{"id":23019,"date":"2015-05-26T15:44:20","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T15:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/?p=23019"},"modified":"2015-05-26T15:44:20","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T15:44:20","slug":"23019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/2015\/05\/26\/23019\/","title":{"rendered":"Pharmacy alumna, Kristin Von Flatern '14, takes life-saving action to help customer suffering allergic reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spring2015newsletter\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

Pharmacy alumna, Kristin Von Flatern ’14,
\ntakes life-saving action to help customer
\nsuffering allergic reaction<\/h1>\n

<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

Class of 2014\u00a0alumna Kristin Von Flatern hasn\u2019t been on the job as a pharmacist at the Centerville, Mass. CVS\/pharmacy a full year yet, but she\u2019s already played a key role in saving a patient\u2019s life.\u00a0Let\u2019s just say that her quick action with a customer suffering from anaphylactic shock on Dec. 26 was probably the best belated Christmas present he ever received.<\/strong><\/em>
\nVon Flatern, who earned her doctor of pharmacy degree from URI in May 2014, has been working at the Cape Cod pharmacy since she graduated.
\n\u201cThe day after Christmas was a quiet day initially,\u201d Von Flatern said. \u201cBut then one of my staff members was helping a customer at the drive-through window, and I could hear the urgency in her voice as he told her he was in anaphylactic shock.\u201d
\nVon Flatern, who grew up in Sunderland Mass., said the customer was asking for an EpiPen, an auto-injector that provides a dose of epinephrine, a medication that treats life-threatening allergic reactions.
\nEpiPens are not sold over the counter, so right after Von Flatern pulled one from her area, she entered the customer\u2019s name in the computer to research potential drug interactions. She opened the package, and handed the device out the drive-through window.
\n\u201cI could see that his skin was red, his lips and face were swollen, and I asked him if he wanted me to administer it to him, and he said yes. I could see he was struggling, and then I saw the relief in his face when I told him I would help.\u201d
\nThings happened fast and simultaneously. Von Flatern hopped on the counter, wiggled her way through the drive-through window and onto the parking lot, since that was the fastest way to get to him. As she administered the EpiPen, a staff member called 911. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital where he recovered fully and was later sent home.
\n\u201cHe came in a day later to say thanks, but I had already completed my shift and gone home. I actually saw him later, and he was very grateful.\u201d
\nVon Flatern said he may have used soap at work that had nuts in it, and he was allergic to nuts. He had an EpiPen at home, but not at work.
\nThe first-year pharmacist credits her URI education with preparing her for such emergencies.
\n\u201cURI isn\u2019t just interested in us learning theory from textbooks,\u201d said Von Flatern, who received a congratulatory letter from CVS corporate offices for her actions. \u201cURI really focuses on the people we will be serving.\u201d
\nShe said she and her classmates are taught they are someday going to have to respond well to emergencies.
\n\u201cWe know we are going to have to talk with them about side effects of drugs. We are in the community, hospitals and clinics dealing with real patients and real problems.\u201d
\nVon Flatern was fortunate that one of her pharmacy rotations was teaching patient assessment with Celia MacDonnell<\/a>, clinical professor of pharmacy, and Anita Jackson<\/a>, clinical assistant\u00a0professor of pharmacy.
\n\u201cWe covered anaphylactic shock, but Dr. MacDonnell even asked us, \u2018What do you do for a snake bite victim, or for someone having a seizure?\u2019 We covered a wide range of emergencies in that class.\u201d
\nAt her pharmacy on that day in December, everything happened fast, and she had to confront this question in seconds, \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d
\n\u201cBasically your choice is whether to act or not, and given our URI pharmacy education, I would say that my peers and I would act because we are prepared.\u201d
\nMacDonnell said she taught Von Flatern for a full year in a laboratory class and then worked with her in the advanced clinical practice rotation for six weeks.
\nMacDonnell said all doctor of pharmacy students have to learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid. They work in a practice lab in small groups making presentations on how to handle such emergencies as choking, someone breaking a bone on a hike and bee stings. The class teaches them how to use EpiPens with placebos.
\n\u201cKristin was always very focused, very mature and always posed good questions,\u201d MacDonnell said. \u201cShe just had a desire to not be just a prescription dispenser. She wanted to be a pharmacist who would help people. She wanted to be the one who had the answers.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd now, I am going to tell this story in my class, because the students will hold on to this and know they can make a difference too,\u201d MacDonnell said.
\nMedia Contact: Dave Lavallee<\/a>, 401-874-5862<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Class of 2014 alumna Kristin Von Flatern hasn\u2019t been on the job as a pharmacist at the Centerville, Mass. CVS\/pharmacy a full year yet, but she\u2019s already played a key role in saving a patient\u2019s life. Let\u2019s just say that her quick action with a customer suffering from anaphylactic shock on Dec. 26 was probably the best belated Christmas present he ever received.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":639,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter-spring2015"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/639"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}