services. Responsibilities include development of individualized care and monitoring plans for various patient populations. After coaching, instruction, and modeling by a preceptor, residents are assessed and constructively critiqued on how to further refine the delivery of evidence-based recommendations.

Drug information is provided to patients, physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other allied health professionals. Feedback is provided to enhance drug information-retrieval skills using a variety of resources and modalities.

Pharmacokinetic monitoring is provided to eligible patients. Residents serve as an information resource by providing recommendations for appropriate assay procedures, evaluation of serum drug concentrations, and appropriate documentation in the medical record.

Required learning experiences

The PGY-2 Pharmacy Residency in Critical Care at Mayo Clinic Hospital — Rochester is designed to provide a diverse experience for the future clinician. Required learning experiences include:

Area Length
Orientation 4 weeks
Cardiac Selective (select one):
  • Coronary intensive care unit
  • Cardiovascular surgery
4 weeks
Medical Selective (one must be medical ICU, other can be medical ICU repeat or immunocompromised ICU):
  • Medical ICU
  • Immunocompromised ICU
8 weeks
Surgical Selective (pick two):
  • Trauma and general surgical ICU
  • Cardiovascular surgery ICU  
  • Multispecialty ICU 
8 weeks
ICU Infectious Diseases (duration based on past ID experience) 2-4 weeks
Medication use evaluation and quality improvement Longitudinal, 12 months
Presentation and Teaching (includes four-week teaching rotation) Longitudinal, 12 months
Professional Development Longitudinal, 12 months
Research Longitudinal, 12 months
Staffing Longitudinal, 12 months

Elective learning experiences

Electives are available in a variety of settings that allow residents to tailor the program to their needs. The list below includes popular elective learning experiences that past PGY-2 critical care residents completed. Additional elective learning experiences may be available upon request.

  • Cardiothoracic transplantation
  • Critical care infectious diseases
  • Critical care nephrology
  • Emergency medicine
  • Immunocompromised intensive care unit
  • Neurology intensive care unit
  • Solid organ transplantation

Staffing commitment

All PGY-2 residents provide up to 24 hours of staffing every four weeks. Staffing may include a combination of weekend and evening experiences to maintain operational and clinical pharmacy competency and knowledge. No formal on-call program exists.

Curriculum enhancements

The Department of Pharmacy and Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences are committed to developing and maintaining the best education programs. The curriculum and other aspects of this program are assessed constantly and changed as necessary to ensure the highest quality training.