Preceptors often have to fill out additional paperwork and potentially deal with backlash from schools, so I find it hard to believe that they would fail you just for ****s and giggles, let alone two separate ones.
Agree with stoich and confetti about the quizzical nature of the circumstance. What they don’t additionally know that should give them some comfort on quality control is that ACPE mandates that each school have a committee composed of both pharmacists and non-pharmacists that is tasked with review when failures are made for patently unfair circumstances (it has other functions, but that's mainly what the experiential education committee is for). I serve on this committee, and to give you a couple of cases:
- Douche preceptor propositions the student and when she refuses, he finds a reason to fail her. Thankfully, this student immediately caught on BEFORE the end of rotation and called the Experiential Education coordinator the same day. EC got us together the next morning and it was cut and dried. We asked the site to reassign, and when the douche decided to fail her anyway, well, it’s very easy for the committee (which we did immediately without even showing it to the student) to override the grade, but as we have no control over the non-faculty preceptor except for removing him from the roster and reporting our findings to the board. Can’t say what happens later, but more or less, it’s hard to do something about someone out of your control.
- Your actual exact scenario when you have too hardcore a preceptor. This is usually a mistake when the preceptor is new and lets the "powah" go the his/her head and overpimps their students without sufficient teaching.
Scenario:
So, you don’t know your HTN meds.
Hardcore unfair: Well, I’ll just fail you. (No opportunity for teaching or correction action. Inappropriate, will get a lecture from me if you were my former student with a canned talk about ‘don’t you remember what YOU were like when you were in pharmacy school. I did!’).
Hardcore fair (me): Well, I guess you’ve earned yourself a reading assignment for tonight. Read either the Koda-Kimble or the DiPiro sections for HTN, prepare a three paragraph brief in the morning, and expect to present to me before you go about your other tasks tomorrow.
And, yes, I’ve actually had a couple of students earn themselves into writing those briefs nightly for 28 days as your time is mine during the rotation (even after hours).
On competency matters, the experiential education coordinator has the ability to question the grading (normal), pressure the preceptor into passing if there is not enough to adjudge failure (not nice but normal), or directly overriding the grade with documentation and pass the student. The committee also has the ability to pass the student with documentation on why.
At the time you failed, trust me, the pharmacy school has as much incentive as you do to pass you even odiously. If the committee thought the preceptor was hardcore unfair (it does happen), the grade will be overriden. The fact that the experiential coordinator did not and the committee did not says to me that there’s more to this than competency unless it is egregious.
If you’re writing this for sympathy, I understand. I’m sympathetic to incompetent P4’s as we should have not passed you in P3 if that was the case. If you really did get bad luck twice, you should build your case around ‘patently unfair’ treatment, however, without the support of the experiential coordinator, that case will be hard to make. If two preceptors fail for competency issues, I would look inward to see what you could do to improve.
By the way, that above doesn’t apply for unprofessional conduct or patient endangerment or matters that the Board would suspend or revoke a license for like diversion. This is for purely academic matters. I have never failed a student over competency even though I wouldn’t exactly like them as my pharmacist as I consider competency my problem to rectify as much as possible, but I have failed students over unprofessional conduct (inexcusable habitually late despite getting verbal and written warnings) and once over something the Board had to be notified for. As stoich and confetti believe, the paperwork is real.
