Ippe

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futuredruggist

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Starting this year all schools must add 5% more hours to the PharmD curriculum, called IPPEs (introductory pharmacy experiences). I am at UCSF where this year we get 60 hours shadowing, 20 hours from courses (like immunization training), and recommended ~20 hours community service. How are the IPPEs structured at other schools?
 
The 5% amount at UIC equals to 300 hours. We already have about 75 hours in the current curriculum.
The new additions to the curriculum are as follows: P1s will take a week off regular classes next week and shadow the P-4s and their preceptors.
The P-2s will take several full days and shadow the P-4s and their preceptors.
During the summer between P-3 and P-4 year, a new experential course will be introduced. It will be medicine rotation lite plus CPR, immunization training, and bioterrorism/epidemic preparedness training. Due to this new course, a clerkship will be removed, and so, we will have only 6 rotations.
At UIC, time was not on our side to make up these new requirements because we are being reaccredited this year.
 
genesis09 said:
The 5% amount at UIC equals to 300 hours. We already have about 75 hours in the current curriculum.
The new additions to the curriculum are as follows: P1s will take a week off regular classes next week and shadow the P-4s and their preceptors.
The P-2s will take several full days and shadow the P-4s and their preceptors.
During the summer between P-3 and P-4 year, a new experential course will be introduced. It will be medicine rotation lite plus CPR, immunization training, and bioterrorism/epidemic preparedness training. Due to this new course, a clerkship will be removed, and so, we will have only 6 rotations.
At UIC, time was not on our side to make up these new requirements because we are being reaccredited this year.
Click to expand...

We do 80 hours in site visits (just like P4s), and 20 in volunteering. Or you can get all 100 in site visits.
 
I was the last class that wasn't forced to do it. Yay me.

I think it's a stupid-ass idea. They take time away from 4th year rotations and sprinkle them throughout the other three years. WTF is the point of putting a lost, confused P-1 in a hospital now rather than giving them the needed experience after they actually learned the **** after didactics....?

But who am I....
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
I was the last class that wasn't forced to do it. Yay me.

I think it's a stupid-ass idea. They take time away from 4th year rotations and sprinkle them throughout the other three years. WTF is the point of putting a lost, confused P-1 in a hospital now rather than giving them the needed experience after they actually learned the **** after didactics....?

But who am I....
Click to expand...

At OU, they don't put us "lost" P1s in a hospital, but in retail, just to get our feet wet.
 
cycloketocaine said:
At OU, they don't put us "lost" P1s in a hospital, but in retail, just to get our feet wet.
Click to expand...

Actually now that I think about it....I think that's what they do at WVU, too. Then hospital for P-2...which is still too early.
 
In order to meet the new IPPE requirements Butler now requires 300 hours unpaid experience. Luckily these new requirements are not retroactive. As a result my class still have to meet the 300 hour requirement but we were able to receive compensation for these hours.

I actually have a question for those of you that go to schools where your experiences are spread out throughout the curriculum; do you feel that this helps? Does it give you a better understanding of what is expected of you once you are on rotations? I'm actually thinking about writing a proposal about instituting earlier practice experiences. I've actually talked to a few students from schools that have instituted organized ‘shadowing experiences' but I didn't really get a lot of feedback regarding their experiences.

I've actually worked in both hospital and retail pharmacy and I was just wondering what everyone's opinion is regarding this issue. If anyone has any idea feels free to respond.
 
At USN, we have IPPE every other friday. We go to sites like Walgreens and work there for 8 hours. This is through P1 and P2 years for a total of 40 IPPE visits (320 hours).

ButlerPharm.D. said:
I actually have a question for those of you that go to schools where your experiences are spread out throughout the curriculum; do you feel that this helps? Does it give you a better understanding of what is expected of you once you are on rotations?
Click to expand...

I think it definately helps. I've been slowly building up on my responsibilities. By third year rotations, I think I'll have a good handle on what I need to do. This is also what fellow P2 students have told me.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
Actually now that I think about it....I think that's what they do at WVU, too. Then hospital for P-2...which is still too early.
Click to expand...
The exposure is helpful for folks who haven't worked pharmacy before, because they can see how coursework relates to practice. And, students get exposure to an overall greater number of practice sites than if all they saw was their internship and 4th year rotations.
 
bananaface said:
The exposure is helpful for folks who haven't worked pharmacy before, because they can see how coursework relates to practice. And, students get exposure to an overall greater number of practice sites than if all they saw was their internship and 4th year rotations.
Click to expand...

That's all great and fantabulous, but...at least at WVU...they are now doing 9 rotations instead of 11 in their fourth year. They are taking away from their experiential year to give them "exposure" in environments where they can't apply as much stuff as they could have before. I think it's silly. I suppose if you added the "exposure" in addition to the full slate of rotations, it would be fine....but that would be annoying as hell. It's almost as bad as making people memorize the top 200 drugs before they have anything to base it on. It's like saying "here's numbers 0-9..now do calculus.." I need some damn sleep. God I hate being sick..
 
