i never called it "tech work," zpak implied that i meant tech work. i don't have a job at a hospital. i have been interning at retail for over a year and i know what it is like to work you way up. i started out at the freaking drive-thru non stop and now i have lots of tasks that i have mastered and can do. that is not the problem. i am thinking about finding a hospital job, but i have heard how certain hospitals just give you mindless tasks and do not teach you a thing. we all have limited time to learn and serving as a courier does not seem like a hard task to master--i think anyone with half a brain could get it done and done right. these hospitals do not feel a responsibility to teach an intern how to be a pharmacist and will take advantage of you and have you do this most of the days you work. And most interns do not work that much, so you could be an intern for a year and still not have learned a damn thing b/c you work about 1 day a week and they give you tasks like that the whole time.
Unfortunately, this thread has become about you when the OP originally asked what kinds of tasks a hospital intern might encounter & how to address the people who might change things if the tasks did not evolve with his level of education.
To the OP - did we answer your questions? If not...let us know & we'll try again.
However, for alwaystired, your thinking is often the case when we have a situation as you describe - an intern 1 day a week who wants to get right to the most clinical & least repetitive setting. However, you know that's not how training goes - either thru your own experience or thru hearsay of your friends. All of us start interns off with routine work which is easy to teach, allows us to get our work done while they learn the task & gives the intern a feeling of learning something concrete. Unless I'm precepting a rotation, that is exactly how I start an intern.
As much as you dislike it, we won't change it for you because its important we, as preceptors, don't give you the impression we don't do "tech" work every single day we work. Why???? Because if we do, you'll then want to go out & find that job which involves no routine, mundane pharmacy "chores". Then you give your coworkers & your dop grief because you only want to be on the front lines & you never want to do drug expiration checks or deliver drugs to the floor because a tech called in sick or pyxis fill (my definition of boredom!). We get interns to the aminoglycoside dosing in time, but that's easy - to learn & accomplish. Its harder to teach interspersonal skills, time management, what can be put aside during an emergency, what is an emergency, etc....
As you say, anyone with half a brain could get routine work done & done right...but..there is a huge lawsuit over the deaths of 3 neonates due to a wrong pyxis fill (which is about as routine as it gets) & the tech, the pharmacist & the pharmacy all share in that responsibility. So....obviously, your theory is flawed & learning how to do routine & mundane tasks over & over again correctly every time is one in which pharmacists need to get good at & develop their own checks & balances. If you never develop it yourself, you cannot & will not be a good supervisor of techs when you get to that point.
If you continue with the mindset you have that we take advantage of you - you won't learn anything while you're there. You are keeping yourself from developing an opportunity to learn that besides what can be derived from a formula. As for a limited time to learn....well-that is your whole career. I'm older than Zpak & I still learn from him as well as the younger pharmacists who I work with & they from me.
Good luck with your rotations & I hope you find the intern position that works for you.
OP - did we answer your questions?
