A visit with Femi Felix-Ukwu, Clinical Pharmacist

Femi Felix-Ukwu joined Connecticut Children's in 2018 and has been a clinical pharmacist for the past five years. He works with patients in the Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Units.

Why did you decide to become a pharmacist?

My mom was a pharmacist. Actually, she just retired June 2022. She was a pharmacist for almost 40 years. I remember sitting in class with her at Texas Southern. I thought her job was pretty cool. She got to wear a lab coat to work, and she seemed very respected at work. My parents actually met in college, in the pharmacy school that my mother attended. I literally followed in her footsteps, going to the same school for my degree.

Femi Felix-Ukwu, Clinical Pharmacist NICU PICU, Connecticut Children's

What would a typical day look like for you?

I typically get in at seven o’clock and the other pharmacist, Katie Campf, and I have our little morning huddle. I start reviewing my patients right after huddle at 7:15 am. I go through each patient and look at how old is this patient? How much should they weigh? What’s their kidney function looking like? What is their liver function looking like? Are they overweight? All these different things help me so I can help the team as succinctly as possible when we’re rounding.

We typically start rounding at eight o’clock, and it’s three medical residents, an attending physician, myself, and a dietitian, and we go room to room, seeing all the patients in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

I offer clinical interventions, insight into drug-drug interactions, and I recommend dosing. I do that for about two or three hours. The rest of the day I work up in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, serving as a resource. The residents sometimes come to ask questions. We are a teaching hospital, and the residents are still learning. They might need some coaching sometimes in terms of order entry, for example, figuring out the appropriate dosing.

What do you like best about your job?

We may have a child come in because of a trauma or a motor vehicle collision, and it’s very gratifying to see that child get better every day. It’s a great feeling to know that you were part of that, feeling like, “I rounded on you for the last seven days and some of my recommendations are helping you get better.” It’s a great feeling to know that I was part of that whole process.

Do you have children of your own?

Not yet. I just got married in October 2022. It was a big, beautiful affair. I’m Nigerian, and we had about 80 people fly in from Nigeria. My wife is American, and we wore Nigerian attire for the second half of the wedding. We had three tables of people from Connecticut Children’s. In the five and a half years I’ve been here, they’ve become my family.