Pharmacy rotations count as clinical experience?

[calimed214]

I'm currently a 4th year pharmacy student and will be spending the next year completing rotations. My involvement in different settings varies.. so far I've rounded with a team of attending doctors & their residents/interns every morning for 6 weeks, followed & worked up patients' drug therapy regimen, presented lectures to pharmacists/doctors/nurses about various disease states and their drug management, and consulted patients that come in about chronic diseases (ie: asthma) and tweaked their meds based on whatever new information I get from them that day. I'm sure I'll end up doing more as the year goes on, but so far I've only completed 2 rotations.. and I have 4 more to go.

Does all of this count towards clinical experience requirement? I know I'm working directly with patients, but it's in the capacity of a clinical pharmacist in-training and not from the perspective of a doctor... anybody know?

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[student1799]

I'm currently a 4th year pharmacy student and will be spending the next year completing rotations. My involvement in different settings varies.. so far I've rounded with a team of attending doctors & their residents/interns every morning for 6 weeks, followed & worked up patients' drug therapy regimen, presented lectures to pharmacists/doctors/nurses about various disease states and their drug management, and consulted patients that come in about chronic diseases (ie: asthma) and tweaked their meds based on whatever new information I get from them that day. I'm sure I'll end up doing more as the year goes on, but so far I've only completed 2 rotations.. and I have 4 more to go.

Does all of this count towards clinical experience requirement? I know I'm working directly with patients, but it's in the capacity of a clinical pharmacist in-training and not from the perspective of a doctor... anybody know?

There really is no clinical experience "requirement," as in X number of hours, although there's no question it's a very important factor in med school admissions. But your experience is in a gray area. The problem is not so much that it isn't clinical (I'd say it is), as the fact that it was part of the educational program for your pharmacy degree. I know it seems like a silly distinction, but med schools want to see that you went out and got a health care volunteer job that was completely separate and apart from your pharmacy studies, and that you put in significant hours and remained committed to it. So, while I certainly think you could put this down on your med school application as "clinical experience," it really won't be sufficient on its own.

 

[calimed214]

Hey thanks for responding to my post. I have completed some hospital volunteer work -- about 300 hours or so that I've slowly accumulated over the last several years. I just didnt know if I could include my rotation duties on top of those hours. Rotations are kind of killing me (get to the hospital by 6am, usually dont get to leave until 8pm) and it would be nice if all those hours spent with patients then (albeit in a pharmacy-related capacity) could be considered clinical experience for medical school apps.

 

[Mobius1985]

I agree you should include the clinical duties as a PharmD student along with your volunteering. The perspective you had makes for a fairly unique and interesting experience that makes you stand out.

 

[Samoa]

As a former member of my school's admissions committee, I have to disagree with the two posters above. Your rotations in clinical pharmacy are actually a better form of clinical experience than you would ever get in a volunteer position, or from shadowing. The point of clinical experience is not to check off a box on your application. It's to prove to the admissions committee that you're making as informed a decision as possible in seeking to go to medical school.

You can't get much more informed than having actual patient care responsibility, and rounding with the team. And if you have to take call with them (which my school required on its adult medicine rotation), even better.

You just need to spell all of that out for the adcom, because they won't automatically understand what you do on your pharmacy rotations. There may not be a pharmacy school at their institution, or the one they have may provide very weak rotations. So you should assume they have no clue what your experience has been.

There is also some value attached to non-medically-oriented community service, but that doesn't seem to be your question. And the adcoms WILL understand that you don't have time during a clinical rotation to continue the community service activities you'd been doing previously.

 

[calimed214]

Thanks for all the input guys -- but here's another question: I didnt specifically list my rotation duties & hours in the Work experience/EC section of my AMCAS application. Since my rotations are technically classes where I receive a grade and course credit, I just listed them in the Courses section.. assuming that adcoms would know what pharmacy clinical rotations entailed. I guess I should try to address it in some of the secondary essays?

And Samoa your avatar seriously makes me want a cookie..

 

[calimed214]

and yes, I will be taking call during my acute care/medicine rotation which is coming up in about 2 months. Not looking forward to the sleepless nights, but am excited about the learning opportunity

 

[dezokitty]

Oh wow, I had the same exact question floating in my head, since I"m in the same situation... So far, I've mentioned what I've done during rotations in a few of my essays, but I also wasn't able to find a place to talk about them in my AMCAS application. Thank you so much for the excellent questions and answers! By the way, calimed214, where do you go to pharmacy school? I haven't heard of pharmacy students taking call during their acute care rotations where I'm at. That sounds really exciting!

 

[student1799]

calimed and dezokitty, I would strongly urge the both of you to PUT THIS IN THE EC SECTION OF AMCAS. If you handle it that way, you'll get much more space to describe it in full without taking up precious space in your PS (each work or EC item gets a max of 1350 characters, while your whole PS is limited to only 5300 char.). And don't count on being able to address this in secondaries; there are a number of schools with NO essays on their secondaries (for example: NYMC, NJMS, RWJ).