So I just called my preceptor. A lady picks up the phone.

I say, "Hi. My name is such and such, and I'm a pharmacy student, a P2. I'm calling about my early pharmacy practice experience. May I speak with such and such(my preceptor)?". I continue to explain my purpose, but the lady isn't following.

The lady says, "I don't understand what you're saying".
So she asks, "When did you get your order?".

I don't have a clue. All this stuff's Greek to me.
So I reply, "I don't know, this semester some time."

I ask emphatically this time, "Is such and such(my preceptor) there?"

"No. He'll be back later this evening."
The lady replies, "So are you a student?".

"Yes. I'm a P2."

"Ok. What's your name?"

"Such and such(my name)."

"What's your phone number?"

I say it loud and clear, "AREA CODE ### ### ####".

She replies, "### ### ####. Ok. I'll have him call you later today."

Things just have a way of going nowhere...such is life...🙄.
 
futuredruggist said:
Starting this year all schools must add 5% more hours to the PharmD curriculum, called IPPEs (introductory pharmacy experiences). I am at UCSF where this year we get 60 hours shadowing, 20 hours from courses (like immunization training), and recommended ~20 hours community service. How are the IPPEs structured at other schools?
Click to expand...

At Mercer, we have 32 hours per year required of service learning/volunteering, and then each year we also have a specific IPPE outcome (P1 is retail, P2 is chronic care, and P3 is hospital). Each of those basically requires 4 hours per week for an entire semester, i.e. you have the IPPE either fall or spring semester, but not both. Then, we also have a 4 hour shadowing requirement in P1, and a varying number of hours per year in a patient caring project (basically, you have a patient that you follow with several visits over time).

I have only done the retail one so far - I actually got more out of it than I was expecting. However, because this 4 hours of IPPE is scheduled at a specific time during the week, it is really impacting the scheduling of our core classes and participation in organizations in a very negative way, IMHO.
 
Interesting how differently schools are handling this...

My school is making us do two 3 week summer rotations. One between the P1 and P2 year and one between the P2 and P3 year. If you want to go somewhere in particular, you can pretty much set it up so you can be there. If not, I guess you get randomly assigned some place. I imagine many people will do it wherever they've got a summer job. The problem is that you've got to pay tuition for 3 credits and you can't be paid by your internship site because that's against the rules. I've been a technician in retail for 5 years and I really don't want to do the rotation with my current employer. I can't imagine that I'd really get much out of it. They'd certainly be happy to have me work for free though. I'm going to try to set something up with one of the local hospitals (plus I'll be able to work some at my current job too, so I can actually earn some money).

Those two summer rotations only make up for 240 hours. The other 60 are worked into the curriculum. This semseter (P1) we've got to shadow at the campus pharmacy (for something pathetic like 2 hours) and work at a pharmacy related community event (like a flu shot clinic or BP screening). Apparently, they can also count reflective writings 🙄 and certain classroom things as part of IPPE also.
 
McZyprexalynn said:
Interesting how differently schools are handling this...

My school is making us do two 3 week summer rotations. One between the P1 and P2 year and one between the P2 and P3 year. If you want to go somewhere in particular, you can pretty much set it up so you can be there. If not, I guess you get randomly assigned some place. I imagine many people will do it wherever they've got a summer job. The problem is that you've got to pay tuition for 3 credits and you can't be paid by your internship site because that's against the rules. I've been a technician in retail for 5 years and I really don't want to do the rotation with my current employer. I can't imagine that I'd really get much out of it. They'd certainly be happy to have me work for free though. I'm going to try to set something up with one of the local hospitals (plus I'll be able to work some at my current job too, so I can actually earn some money).
Click to expand...

The issue is that you cannot be paid for your IPPE experiences. My college has rules on being a preceptor. Also, it has to be direct patient care, whatever that means. I do know for a while they were thinking of making some of the APhA clinics required.
My class and the P-2s will not have the full 300 hours, but they say it will be okay and fine. Also, in the future, they might change around the requirements when the stress of the reaccreditation is gone.
Tomorrow, I have the "joy" of writing my first SOAP note based off an outpatient interview. Our SOAP notes are notoriously long. PharmD students are required to write the longest SOAP notes of any of the health care students.
 
genesis09 said:
PharmD students are required to write the longest SOAP notes of any of the health care students.
Click to expand...

Which is soooo frustrating because NO ONE wants to read a 2 page SOAP note, seriously.
 
alwaystired said:
Which is soooo frustrating because NO ONE wants to read a 2 page SOAP note, seriously.
Click to expand...

