Follow the Yellow Brick Road!

08/23/18 • 26 min

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Interview with Dr. Diana Rangaves! Dr. Diana Rangaves is a pharmacist, philanthropist, and ethics professor turned writer. An accomplished educator, award-winning teacher, and business professional, she uses her powers for good. Diana is a foster mom for PapHavenRescue.org and lives in California with her dogs and pasture pets, in their forever home. She is the author of Embrace Your Excellence: A Psychopharmacology Primer and Mirror to the Soul and Escape into Excellence: Building a Foundation for Honest Decision-Making. References: The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram Resources: The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Carpool Karaoke with Paul McCartney Questions? Comments? Recommend someone for an interview? Contact us [email protected] or find us on twitter @twopillspodcast! Highlights (full transcript at www.twopillspodcast.com): My teaching strategies are related to reading apprenticeship. In reading apprenticeship, we use interactive keywords and think aloud's, think pair and share, questions, and we map things. Critical thinking skills are embedded in reading apprenticeship. It is so important that once a student leaves school, they have those tools in the real world. For those of you who are considering a career in Health Sciences, you can change your environment, use your degree for multiple reasons, you are not just boxed in. After teaching for a while, I realized I could be teaching the same few courses forever. After a while, you can't integrate new stuff. I ended up writing two textbooks. They're called “Embrace Your Excellence” and “Escape Into Excellence.” “Escape into Excellence” talks about ethics and how to develop critical-thinking skills. It uses real-life case studies. It takes you from the beginning about what is ethics, what are values, how do we learn our values-all the way full circle to passing and death. How do we stand in silence and honor the people in our lives we care about who are ready to pass? “Embrace Your Excellence” is a psychopharmacology book. It introduces people to mental health, mental health issues, the pharmacology involved, including opiates and hallucinogenics. It adds the holistic piece to it with real life student cases and students writing about their experiences. It helped create a full package that students like. A lot of it was written by students for students. When I wrote, “Escape into Excellence,” we determined that all author royalties would go back to charity. Education is so important. For both “Embrace Your Excellence” and “Escape into Excellence,” all author royalties go back to Santa Rosa Junior College Foundation to support education. The royalties of my children's values book, “The Adventures of Rosie Posie Papillion,” go to pap haven rescue. It's a heart project and labor of love to impact and give back. We had to learn these skills on the fly when we got out, when we read a book, and here is a textbook that schools can use to further that endeavor. One topic was IV therapy. I brought in empty vials and bags and tubing. I gave them a scenario that included stuffed animals like dinosaurs, poodles, and others. Each doll had a flash card around their neck with a scenario. It Incorporated education, pharmacology, and calculations. Each team had a team leader who read the case. Each team member then took one of the questions And explained the answer to the other students. Each team member had a teaching moment. It gives them confidence, practice speaking, and all in a peer environment that was safe. No one was judging them, no one giving them a certain number of points, and it was a very relaxed environment. They were able to do every sensory experience within that one exercise. It is applicable to any topic. Don’t ever be afraid to step into the unknown. Fear is the worst reason in the world to do somethi

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Two Pills Tips: Classroom Card Games!

Cards Against Humanity/Apples to Apples Resources: http://www.techsavvyed.net/archives/3811 https://insidetheclassroomoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/apples-to-apples-edu-style/ What: • Word association games • Shared goal by all players to complete a phrase by matching the dealer’s card to a card in their hand to earn points • Everyone has a unique set of cards in their hand, and thus the phrases can vary wildly, depending on the preference of the player. How: • Learners are divided into teams that can range from 4 students per team to 10 or more. • In each round, one player (the ‘judge’) turns over the top prompt card and the others, who each have a hand of 8-10 cards, anonymously throw down a single card in response. • Two sets of cards— a “judge” lays a category word or phrase and participants have to secretly lay a card from their hand that they believe best represents the word/phrase. The judge selects which card was the closest/funniest/most interesting/best. The card that the judge chooses earns a point. Who: • Small or large groups, though smaller teams may be more engaged • Classroom likely most conducive What topics: • Almost any content, usually as a review • Any topic that has clear subcategories/topics • So, for pharmacotherapy of diabetes, the topic card could be “DPP4’s, insulin, GLP-1’s, etc” and then students would have to use adjective/descriptor cards “hypoglycemia, weight gain, nausea, etc” and the best card wins • For heart failure, could use each drug class as a topic card and the descriptor cards could be “hypokalemia, mortality benefit, etc” When/Why: • Goal of this strategy is to provide an immersive active learning strategy for review and association/correlation of complex topics. • Though would take time to set up and print, could be used over and over • Estimated classroom time: 15-20 minutes Other: • This active learning strategy, like many, requires the instructor to be comfortable with a small amount of chaos. Learners typically enjoy this game and become competitive. • To add descriptor cards, could use “NOT cards”-so “NOT hypoglycemia” as a descriptor • Templates available online (see links in show notes)-probably want to print on cardstock for longer-lasting cards

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Two Pills Tips: Making Rounds More Well-Rounded!

Resources: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2015/12/07/peds.2015-3679 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=24004439 This topic is a little different from our didactic-focused interventions. However, for those of us who participate in rounds or any experiential education in patient care, I think it is an important question. When I think about rounds, I think about how beneficial it can be for all participants. The process encourages attendings or faculty to teach, residents to both teach and learn as part of practice, and students to learn. However, I have also seen a less enthusiastic approach to rounds. Sometimes, it is just getting through the morning to move on to discharges, clinic follow up, etc. So, I started thinking-how can we make rounds a more well-rounded experience? Bedside rounds, or family-centered rounds in pediatrics, can be defined as conducting attending rounds, including patient presentations and discussions, in the patient’s room with nursing and family present. If you look around an ICU team (as an example) and consider the amount of salaries standing in a circle (physicians, residents, nurses, pharmacists, case managers, social workers, dieticians, PT/OT, and more)-it would behoove us to make the best use of each professional’s time. Areas of education in rounds include skills such as bedside physical examination teaching, effective communication, and encouragement of trainee independence. A first step to improving the educational experience on rounds is to have a specific plan/road map. Preparation instills confidence in both the teacher and the learner and facilitates the learning process. It allows you to maximize the learning outcomes rather than just repeating the same process day after day. Defining each person’s role on the team has multiple benefits to improving education on rounds. This ensures that each person is involved, breaks down barriers between educator and learner, engages the team, maintains interest, ensures efficient rounds, validates the learner’s input, and allows equal opportunities between learners. Devise a plan beforehand on what can be taught to act as a guide but still be flexible to improvise. No two days of rounds will be the same. Having a plan also allows for good time management and prioritizes educational opportunities to focus on the learner’s needs. I have seen this be successful in a variety of ways. For example, presentations and team goals can be set at the beginning of the week. Each presentation is then planned and topics are decided on, therefore providing clear expectations. Some attendings will choose to review a certain article in the main journal of their expertise. It becomes a group discussion facilitated by the attending and allowing the attending to provide his/her expertise. Some residents have created quizzes based on topics discussed during the week. Other residents may opt to review an OB strip each week or an EKG each week just to provide exposure to the team. If you are able to collaborate with another department, maybe your team visits radiology once weekly, pathology once weekly, or microbiology once weekly. One resident I worked with had a focus on physician wellness and started each day of rounds with DzGratitude Roundsdz where each team member said something that they were grateful for..... Full content available at twopillspodcast.com