Finding Rotations

[Sparda29]

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Anyone have any experience in finding your own rotations? I just found out that our school allows us to find our own sites for elective rotations. I was interested in doing a rotation in surgery but we don't have any sites for that.

If anyone does have experience in this:

#1 - How did you go about finding this site?
#2 - Who did you contact to set up the rotation?

 

[MindOverMatter]

 

[rxlea]

You need to contact whoever is in charge of coordinating your rotations so you can get the right documents/contract paperwork. Then contact the site directly and ask if they are willing to take students from your school or if they have had contracts in the past. If they had them in the past, you can renew the contract. But, since your school is new I am assuming everything is new, right? I would contact the site directly after you obtain the info from your coordinator (docs needed, if you pay, how many hours, curriculum requirements, blahblahblah). It can take a long time, though...

I am heading into 2nd year and I am already trying to get things in motion so I don't have to worry about it. Our rotation coordinator is pretty good about helping out so that should be the first place you go.

 

[All4MyDaughter]

I think it's odd that there are no surgical rotations available through your school. What's up with that?

 

[Sparda29]

I think it's odd that there are no surgical rotations available through your school. What's up with that?

It's a required rotation so I guess they didn't put any effort into finding sites for that. And I'm not sure if we have any faculty who work with surgical teams.

 

[All4MyDaughter]

It's a required rotation so I guess they didn't put any effort into finding sites for that. And I'm not sure if we have any faculty who work with surgical teams.

I assume you mean it is NOT required. If it's required and they have no sites that's baaaaaaaad.

 

[IndustryPharmD]

Well, there are several different ways to find your own rotation:

1) Look online and see if there are any hospitals that offer surgery rotation and then call them up and see whether they will take you (though online search usually works better for industry and government rotations than for hospital based ones)
2) Talk to your professors and see if they know someone who works in that role and might be willing to precept you
3) If both these ways fail, you can cold call all local hospitals' pharmacy departments and see if they would consider precepting you

In parallel, talk to your rotations coordinator to see what would be required of a preceptor both during and after your rotation. That way, if someone by chance does say that they would consider hosting you, you would be able to tell them how much or how little of a commitment it would have to be. That presents a much stronger case in your favor that stumbling, "Eh... uh... let me find out what my school requires." It can also sway the person's decision - if the preceptor has to go to your school once a week, for example, and a 20-page syllabus with fifteen signatures - that's too much for any normal person, but if all that's required is signing off one-page preceptor agreement and then giving you a grade at the end - that won't scare anyone off. Of course, reality is always somewhere between these two extremes.

 

[Sparda29]

I assume you mean it is NOT required. If it's required and they have no sites that's baaaaaaaad.

Oh yeah, that's a typo.

 

[Sparda29]

Well, there are several different ways to find your own rotation:

1) Look online and see if there are any hospitals that offer surgery rotation and then call them up and see whether they will take you (though online search usually works better for industry and government rotations than for hospital based ones)
2) Talk to your professors and see if they know someone who works in that role and might be willing to precept you
3) If both these ways fail, you can cold call all local hospitals' pharmacy departments and see if they would consider precepting you

In parallel, talk to your rotations coordinator to see what would be required of a preceptor both during and after your rotation. That way, if someone by chance does say that they would consider hosting you, you would be able to tell them how much or how little of a commitment it would have to be. That presents a much stronger case in your favor that stumbling, "Eh... uh... let me find out what my school requires." It can also sway the person's decision - if the preceptor has to go to your school once a week, for example, and a 20-page syllabus with fifteen signatures - that's too much for any normal person, but if all that's required is signing off one-page preceptor agreement and then giving you a grade at the end - that won't scare anyone off. Of course, reality is always somewhere between these two extremes.

What I'm thinking about doing is contacting my uncle who is a Chief at a hospital and seeing if he can get me into a rotation with his Clinical Pharmacist. Only thing is that they usually precept students from Wilkes University Nesbit Pharmacy School.

 

[CUpharmD2013]

PM me your email address and I will go into our database and see what sites have agreed to work with our distance students in your area in the past. You're in the NYC area, right? Let me know if you want me to look at Jersey or other areas.

 

[KARM12]

Do you mean surgery as in OR stuff or SICU?

Surgery/OR isn't that that exciting for pharmacy. I used to staff the surgery satellite when I was a resident and it was sooo boring. It was mostly verifying pre-op abx and checking trays. The pharmacist isn't in the actual OR making recs or sitting in on surgeries. It is similar to being man-power in the central pharmacy.

 

[Praziquantel86]

You're in a slightly different situation than many of us because you don't have an alumni network to draw preceptors from. They were always the most willing to sign up as a preceptor, particularly because my school does not offer a stipend to the preceptors.

What I would do is utilize any connections you may have, whether they're family, work, friends, professional organizations, former drinking buddy, etc. Hopefully you should be able to find some willing preceptors with that route. If that doesn't work out, you could potentially cold-call/email DoPs or clinical pharmacists at the sites you're interested in. If you do go this route, make sure you have a solid introduction for yourself worked out.

 

[SoylentGreen]

I was in a similar position, doing rotations 1000 miles from my school. I cold called about a bazillion sites and asked if they would take me as a student, until I got a positive response from enough of them to fill my rotation slots, then handed their contact info over to my school. Just be prepared to be ignored or rejected a lot.

Try to fill the hard-to-find ones first when you have an empty schedule. My amb and hospital rotations were normally fully stocked with students from the local schools, but they just happened to have a few empty slots, at times I could take or leave. It would have been bad to have a relatively easy to find community rotation that conflicted with them.