This one is going to be especially ripe because the patient was a transplant patient.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
That's all great and fantabulous, but...at least at WVU...they are now doing 9 rotations instead of 11 in their fourth year. They are taking away from their experiential year to give them "exposure" in environments where they can't apply as much stuff as they could have before. I think it's silly. I suppose if you added the "exposure" in addition to the full slate of rotations, it would be fine....but that would be annoying as hell. It's almost as bad as making people memorize the top 200 drugs before they have anything to base it on. It's like saying "here's numbers 0-9..now do calculus.." I need some damn sleep. God I hate being sick..
Click to expand...
The IPPE are supposed to add 300 hrs to the school coordinated intern hours, not to move 300H from 4th year to the other years. Maybe your school had more then the required number of hours to begin with? Or, maybe they are still doing the same number of hours during 4th year, just allocated into fewer rotations? The 300hrs should reduce the number of non-school based intern hours, not the rotation time.

I checked. Schools are still required to have 25% of the curriculum as 4th year rotations. A separate 5% of the curriculum is required for IPPE.
http://rxweb.ulm.edu/pharmacy/acpe/acpestandards.pdf#curriculum
 
Right now we get 40hrs IPPE retail and 40 hours hospital in the first year (rotating retail/hospital between 1st and 2nd semester) We have an IV rotation 2nd year, but I don't know exactly how many hours are involved. They also require us to go through APhA immunization training, but I don't know if that qualifies as IPPE or not. We only have 6 4th year rotations, I didn't realize other schools had 7-11.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
I was the last class that wasn't forced to do it. Yay me.

I think it's a stupid-ass idea. They take time away from 4th year rotations and sprinkle them throughout the other three years. WTF is the point of putting a lost, confused P-1 in a hospital now rather than giving them the needed experience after they actually learned the **** after didactics....?

But who am I....
Click to expand...

Totally agreed. I was just at one of my shadowing sites, and it was completely useless. I sat there and talked to my preceptor for 4 hours (we were doing a flu shot clinic...so we were handing out forms for patients to sign). I understand where they are TRYING to go with it, but I think they misunderstood the definition of "real world". Yes, having first year students go out and get their feet wet in the environment in which they will work sounds like a swell idea.

The reality is, having hundreds of first and second year clueless pharmacy students go out into one area to try to gain experience is ridiculous. The area surrounding our school in about a 10 mile radius is COMPLETELY saturated. Now I'm worried about how I'm going to get my useless service learning experience out of the way when every location I call says "we're booked". Yes, the area is so saturated, they reject volunteers...free workers.

At the very least, if they are going to make us do this IPPE thing, their own idea, they should structure it properly. The burden should be on them to coordinate these things, not telling us the assignment and throwing us out there. It may be a good idea conceived, but it's sure as hell poorly realized.
 
Many schools are making official complaints about the new IPPE requirement. Many of them have no idea what to do. Not every school is in a major metropolitan area. My school already has a well organized flu shot clinic and diabetes program. When we go through experential 5, they will have it under the P-3 curriculum. However, we will call ourselves P-4s. This is just nuts.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with this year's crop of reaccreditation schools.
 
The P2s at my COP have to do 80 hours of early practice experience each semester. That equals 160hrs/year in addition to the 32 credit hours/year. 😱

I just tried to contact my preceptor again. I have to speak with his secretary again 😡. She wants me to leave my phone number so that he can call me back, but I tell her that I've already tried to call three times. She asks me if I'm "the student". I tell her that I am. She tells me to have the IPPE coordinator call her. I ask her why she has to speak with the coordinator- maybe I can speak to the coordinator directly??

Finally she gets to the point. "We already have one student, and we can't have another student because that would be too much."
Therefore, I'll probably have to be reassigned and start the whole process over again.

This whole thing has ruined my plan to get some hours done over Fall Break. I'll just work on my Pathophys paper instead. It has to be at least 12 pages in length. My topic is: ALS
 
jackbauer1 said:
When do the P-2s shadow the P-4s? I'm a P-4, and I didn't get a P-1 student and I kind of want one.
Click to expand...

The P-2s have several scattered Thursdays. I don't think that plan will be implemented until next year or semester. I haven't heard of the P-2s going away thus far.
 
I got some hours done for my early practice experience! Yay!
My experience consisted of talking about the Naplex, prepacking albuterol, and listening to the soulful side of music.

While I was prepacking the albuterol into 90's and 120's, I starred at the transplant drug section. The drugs included: CellCept, Myfortec, Anzemet, Declomycin, Emend, Prednisone, Cyclosporine, Prograf, Rapamune, Xeloda, Kytril, and generic Zofran. It was an interesting collection.
 
