Quitting Intern Pharmacist Position? Advice Please!

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funnybunny

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I'm currently in my P3 year and am about to go on rotations at the end of June. I've been working as an intern pharmacist for the past 2 years. During our P4 year, our manager is expecting us to work 14 hours a week on top of our rotations. In the past, P4 interns have only worked 8 hours a week. Our manager is using us to cut costs on pharmacists. Many of the staff pharmacists believe he is abusing our position and that 14 hours/week is too much to ask for P4s. Our manager states that if we're unable to meet this requirement, then we'll have to resign. I'd rather not be forced to lose my sanity during my P4 year but I'd also rather not cut ties with the company I'm currently at. This company is known for hiring from within. Any advice?? Will it look bad if I resign my P4 year and try to apply back for a pharmacist position when I graduate?

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I'm currently in my P3 year and am about to go on rotations at the end of June. I've been working as an intern pharmacist for the past 2 years. During our P4 year, our manager is expecting us to work 14 hours a week on top of our rotations. In the past, P4 interns have only worked 8 hours a week. Our manager is using us to cut costs on pharmacists. Many of the staff pharmacists believe he is abusing our position and that 14 hours/week is too much to ask for P4s. Our manager states that if we're unable to meet this requirement, then we'll have to resign. I'd rather not be forced to lose my sanity during my P4 year but I'd also rather not cut ties with the company I'm currently at. This company is known for hiring from within. Any advice?? Will it look bad if I resign my P4 year and try to apply back for a pharmacist position when I graduate?

If you can't work 14 hours a week during your P4 year, you will never able to be a pharmacist. Grow up. My P4 from last year did more than that and my current P4 does more than that. For goodness sake you could work every other weekend and two nights a week and get the 14 hours per week average.

2 weekends per month at 16 hrs per weekend = 32 hours
2 weeknights per week @ 4 hours X 2 weeks = 16 hours
1 weeknight per week @ 4 hours X 2 weeks = 8 hours
============================================
That's 56 hours over 4 weeks or 14 hours per week.
 
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Another thing is that if we're doing rotations out of state or out of the area we'll be required to make up those hours by either working 7 days straight during break times or flying in on the weekends. Either that or be required to resign.
 
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When I did my rotations in 2004 a majority of interns did 1 day a week to make ends meet. But that was 8 hours. 14 hours is a bit much.
 
I used to work ~12-24 hours a week while on rotations depending on the location/intensity of the rotation. 16hrs/week is every weekend if you can't work out weekday partial coverage after rotations.

That said, buck up and work. If this guy really is an a$shole, it doesn't matter. Keep your head down and grind it out. You'll do more damage to your career prospects by quitting. And no one's gonna hire a P4 for anything.

The problem is the out of state/country rotations. I think he's being a dick about that one...but you'll have an off block you can work 7 days straight to please him.


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Keep the job. Looks much better to managers if you are able to work during rotations. Not to mention you said they hire within and jobs are getting slim. I graduate in may and averaged about 24hrs a week with 2 jobs while on rotation. Also I have 2 kids too. It can be done. It's only a year. It is the reason I got a job offer from my hospital they saw I knew how to work hard.

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Thanks for the replies. "It's only one year" - that's what I keep telling myself. I'm hoping that we can somehow reach a compromise in terms of how many hours we'll be working during rotations. I know it'll be tough but not impossible
 
I did about 20 a week during rotations, but I was a work aholic - can you make up the extra hours on your off month? If you put in 40 hours a week (or more if they let you) for one month = 160 hours - that is equivalent to 14 hours a week for about 11 weeks
 
I can't really remember how much I worked during my P4 year.. I know I did at least every other weekend, but I can't remember if I worked during the week. Anyway, it might be tiring but I think it's worth it.
 
I did not work at all during rotations and I don't regret it. I traveled during my months off and was also able to enjoy my weekends. It's your last year of being unemployed before full time responsibilities kick in, enjoy it!
 
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I just finished my last rotation and I was doing at least 25 hours a week on top of rotations since last May.... it sucks, but it is worth it. Just grin and bear it.
 
