Clinically Experienced Non-Traditional

[Xyas]

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Hello everyone. First, thanks for taking the time out of your day to read my topic. I am a emergency medicine clinical pharmacy specialist wanting to go back to med school. I've been working strictly in the ER for the past 4 years with 6 years of hospital experience.

A little about me. I'm currently 31 years old, graduated in 2010 from pharmacy school with my Pharm.D. I did not do a residency. I developed an emergency medicine pharmacist position at my hospital, figuring out the finances to accomodate this. My job consists of a collaborative practice agreement which lets me manage all outpatient pharmacy calls (for example if there is an error in dosing on a prescription), microbiology results where I can request a person return to the emergency department or call in a new prescription due to positive blood cultures, CSF, urine cultures, etc. without a physicians approval, respond to all rapid responses and code blues hospital wide, and I also round with the physician on the majority of patients that they see, giving input for such things as antibiotics, antiarrhythmics, diabetes counseling and other medication recommendations as necessary (I'll also help out with EKG interpretation, CT Scans, X-rays if they want an off the record second opinion as I try to learn as much as I can about everything). I also precept for pharmacy students, pharmacy residents, and DO students who request an elective in emergency medicine pharmacology through a local DO school. I do didactic lectures for the emergency medicine residents, internal medicine residents, and also do lectures for DO students at my hospital. I was asked to speak and presented at a state-regional DO medical conference. I currently have a case report submitted to the American Journal of Emergency Medicine with two physicians I work with that is awaiting approval but from conversations with them looks like (and hopefully will be) approved.

The past three years I have thought long and hard about going to medical school. I've weighed out the advantages and disadvantages. I've given up a relationship with a long term girlfriend as she was not supportive in my decision of wanting to go back to medical school. It will cost me over a million dollars in lost wages, opportunity costs, etc., to do this. I am perfectly content with this. I want to go back because I want to provide better medical care for those in need. I've seen patients die because of medical errors that I couldn't prevent due to my position and believe that some of those patients could be home today with their family members if I was a physician.

My issues. I graduated from pharmacy school with a 3.25 GPA and only had a 3.55 GPA for undergrad. For science and math based courses my undergrad GPA ended up being a 3.81. I am studying hard for the MCAT (which is a lot harder when it's been 10ish years since you've taken the course) but as I review the material is coming back to me faster than I anticipated. My letters of recommendations would come from DO residency directors and other physicians.

My question is. Does my past experience help me out at all in getting accepted? Most of my teaching is with DO schools and residents in a DO residency program which I'm wondering if it would help at all as they're not MDs. My second question is whether or not my life and clinical experiences will be enough to compensate for my lackluster GPA. Would I have to perform extremely well on the MCAT (515+) to even be considered due to my GPA?

Once again, thank you for your time. Any help and input is greatly appreciated.

TL;DR - Clinical Pharmacist with lots of experience wants to go back but isn't sure if he should retake classes or just go for it.

 

[popopopop]

There has been a few threads on pharmacist to physician in the past here, so you might want to try and dig those up. You have very interesting clinical experiences and it's going to catch the eye of a lot of medical schools!

Your GPA is fine and your undergrad GPA is slightly under the median for MD school, so no biggie. Grad school GPA will be calculated differently from your undergrad, regardless of how long it has been. Although the caveat is that in some states/schools, pre-reqs can expire if it has been after a certain time since you've taken them.

You should be able to get into either MD or DO if your MCAT is average or better. No one can truly chance you 100% accurately, but with an MCAT of 508 or better, you'll be a strong candidate for most states unless you're in California. The GPA part wouldn't be your weakness, but some schools might raise an eyebrow because you have no recent courses to show you can still study like a 21 year old pre-med. I *think* this is more school specific.

Do you have a bachelor's? I believe most schools will not take your pharmD degree as a substitute. That is what I recall from reading past threads here. You might want to check.

Make sure you have letter of recs from science professors as most DO schools requires that. I don't know what the requirements are for MD schools, but you should be able to find out by simply going to their webpages.

 

[penicillinman]

PMed you

Hello everyone. First, thanks for taking the time out of your day to read my topic. I am a emergency medicine clinical pharmacy specialist wanting to go back to med school. I've been working strictly in the ER for the past 4 years with 6 years of hospital experience.

A little about me. I'm currently 31 years old, graduated in 2010 from pharmacy school with my Pharm.D. I did not do a residency. I developed an emergency medicine pharmacist position at my hospital, figuring out the finances to accomodate this. My job consists of a collaborative practice agreement which lets me manage all outpatient pharmacy calls (for example if there is an error in dosing on a prescription), microbiology results where I can request a person return to the emergency department or call in a new prescription due to positive blood cultures, CSF, urine cultures, etc. without a physicians approval, respond to all rapid responses and code blues hospital wide, and I also round with the physician on the majority of patients that they see, giving input for such things as antibiotics, antiarrhythmics, diabetes counseling and other medication recommendations as necessary (I'll also help out with EKG interpretation, CT Scans, X-rays if they want an off the record second opinion as I try to learn as much as I can about everything). I also precept for pharmacy students, pharmacy residents, and DO students who request an elective in emergency medicine pharmacology through a local DO school. I do didactic lectures for the emergency medicine residents, internal medicine residents, and also do lectures for DO students at my hospital. I was asked to speak and presented at a state-regional DO medical conference. I currently have a case report submitted to the American Journal of Emergency Medicine with two physicians I work with that is awaiting approval but from conversations with them looks like (and hopefully will be) approved.

The past three years I have thought long and hard about going to medical school. I've weighed out the advantages and disadvantages. I've given up a relationship with a long term girlfriend as she was not supportive in my decision of wanting to go back to medical school. It will cost me over a million dollars in lost wages, opportunity costs, etc., to do this. I am perfectly content with this. I want to go back because I want to provide better medical care for those in need. I've seen patients die because of medical errors that I couldn't prevent due to my position and believe that some of those patients could be home today with their family members if I was a physician.

My issues. I graduated from pharmacy school with a 3.25 GPA and only had a 3.55 GPA for undergrad. For science and math based courses my undergrad GPA ended up being a 3.81. I am studying hard for the MCAT (which is a lot harder when it's been 10ish years since you've taken the course) but as I review the material is coming back to me faster than I anticipated. My letters of recommendations would come from DO residency directors and other physicians.

My question is. Does my past experience help me out at all in getting accepted? Most of my teaching is with DO schools and residents in a DO residency program which I'm wondering if it would help at all as they're not MDs. My second question is whether or not my life and clinical experiences will be enough to compensate for my lackluster GPA. Would I have to perform extremely well on the MCAT (515+) to even be considered due to my GPA?

Once again, thank you for your time. Any help and input is greatly appreciated.

TL;DR - Clinical Pharmacist with lots of experience wants to go back but isn't sure if he should retake classes or just go for it.