East Saint Paul

Phalen Family Pharmacy 

Located on the east side of St. Paul, Phalen Family Pharmacy is jointly owned by Drs. Mayxia and Cheng Lo. Pharmacy staff is composed of cashiers, technicians, and pharmacy interns. Since opening in 2011, their team has made significant strides in teaching the community that pharmacists play a significant role in their healthcare. Together, they have empowered many patients to take charge of their medications and gain a better understanding of their medical conditions. Many are now able to call the pharmacy directly to place their refill requests or ask questions. It is not surprising to have a patient come and consult with the pharmacist before making an appointment with their physician or heading to the ER. After being open for 14 years in the area, they have built strong relationships with their patients and local providers. Once a person visits, they leave knowing how passionate the Phalen Family Pharmacy staff is about helping them feel their best.

St. John’s Hospital

M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital opened in Maplewood in 1985. St. John's Hospital provides a comprehensive range of medical care in the community, from the intensivist program (onsite critical care physician specialists) and 24-hour in-house obstetrics coverage to a wide variety of diagnostic and therapeutic services. Areas of Pharmacy Practice includes: medical/surgical, emergency medicine, cardiology, critical care, neurology, maternity care, neonatal intensive care, and oncology. 

M Health Fairview is the collaboration among the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Physicians, and Fairview Health Services. The healthcare system combines the best of academic and community medicine -– expanding access to world-class, breakthrough care through our 10 hospitals and 60 clinics.

M Health Fairview - Phalen Village Clinic

Located on the East Side of St. Paul, Phalen Village Clinic is a family medicine primary care clinic. The clinic houses a family medicine residency program, providing ample opportunity for interprofessional learning with family medicine physician residents, faculty, and medical students. As a patient-centered medical home, Phalen Village Clinic also has registered nurses, social work, and behavioral health services on-site. Patients include a well-established, ethnically diverse population, ranging from newborn to geriatric age, in addition to caring for pregnant individuals.

Katie Rog, PharmD (Lead Preceptor)

Following graduation from pharmacy school at Drake University, Katie completed a PGY-1 Residency with HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, MN. She worked as a clinical pharmacist at St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul, MN for 12 years, primarily on the cardiology, critical care, and medical/surgical pharmacist teams, developing a strong foundation in patient care, clinical decision-making, and interdisciplinary collaboration. In 2021, she transitioned into the Clinical Pharmacy Manager role at St. John's Hospital. She also serves as the Residency Program Director (RPD) for the PGY-1 Pharmacy Residency Program at St. John's Hospital. Her favorite part of working at St. John's is the pharmacy team and the leadership.

Cheng Lo, PharmD

Cheng is a graduate of the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy. He has been a preceptor since 1999 and was selected Preceptor of the Year in 2006. One of his main methods for teaching PharmD students is role playing. Dr. Lo has volunteered on the Board of Directors of MPhA, the U of M College of Pharmacy Century Mortar Club Board of Directors, and as a member of the Committee on Experiential Practice (CEP) at the College of Pharmacy. In his off time, Dr. Lo likes to play tennis, fly fish, and go for walks with his wife and kids. These experiences, combined with his role as president and pharmacy manager of Phalen Family Pharmacy, provide him the experience and ability to offer unique and well-informed learning opportunities for future pharmacists. 

Katherine Montag Schafer, PharmD, BCACP, CDCES

Katherine is a faculty member of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health within the University of Minnesota Medical School and the St. John's Family Medicine Residency program. The program trains family medicine physician residents during their three-year residency, and residents split their time between St. John's Hospital and Phalen Village Clinic. Katherine helps supervise their patient encounters when they are in the clinic and helps them learn best practices for medication prescribing and monitoring.

In addition to precepting the family medicine residents, Katherine sees patients through MTM and Diabetes Education visits, with a busy practice averaging about 75 patient encounters every month. Through a broad Collaborative Practice Agreement (CPA), she provides chronic disease management. The most common conditions she treats include diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and gout. In the clinic, she commonly partners with other members of the clinic team, including the PCP, social worker, care coordinator, medical assistants, and professional interpreters.

Katherine also helps plan and participate in the family medicine resident didactic curriculum — dedicated classroom learning time held twice per month, spent reviewing evidence-based medicine and topics relevant to the practice of family medicine. From a research perspective, she is interested in improving the patient experience of healthcare. Through this work, she and her colleagues identified that there are limited resources available that teach diabetes self-management topics to the Hmong community, and that the resources that are available lack cultural relevance. They are working on creating and sharing a curriculum to fill this need, together with a Community Advisory Board. Their pilot video is available here.

Formal UMN biography: med.umn.edu/bio/katherine-montag-schafer

Community

Site: Phalen Family Pharmacy

Onsite hours: Monday–Friday, 9:00am–5:30pm.

Description: Students will be responsible for providing counseling to patients, assessing patients for OTC recommendations, communicating with clinics to resolve prescription issues, and assisting in any community outreach that may arise. Preceptors are able to coach and guide interns based on their assessment of the student, with a custom-tailored approach; however, students with a solid drug knowledge base and good verbal communication skills tend to have the best experience.

Students have full access to the internet with a dedicated computer workstation. They are expected to have their own access to online resources such as Micromedex or the U of M Biomedical Library, and hard copy references are also available onsite.

Depending on experience and skill level, students will get integrated into various aspects of the pharmacy workflow. This may involve preparing prescription orders and fielding phone calls from clinics and/or patients or their representatives. From these experiences, discussions will arise between preceptor and student, which often lead to special projects being assigned. Projects can vary based on students' skill level, interests, and the needs of the pharmacy. Past projects have included creating ads or flyers, in-service training on new drugs or drug classes, and data analysis, among others.

Typical patient demographics: Common conditions encountered at Phalen include diabetes, hypertension, depression, PTSD, and malnutrition. Primary languages spoken are Hmong and Karen; many patients are able to speak and understand a limited amount of English but prefer their native language. Students are able to utilize bilingual staff or patients' interpreters when interacting.

Clinic

Site: Phalen Village Family Medicine Clinic

Onsite hours: Monday–Friday, 8:30am–4:30pm.

Description: Students will partner with a pharmacist preceptor during scheduled clinic shifts as well as during family medicine resident precepting shifts. Students will have, on average, one day per week of dedicated time to work on assigned rotation projects. Examples include creating and distributing drug information and accompanying resources to clinic staff and providers, and participating in quality improvement projects such as improving the number of clinic patients achieving blood pressure control (below 140/90 mmHg).

When seeing patients with the pharmacist preceptor, students will be responsible for preparing for patient clinic visits, collecting information from the patient and their medical record, partnering with professional interpreters when necessary, assessing collected information to determine if any medication therapy problems are present, and working collaboratively with the patient, their family, and the preceptor to determine a plan to resolve the identified problems, including determining when to see the patient for follow-up. The student will complete, with the preceptor, documentation of the patient encounter in the medical record.

When serving alongside a preceptor for family medicine resident physician clinic shifts, the pharmacy student will be responsible for assisting with answering drug information questions from interdisciplinary team members and seeing patients when needed for education and counseling. Common requests include inhaler teaching, diabetes injectable medicine counseling, diabetes technology troubleshooting (e.g., continuous glucose monitoring), and medication reconciliation.

Interprofessional experiences: Students will also attend clinic-wide meetings every other week (Tuesdays) to learn about clinic operations and efforts to improve patient quality measures.