VCU news

By Dina Weinstein

Family ties and professional dreams took Michelle Johnson far from her Virginia Commonwealth University classrooms this summer. She became the first School of Pharmacy Pharm.D. student to intern in Ghana.

Both of Johnson’s parents were born and raised in the West African country, and though she grew up in Northern Virginia with her mother, her father still lives in Ghana. With an eye toward visiting him, Johnson reached out to the pharmacy director at KATH – the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi – about prospects for hands-on pharmacy experience in a hospital setting.

The result was a three-week summer internship in KATH’s obstetrics and gynecology unit.

“It was kind of going in blind, but there was also something exciting about that, too, something to look forward to,” Johnson said.

This was her third visit to Ghana, after trips as a toddler and after earning her bachelor’s degree. Johnson speaks the Fante dialect, and Twi is spoken in Kumasi. But English was primarily used in the hospital.

“Everyone there was just super nice and super helpful to me,” Johnson said. “Their initial question I got a lot was, ‘Why did you choose to come to Ghana?’ I think that stemmed from [their understanding that] ‘You have so many resources in America – what’s so special about coming here to our hospital?’”

Johnson replied that she wanted to see how pharmacists practice from a resource-limited perspective, which would help her compare the U.S. and Ghanian educational and health care systems.

“I wanted to see that, especially it being the place where I have my roots,” she said. “It was near and dear and close to my heart.”

During her three-week stint, Johnson worked with pharmacists, house officers (who are pharmacy residents) and pharmacy students doing advanced rotations. She joined the pharmacy team in making daily rounds to review patient cases, including in the intensive care unit. Patients’ use of traditional medicines and herbs were an important part of assessing medical histories. And each week, team discussions focused on a prevalent condition, such as ectopic pregnancy.

“In Ghana, they don’t have all the resources, they don’t have all the medications that we do, but they’re still so deeply invested in the health of their patients,” Johnson said. “It really forced me to take a step back and think, ‘This is the kind of pharmacist that I want to be.’”

Pharmacy, in fact, had long been on Johnson’s radar, as her parents had planted a seed about health care as a career. She witnessed the power of pharmacists as her father recovered from a health scare.

Johnson first earned a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech in human nutrition, food and exercise science. She then took a gap year and worked as a pharmacy technician at a CVS near Triangle in Northern Virginia, where she is from.

After the first year of her Pharm.D. program at VCU, Johnson worked at a Safeway pharmacy for her community rotation. Her second-year hospital placement rotation, right before her Ghana internship, was at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital, where her mother is a nurse.

Johnson enjoyed her second year of school, when “we’re getting more into what we call the therapeutics of pharmacy,” she said. “That’s been interesting learning about different disease states, learning about all the medications – why one might be better than the other, what condition does this person have in conjunction with the condition we’re trying to treat and how that also affects the treatment regimen. Problem-solving and puzzle-piecing-together is interesting.”

The internship in Ghana built on that classroom and rotation experience, as the focus on OBGYN required more research and asking precise questions of specialists.

“I’m more of a hands-on learner,” Johnson said. “I think that also helped to reinforce my love for women’s health.”

The internship reinforced her inclination to work at a hospital, as Johnson embraced the direct interaction with patients and other medical professionals. And it prompted a project that connects pharmacy training to study abroad opportunities: She plans to conduct a study on what international rotations are available to VCU Pharm.D. students and what rotations students have participated in to see how those rotations compare to those within the US.

“I encourage anyone to go out and do things that make them a little bit uncomfortable,” Johnson said. “It was honestly an amazing, memorable experience – something I’m going to take with me in my career for the rest of my pharmacy journey.”