Just out of curiosity, can I ask what chain you work for? Or at least get a hint as to which one it is?
 
I think that you have no choice. Nowadays when an employers tell u to jump, u ask how high. I would not risk being an unemployed p4.
 
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14 hours/week on top of rotations sucks, but it is physically doable (I had a couple of classmates who worked full time jobs on top of rotations/externships.)

I'm guessing you are in a saturated area, so unless you are planning to move after you graduate, the best thing would be to figure out how to work in your rotations. If you are working for a chain, is it possible to do your hours in the area you are going to school?
 
I worked full time during rotations because I was the breadwinner and we needed health insurance. 17 hours every weekend and picked up the rest in the evenings throughout the week. 14 hours would be easy peezy. Keep the "in" at your current company. Harder and harder to find jobs these days.
 
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How would a manager "cut costs" on pharmacists by using interns? Interns can't verify at chains.

No pharmacy "needs" an intern and interns should be considered a luxury at best. If you want to work 14+ hours a week, great. If you don't, it shouldn't cripple a pharmacy unless the RXM is that incompetent and unable to train techs properly. You should have that choice.

The fact that you would be expected to work 7 days a week on off blocks to meet this "mandatory" average of 14 hours a week just reinforces this RXM's dickbaggery. Keep that in mind... that this is the kind of market/district/[other organizational unit of stores] that let this d-bag become RXM.

LOL at "if you can't work 14 hours a week you'll never be a pharmacist." There are so many mentally crippled pharmacists who still have jobs even in saturated markets. Think hard to fire unless for gross violations or repeated egregious misfills or not even worth replacing with another pharmacist because you are just a license, a commodity.
 
How would a manager "cut costs" on pharmacists by using interns? Interns can't verify at chains.

No pharmacy "needs" an intern and interns should be considered a luxury at best. If you want to work 14+ hours a week, great. If you don't, it shouldn't cripple a pharmacy unless the RXM is that incompetent and unable to train techs properly. You should have that choice.

Interns are not a luxury to me. They are a necessity. They train up faster and you can off load so much more to an intern compared to a tech. Techs can make and receive MD calls, they can do transfers, they can make compounds. In short they can do every part of my job except verify and that frees me to verify. I have 4 interns at my store at all times. One from each year. Graduate one and roll in another one.

The fact that you would be expected to work 7 days a week on off blocks to meet this "mandatory" average of 14 hours a week just reinforces this RXM's dickbaggery. Keep that in mind... that this is the kind of market/district/[other organizational unit of stores] that let this d-bag become RXM.

My current P4 who is done rotations worked about 20 hours per week while on rotations. Get A's on all graded rotations and passed on all Pass/Fail rotations.

LOL at "if you can't work 14 hours a week you'll never be a pharmacist." There are so many mentally crippled pharmacists who still have jobs even in saturated markets. Think hard to fire unless for gross violations or repeated egregious misfills or not even worth replacing with another pharmacist because you are just a license, a commodity.

I disagree. That old model is over or about to be over. You need to be able to handle stressful situations because pharmacy is a stressful field. They need to get as much out of you as they can since you cost so much and that goes for hospital as well as retail. Ask Mickey (WVU2007) about the stress of being in a 200+ bed hospital and being the only pharmacist on duty. He finds retail less stressful......
 
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There is a small hospital nearby. My tech works there 2h actual work out of 8h shift. She regularly being sent to do errands and let go to take care of her kids and run around town while still on the clock, manager will txt her if hospital gets busy to come back. Play computer, doing absolutely nothing at 25/hr lol...

Then, she complains how much work she has to do at 18.75/hr at my store :-/
 
There is a small hospital nearby. My tech works there 2h actual work out of 8h shift. She regularly being sent to do errands and let go to take care of her kids and run around town while still on the clock, manager will txt her if hospital gets busy to come back. Play computer, doing absolutely nothing at 25/hr lol...

Then, she complains how much work she has to do at 18.75/hr at my store :-/
Wow that would be dream job specially if its at hospital. I used to volunteer at this hospital where most of time techs were getting paid to sit around, i was so jealous at time. At my job in retail, there is no downtime!!
 
