Top 10 Clinical Guidelines to Review
Top 10 clinical guidelines for students, residents, and pharmacists to review before a hospital interview or rotation
Many users utilize PharmGuides to review guidelines for their NAPLEX boards, APPE rotations, or before a hospital/residency interview. I compiled what I believe are the most common disease states with guidelines that you should know to be prepared to take on most patient cases.
It was actually difficult to narrow down and I left out many other important disease states (psychiatry, HIV, stroke, infectious diseases, BCLS/ACLS, etc) but for the sake of brevity and quick review, I kept it to the ten most common disease states. Even within each disease state opens more categories to study. It’s not going to be easy but the secret to getting ahead is getting started.
For pharmacy students about to start APPE rotations, I recommend reviewing these disease states so you’ll be mostly prepared:
- Ambulatory care: Hypertension, Heart Failure, Hyperlipidemia, Diabetes, Chronic Kidney Disease, Asthma/COPD
- Acute care: Acute Coronary Syndromes, Atrial Fibrillation, and above^
- Internal Medicine: Community acquired pneumonia, Sepsis, and above^. As my internal medicine preceptor said, “you gotta know everything.”
For pharmacy students about to interview for residency, there was a lot of focus on all these top 10 areas. I interviewed at 6 large academic centers and the clinical section of the interview, without fail, included some form of cardiology and infectious disease.
- Hypertension
- Note: there are multiple hypertension guidelines, the main two that are used in NAPLEX exam and residency clinical case interviews are ACC/AHA and JNC8. Pay attention to the difference classification of BP category and treatments
- Heart Failure
- Stage A to D Heart Failure treatment
- Specifically Stage C Heart Failure treatment
- Hyperlipidemia
- Diabetes
- Asthma/COPD
- Chronic Kidney Disease
- CKD can get complex and have different parameters and goals if the patient also has diabetes, hypertension, anemia, lipid management, or mineral and bone disorder - all of which can be found typing CKD into the search
- Atrial Fibrillation
- Acute Coronary Syndromes
- ISH
- STEMI
- NSTEMI
- Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP)
- There is hospital acquired (HAP) and ventilator acquired pneumonia (VAP) as well, but for most interviews and questions ask about CAP
- Sepsis
- Know the SOFA score requirements
Whether you’re interviewing for a hospital position or residency or studying during school, the guidelines can get overwhelming but remember life’s rules: 1. Don’t quit. 2. See rule 1. I wasn’t the brightest (ADHD attention span) but I was willing to learn and that was enough. Good luck and feel free to Contact Me at the bottom of the page if you have any questions! ~Diana