As part of the Noon Professional Development Elective series, Dr. Nathan Silver & Dr. Fabiola Escalante from Northeast Valley Health Corporation explained how an Ambulatory care setting worked and how their clinic managed services to patients. Dr. Escalante gave a brief background about herself. Escalante, an indigenous South American (Peruvian) Indian was sent to the mountains because her parents wanted her grandmother, who was also one of the village’s healers, or “curandera,” to treat and cure her asthma and wheezing. Cured of asthma, she eventually returned home to her parents’ home in Lima, but knew what she learned from her grandmother would endure forever. Later on, she finished school in Lima and was admitted to Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru to study industrial engineering. After a year at the university in Lima, her family immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Los Angeles. With little money and no English skills, her family took to the streets and alleys of downtown Los Angeles and sold hats and clothing as street vendors in order to survive. While helping the family, Escalante went to adult school to learn English, and then studied at Santa Monica College, eventually getting a scholarship to UC Berkeley, where she attained a B.S. in chemistry and later was admitted to the WesternU College of Pharmacy. After graduation in 2014, she took a position as an ambulatory care pharmacist at the Northeast Valley Health Corporation. Ambulatory services consisted of MTM-Hypertension management, MTM-Diabetes-Statin service, Medication reconciliation of Medicare patient discharged from the hospital service and Beer’s criteria potentially inappropriate medications in older adults.
Posted by Finney Jacob, PharmD Candidate 2017 and Sam Shimomura, PharmD