How knowledgeable are you now/ post graduation?

[pharmstud]

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For those who are still students, how knowledgeable are you? Can you answer most of customers questions or do you have to look most of things up?

For those who graduated, how long did it take you to be on top of the game?

Thanks!!!🙂

 

[BrightLight]

It depends on the setting where you practice pharmacy. For me, my school taught me a lot that I do not need to know to succeed in my job, and there is a lot I need to know for my job that my school did not teach me. While I may not have known as much as I have while I was a pharmacy student, I now know more relevant stuff for my career than I did when I was a student.

 

[mustang sally]

I sort of feel there is a tipping point post-graduation where you may start becoming less knowledgable (depending on factors such as residency, practice setting, etc.). A lot of clinical knowledge taught in pharmacy school may be forgotten. Use it or lose it.

But hopefully you end up knowing most of the information that is relevant to your job (still trying to get to that point personally, but I'm just starting out).

 

[pharmstud]

Thanks for sharing...I think sometimes we are overwhelmed by the large amount of info that we do not remember info right away or at all, which can be challenging sometimes

 

[rxlea]

I thought I would feel stupid on my rotation and not know anything but I surprised myself with what I remember about infectious disease and acute care. I think our curriculum does a decent job of preparing us with the practical knowledge in those areas. I also felt confident in talking to patients about diabetes and associated disease states. I was sketchy with things like arthritis and anemia, though. I had to look at Hep C and HIV stuff too. I knew nothing about OB and peds lol

Third year will get more intense with therapeutics. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[rx2010]

I graduated 2 years ago and have been working retail since. I honestly lost a lot of my clinical knowledge from school since I rarely deal with that in retail. I started my retail job as a pharmacist with no experience other than rotations, which all I did was count pills all day anyways. Now, it's like I'm an expert in fixing insurance adjudications and being able to run a pharmacy with just you and one tech and some days, no tech. If I had to take the NAPLEX again, I'm sure I would fail it big time... This is one of the reasons why I hate retail, I feel like all of the things I learned in school has been wasted. 🙁

 

[BrightLight]

I graduated 2 years ago and have been working retail since. I honestly lost a lot of my clinical knowledge from school since I rarely deal with that in retail. I started my retail job as a pharmacist with no experience other than rotations, which all I did was count pills all day anyways. Now, it's like I'm an expert in fixing insurance adjudications and being able to run a pharmacy with just you and one tech and some days, no tech. If I had to take the NAPLEX again, I'm sure I would fail it big time... This is one of the reasons why I hate retail, I feel like all of the things I learned in school has been wasted. 🙁

It depends how you look at things. If you only focus on the most mundane parts of daily requests from customers at retail, you will surely feel that school knowledge has been wasted. However, if you really pay thoughtful attentions, you will find plenty of opportunities to practice your clinical knowledge in everyday situations. A common example, if a crackhead comes to your pharmacy, cuts in front of a line of customers during rush hour, and asks you to open the restroom door for him or he will take all the time in the world he has and complain to the corporate, you can simply comply to his request and return to the pharmacy right away and complain to yourself how you went to school for 4 years to end up doing this kind of chit. Or you can remember that a crackhead is prone to constipation because he abuses narcotics. You can then let him know, "I will be more than willing to drop my current work and piss off all my waiting customers so I can walk out of my pharmacy and open the restroom door for you, but do you mind if I first ask you if you have any troubles going number 2?". The crackhead will stare at you with full surprise and utters, "Dang, you do know my ass well!". Then you can continue to listen to him describing how his poo poo problem has also caused him to bleed from behind, which allows you to identify another medical problem he has--hemorrhoid. Now you are ready to solve his medical problems with your clinical knowledge by recommending the appropriate OTC products, and perhaps even demonstrate to him how to use them. 😴

 

[Pharmacy Kid]

I've come a looooooong way. Good God, I've come a long way. There was a huge learning curve for the first 3 months, then there was a smoother learning curve until 6 months. Now I feel comfortable to be alone in a hospital (which I am for about once a week). I'm always steadily learning something new, whether I want to or not.

 

[mustang sally]

It depends on the setting where you practice pharmacy. For me, my school taught me a lot that I do not need to know to succeed in my job, and there is a lot I need to know for my job that my school did not teach me. While I may not have known as much as I have while I was a pharmacy student, I now know more relevant stuff for my career than I did when I was a student.

This is very true! I learn random stuff everyday that school didn't teach me and I didn't learn because I didn't work in a hospital. On the other hand, I can almost feel some knowledge I picked up in school oozing out of my brain.

 

[xiphoid2010]

I don't feel like I lost much of what I learned in school, residency and still doing clinical work helps to keep that aspect up. What I feel the most threatening is knowledge going out of date. You feel clueless when patients get admitted on some brand new drug that came out after school/residency and isn't used in an acute care setting,