There is a small hospital nearby. My tech works there 2h actual work out of 8h shift. She regularly being sent to do errands and let go to take care of her kids and run around town while still on the clock, manager will txt her if hospital gets busy to come back. Play computer, doing absolutely nothing at 25/hr lol...

Then, she complains how much work she has to do at 18.75/hr at my store :-/

Oh my god....the liability....imagine if she rear ends someone on the street. On the clock. At the direction of their supervisor.

Holy hell.

facepalm.jpg
 
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I thought I had replied to this thread but it turns out I put it in the wrong thread. Anyway...I don't think objecting to working 14 hours on top of P4 rotations is a bad thing. Remember this is 14 hours a week, not random hours that average out to 14 hours a week. I had one rotation that required me to drive an hour and a half one-way and I would be so burned out working 14 extra hours a week. Get up at 6:30 to shower and brush teeth, head out by 7:30, get to work at 9, leave at 5, get home at 6:30, and work from 7 to 9 (that's just assuming you don't want to work every weekend and choose to space out the hours). 6:30 AM to 9:00 PM. Say goodbye to your friends, you'll never see them....well, you'll never keep your eyes open long enough to see them.

Bunch of damn whiners in this thread. Enjoy your life P4!
 
Rotations AKA free labor are usually 40 hours per week plus commute ... and they can ask you to put in work at home on top of that ... just do the absolute minimum on them and focus on getting hired as a pharmacist for the company you are interning for ... I regret caring at all about my rotations because I got nothing out of them in terms of employment opportunities. .. just a bunch of people who use you ...
 
Rotations AKA free labor are usually 40 hours per week plus commute ... and they can ask you to put in work at home on top of that ... just do the absolute minimum on them and focus on getting hired as a pharmacist for the company you are interning for ... I regret caring at all about my rotations because I got nothing out of them in terms of employment opportunities. .. just a bunch of people who use you ...

On the opposite side of the coin, I got hired because of my rotation performance.
 
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Take an educational leave of absence. Go through your district supervisor.


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On the opposite side of the coin, I got hired because of my rotation performance.

We agree again. Last year, we lost two interns who get fellowships from their intern experience. No, I know the world is really going to end soon.
 
On the opposite side of the coin, I got hired because of my rotation performance.

I, too, have gotten PRN and full time positions because of relationships that I developed with my rotation preceptors. The full time job came a few years after graduation, so making a good impression can have a lasting effect if the employer doesn't have a position at the time of your graduation.
 
I, too, have gotten PRN and full time positions because of relationships that I developed with my rotation preceptors. The full time job came a few years after graduation, so making a good impression can have a lasting effect if the employer doesn't have a position at the time of your graduation.

Yup we remember our students, good and bad. Not just direct preceptors...other pharmacists, technicians, and management. We solicit input from everyone.


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There is a small hospital nearby. My tech works there 2h actual work out of 8h shift. She regularly being sent to do errands and let go to take care of her kids and run around town while still on the clock, manager will txt her if hospital gets busy to come back. Play computer, doing absolutely nothing at 25/hr lol...
Then, she complains how much work she has to do at 18.75/hr at my store :-/

Yes, and no. Hospitals can have their downtime, but they also have their stress times (just like retail, to a lesser extent.) Except, unlike retail, where if things stress out to the max, at worse people will throw temper tantrums about their weight time, in hospitals when things stress out....people can die. Admittedly, this level of stress happens less in hospitals, then in retail from what I've seen, but when it happens in hospital.....falling behind doesn't mean that your manager will lecture about long wait times, it literally means people could die.

And, as always, this stress falls on the pharmacist to a FAR greater extant then it falls on a technician. So just because your technician isn't stressed.....that doesn't meant that the work environment isn't stressful for the pharmacist. (I don't know your technician, but maybe she is the kind of technician that gets in the way and doesn't do anything, so it helps everyone if she just stays out of the way?)



Oh my god....the liability....imagine if she rear ends someone on the street. On the clock. At the direction of their supervisor.
Holy hell.