Here is a great thread in pre-allo where people have their questions answered on how to put things in the AMCAS EC section:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=202513&highlight=work/activities

The main authority on this thread is LizzyM, an SDN member who's an adcom in real life. You can always post a query on the thread yourself, and I'd take whatever LizzyM says as gospel (more or less).

Good luck.

 

[calimed214]

calimed and dezokitty, I would strongly urge the both of you to PUT THIS IN THE EC SECTION OF AMCAS. If you handle it that way, you'll get much more space to describe it in full without taking up precious space in your PS (each work or EC item gets a max of 1350 characters, while your whole PS is limited to only 5300 char.). And don't count on being able to address this in secondaries; there are a number of schools with NO essays on their secondaries (for example: NYMC, NJMS, RWJ).

Here is a great thread in pre-allo where people have their questions answered on how to put things in the AMCAS EC section:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=202513&highlight=work%2Factivities

The main authority on this thread is LizzyM, an SDN member who's an adcom in real life. You can always post a query on the thread yourself, and I'd take whatever LizzyM says as gospel (more or less).

Good luck.

It's not that I dont WANT to put it in my EC section.. it's that my AMCAS is already submitted & complete and I'm not able to anymore. I never saw clinical rotations that are part of my pharmacy curriculum as an extracurricular or work activity & unfortunately found these forums a bit too late, aw well. Hopefully it won't hurt me too much.

And dezo -- not all pharm students at my school have to take call on their med rotations. It depends on the hospital that you're assigned to. I purposely made a bid to get assigned to one of the more challenging med rotations that do make their pharmacy students stay up with their residents on call.

 

[student1799]

It's not that I dont WANT to put it in my EC section.. it's that my AMCAS is already submitted & complete and I'm not able to anymore.

In that case, don't look back. Talk it up in your secondaries (and hopefully interviews) as much as you can. Good luck.

 

[calimed214]

In that case, don't look back. Talk it up in your secondaries (and hopefully interviews) as much as you can. Good luck.

Thanks for the advice *crosses fingers*

 

[dezokitty]

Haha, again, same situation as calimed214... AMCAS is already submitted and verified. Thanks for the help, though!

Calimed214, sounds like a really interesting rotation. I hope you enjoy it!

 

[shahak49]

Hey guys,
I am also shifting gears from pharmacy to medicine. hope to get accepted!

One question to Pharm students: "How did you classified your coursework in AMCAS? I mean how did you classified your rotation experience and all medicinal chem and therapeutics classes? Did you put any of such classes in BCPM? Or entered as health Science or Others?"

Also, let me know how is med school working out for ya?

AK

 

[J ROD]

Hey guys,
I am also shifting gears from pharmacy to medicine. hope to get accepted!

One question to Pharm students: "How did you classified your coursework in AMCAS? I mean how did you classified your rotation experience and all medicinal chem and therapeutics classes? Did you put any of such classes in BCPM? Or entered as health Science or Others?"

Also, let me know how is med school working out for ya?

AK

According to the instruction manual, it says to list pharmacy classes under "health science". That is what I did. I am not sure if they are going to include it in the BCPM or not. I really do not care since it does not make a huge difference in my GPA.

 

[shahak49]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

According to the instruction manual, it says to list pharmacy classes under "health science". That is what I did. I am not sure if they are going to include it in the BCPM or not. I really do not care since it does not make a huge difference in my GPA.

 

[sablemagus]

Thanks for the response! So, are you saying to list ALL pharm school classes in Health Sciences section (because they were part of grad school)? What about microbiology, pharmaceutical calculation and biochemistry, Anatomy/physiology........I got B's in all of them. All my pharm classes are A's except these basic classes! So, Q: Do I list all Micro, physio classes taken in pharm school under BCPM? Or can i dump them in HealthsScience as they are part of pharm school? How can I retain my 4.0 undergrad GPA.....these BCPM classes from pharm school will ruin it!!!!!!!!1

I put my microbio, biochem, A&P, and pharm calculations classes under the same headings that the undergrad courses of the same subject go under. I put the rest under health sciences. It all gets figured into your graduate GPA anyway, rather than undergrad, and as far as I can tell, admissions committees care more about your undergrad credentials than grad anyway.

 

[shmoodoo]

Shouldn't they care more about more recent, and more applicable, grades? I would think that pharmacy grades are more important than undergrad grades, but AMCAS doesn't count them in overall gpa. Can anyone shed some light on this?

 

[pharmacy85]

Shouldn't they care more about more recent, and more applicable, grades? I would think that pharmacy grades are more important than undergrad grades, but AMCAS doesn't count them in overall gpa. Can anyone shed some light on this?

i wonder the same