Are Pharmacy Schools Properly Preparing Their Students?

[English102FTW]

I'm writing on these forums for an English paper about a discourse community of my choice. The community I chose was Pharmacy because I'm interested in the pharmacy field and I was curious to see if the post-university schools are doing a good job of training their students. Having interviewed a few pharmacists in Arizona and doing research through academic journals, most have said that the extra curricular activities and internships are the most effective tools for training students. I would argue that schools with these programs are going to have students who feel more prepared than schools without such programs. As pharmacy students or pharmacists yourselves, would you agree that extra-curricular activities and internships are the best way to train students? Or do you feel there are better ways of doing so. Thanks in advance for responses.

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[Caverject]

I'm writing on these forums for an English paper about a discourse community of my choice. The community I chose was Pharmacy because I'm interested in the pharmacy field and I was curious to see if the post-university schools are doing a good job of training their students. Having interviewed a few pharmacists in Arizona and doing research through academic journals, most have said that the extra curricular activities and internships are the most effective tools for training students. I would argue that schools with these programs are going to have students who feel more prepared than schools without such programs. As pharmacy students or pharmacists yourselves, would you agree that extra-curricular activities and internships are the best way to train students? Or do you feel there are better ways of doing so. Thanks in advance for responses. Be opinionated!

I'm not sure if you really understand what your talking about...

 

[RxWildcat]

I'm lost too, are you asking if school rocks my socks off? Because it doesn't, but I feel that I learn 100X more stuff than I'll use on a daily basis in practice. When you say extracurricular, do you mean working in a pharmacy?

 

[Rumplestiltazepam]

I'm writing on these forums for an English paper about a discourse community of my choice. The community I chose was Pharmacy because I'm interested in the pharmacy field and I was curious to see if the post-university schools are doing a good job of training their students. Having interviewed a few pharmacists in Arizona and doing research through academic journals, most have said that the extra curricular activities and internships are the most effective tools for training students. I would argue that schools with these programs are going to have students who feel more prepared than schools without such programs. As pharmacy students or pharmacists yourselves, would you agree that extra-curricular activities and internships are the best way to train students? Or do you feel there are better ways of doing so. Thanks in advance for responses. Be opinionated!

Beating insolent pharmacy students...

Arguing that training students through internships in a pharmacy setting is a good way to train pharmacists to work in a pharmacy...wow that is insightful

 

[English102FTW]

I'm lost too, are you asking if school rocks my socks off? Because it doesn't, but I feel that I learn 100X more stuff than I'll use on a daily basis in practice. When you say extracurricular, do you mean working in a pharmacy?

Yes, I mean working in pharmacies/residencies or even programs during the summer that go over reading and distributing medications. I was just curious to see if there are students from schools that do not require students to attend these sorts of activities and how prepared they feel without them. I realize it seems redundant to state that extra-curricular activities are successful but that's why I'm arguing for them.

 

[English102FTW]

Maybe this question will help..... Are there any things that could be done INSIDE the classroom that would help students feel more prepared for the real world? Or does it pretty much just come down to those outside the class experiences.

 

[Moxxie]

ALL pharmacy schools in the U.S. require early, intermediate and advanced pharmacy practice experience. There's a minimum number of hours for each. This is a requirement set out by ACPE. If the schools didn't offer them, they couldn't be accredited.

And I seriously doubt that there are any pharmacy schools in this country that provide NO extracurricular activities. It's just the student's choice to participate or not.

I'm not saying that I disagree with you, though - I truly believe that we get a lot of our education from outside the classroom. I agree that it would be more relevant to look at what's taught INSIDE the classroom for your paper - yes, all schools have to teach a basic curriculum, but different schools do it in different ways, or may be harder than others.

 

[RxWildcat]

Well, you learn new things almost everyday working in a pharmacy, so it certainly helps. You must have a strong core with classroom learning though or you'll be lost. Like said before, for a CoP to be accredited they have to incorporate practical experience into the curriculum, so all grads will get some of the experience you are talking about. I think some "hands on" learning types prefer the out of classroom learning experience, but to answer the original question, yes, aside from a crappy school, pharmacy schools do properly prepare students.

 

[PharmDstudent]

The only problem that I've seen with practical experience while in pharmacy school is that it's over-rated. Maybe I just haven't had a very "educational" rotation yet, but every conceptual idea that I've learned from practical experience, I already knew from school or would have learned in school.

I'll admit though... I did watch an Invega infomercial at my first rotation. It was nice to finally see what the heck they were talking about in Pharmaceutics (with the whole push-pull osmotic delivery system).
Note- Invega is expensive!!!


It drives me crazy when they teach us one thing in school, and then I see it practiced in a totally opposite way at work/rotations, e.g. max duration of benzos for sleep is suppose to be #14 1 t po qhs --> patient gets Triazolam #30 1 t po qhs at work.

 

[bananaface]

Having worked in a pharmacy before pharmacy school, I can say that you have the opportunity to become skilled at intrapersonal and situational aspects of practice on the job, but you in no way "learn more" at work than school. If we learned more that way, we may as well generate pharmacists by apprenticeship.

For myself, I find that work facilitates my classroom learning by allowing me to process, organize, and apply things in context as I go along. But, everyone is going to feel differently because we all learn differently.

 

[njac]

i find a nice collaboration between the school work and the work-work.

Having job experience makes certain topics much easier in school. Having school experience makes me more valuable than many (untrained in that sense) techs.

I cannot imagine making it to the end of my 3rd year without the practical experience that I've gained from working as an intern. As far as my required school rotations, my retail was a joke, and I was able to get the hospital rotation that I did due to my personal connections and hospital experience. I set that up by myself, the school had almost nothing to do with it.

I'm sure that people can graduate without any external intern hours and be ok pharmacists, but I think it's necessary to see how things are in "the real world". Like PDS said - things aren't always done by the book in the real world.