This. I am betting no higher up's know about this, or the supervisor would be in huge trouble. Insurance liability would never make this situation allowable, and if the supervisor were even minimally competent, he should know this.

We have "comp time" at my hospital....in a situation like this, the technician would clock out when s/he leaves the hospital, then clock back in when s/he comes in. The manager can then edit the clocked out time as "comp time", which means s/he wasn't working because of lack of need and s/he isn't paid for working that time, but the clocked out time counts as "hours worked" when figuring eligibility for benefits/insurance. I'd like to think that Momus's technician was actually running errands on comp time, and due to a misunderstanding Momus thought they were on the clock.....but I've had the misfortune in my career of working with managers who really were that ignorant of anything that didn't directly involve drugs/pharmacy.
 
Yes, and no. Hospitals can have their downtime, but they also have their stress times (just like retail, to a lesser extent.) Except, unlike retail, where if things stress out to the max, at worse people will throw temper tantrums about their weight time, in hospitals when things stress out....people can die. Admittedly, this level of stress happens less in hospitals, then in retail from what I've seen, but when it happens in hospital.....falling behind doesn't mean that your manager will lecture about long wait times, it literally means people could die.

And, as always, this stress falls on the pharmacist to a FAR greater extant then it falls on a technician. So just because your technician isn't stressed.....that doesn't meant that the work environment isn't stressful for the pharmacist. (I don't know your technician, but maybe she is the kind of technician that gets in the way and doesn't do anything, so it helps everyone if she just stays out of the way?)





This. I am betting no higher up's know about this, or the supervisor would be in huge trouble. Insurance liability would never make this situation allowable, and if the supervisor were even minimally competent, he should know this.

We have "comp time" at my hospital....in a situation like this, the technician would clock out when s/he leaves the hospital, then clock back in when s/he comes in. The manager can then edit the clocked out time as "comp time", which means s/he wasn't working because of lack of need and s/he isn't paid for working that time, but the clocked out time counts as "hours worked" when figuring eligibility for benefits/insurance. I'd like to think that Momus's technician was actually running errands on comp time, and due to a misunderstanding Momus thought they were on the clock.....but I've had the misfortune in my career of working with managers who really were that ignorant of anything that didn't directly involve drugs/pharmacy.

I didn't see any pharmacists involved in a life or death situation during my time at the hospital

I saw them playing solitaire and sitting around half the day with their feet up
 
I didn't see any pharmacists involved in a life or death situation during my time at the hospital

I saw them playing solitaire and sitting around half the day with their feet up

I do a sense a hint of jealousy?

But in all seriousness, it depends on the hospital what pharmacists will do. At my hospital, pharmacists are generally expected to attend codes and help during emergency situations.
 
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I do a sense a hint of jealousy?

But in all seriousness, it depends on the hospital what pharmacists will do. At my hospital, pharmacists are generally expected to attend codes and help during emergency situations.
what do they do? watch?
 
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what do they do? watch?

Well, at my hospital we help pulls meds and make sure they're dosed/administered properly. Things like adenosine being given as close to the heart as possible and making sure the limb is elevated, and followed by a flush within a few seconds. Or amiodarone being given undiluted if they're in asystole/pulseless.

Also, our hospital deals with pediatric/neonatal codes. If the pediatric doctor isn't in the hospital (which is actually fairly often here), it's basically up to us to dose and draw the meds since the ER doctors aren't as familiar. Other times it's simple things. For example, overriding multiple Pyxis in order to get enough lung surfactant for a premature baby in a timely manner.
 
what do they do? watch?

They draw up medicines and dose them. I know you want to believe that hospital pharmacists don't do anything, and then you are hoping that you can get that hospital pharmacist job where you don't do anything.......Reality is, if that hospital you are talking about is that slow, its probably on the verge of closing.
 
They draw up medicines and dose them. I know you want to believe that hospital pharmacists don't do anything, and then you are hoping that you can get that hospital pharmacist job where you don't do anything.......Reality is, if that hospital you are talking about is that slow, its probably on the verge of closing.
Can only talk about I've seen my friend

Sorry but I'm not impressed
 
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