I understand the new requirements for IPPE are 80 hours/ semester, which equates to roughly 5 hours per week. I'm sure this differs among the different schools, but what do you guys have to do? Are you locked into one site? What kinds of places do you get to visit? I'd appreciate input from P1's - P3's as I'm sure the "things" you get to do are different based on your level of education. But for a P1 just starting out, what do you do at the sites? Thanks! 🙂
 
CaliCPhT said:
I understand the new requirements for IPPE are 80 hours/ semester, which equates to roughly 5 hours per week. I'm sure this differs among the different schools, but what do you guys have to do? Are you locked into one site? What kinds of places do you get to visit? I'd appreciate input from P1's - P3's as I'm sure the "things" you get to do are different based on your level of education. But for a P1 just starting out, what do you do at the sites? Thanks! 🙂
Click to expand...
Check out this thread link:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=5702123

It will really depend on the school...
 
bananaface said:
Cali - Do you want to have this thread mergedwith the existing one?
Click to expand...

Sure... Although I'd still like more input on exactly what you get to do at the sites. I'm sure you don't play Scrabble with the patients (though that may be fun...) 😀
 
I'm sure every school is different.

Our P1's shadow at 5 sites for 8 H each. Between 1st and 3rd years, students do a 2 week (80H) community rotation and a 3 week (120H) hospital rotation. During that time they are expected to function, not just to observe. Anytime before the end of 3rd year, students complete 30 hours of professional or service learning activities, minimum 10 from each category. The service activities have to be pharm related and all must be pharmacists supervised.
 
I was wondering what sort of systems your schools have set up for the various IPPE rotations that are now required.

Ours are set up as an increasing amount every year (50 hours P1, 100 hours P2, 150 hours P3) with the individual students doing the bulk of scheduling. We also have different requirements for the amount of time that we spend at a certain site, depending on what year we're in.

Just thought I'd throw this out there, see what other schools are doing around the country.
 
school provides the site
3 hours per week per semester (42/sem, or 84/year)
built in to our schedules

This is for P-1 at my school, can't speak for the rest of the upcoming years. I was at a small outpatient clinic last semester and doing community pharmacy this semester. I basically stand around and shoot the breeze with the pharmacists on duty and joke around with the store manager. It's great.
 
My school has them set up 4 hours a week for 10 weeks, per semester. So about 80 hours a year. I think they did say we are required to get some of the 300 required hours on our own in the summer.
 
Praziquantel86 said:
I was wondering what sort of systems your schools have set up for the various IPPE rotations that are now required.

Ours are set up as an increasing amount every year (50 hours P1, 100 hours P2, 150 hours P3) with the individual students doing the bulk of scheduling. We also have different requirements for the amount of time that we spend at a certain site, depending on what year we're in.

Just thought I'd throw this out there, see what other schools are doing around the country.
Click to expand...

32 hours per year of service learning, 56 (I think) per year but this is done in one semester at 4 hours per week (community, speciality/LTC, institutional), and then the balance is made up with following a specific patient over several years (multiple visits), mock MTM, and some other misc. small projects. Unfortunately, it's been like a moving target for my class because we were the first one that had to meet the new ACPE requirements. Definitely not my favorite thing about pharmacy school.
 
rxlynn said:
32 hours per year of service learning, 56 (I think) per year but this is done in one semester at 4 hours per week (community, speciality/LTC, institutional), and then the balance is made up with following a specific patient over several years (multiple visits), mock MTM, and some other misc. small projects. Unfortunately, it's been like a moving target for my class because we were the first one that had to meet the new ACPE requirements. Definitely not my favorite thing about pharmacy school.
Click to expand...

yeah we have def been the guinea pigs on this one too. So it seems like its built into everyone's schedule. Ours is completely up to us, the students to plan sites and time. It would be nice to have a time built into the schedule, but I prefer to pick my own sites. We have to balance the types of sites however
 
We have 120 hours in a community setting summer after P1 and another 120 in a hospital setting summer after P2 (40 hours/week X 3 weeks each). Scheduling is all done for us. We submit top choices and date ranges. The 60 remaining hours are split between a pharmaceutical care clinic in P3 and mentoring/community teaching in P1.
 
This is what we've had for P1 so far:

Fall semester half the class did retail IPPE (40 hours) while the other half did hospital (32 hours). Then Spring semester the ones that did retail did/are doing hospital and vice versa.

The school assists with finding preceptors, but the hours can be done whenever. For the fall semester we had the option of either doing it during the semester or during winter break. For the spring semester we had the choice of either doing it during the semester and/or spring break or during the first 2 weeks of summer vacation (which I'm doing). After the IPPE is done there is a roundtable discussion scheduled. Since I am doing my IPPE during break, I'll have to go back on campus at the end of May for my roundtable.
 
great article Praziquantel.

I find it unfortunate that the called for changes will take place long after we're practicing.
 
Praziquantel86 said:
Pharmacotherapy just published a very interesting editorial on the entire experiential education process:

http://www.atypon-link.com/PPI/doi/pdf/10.1592/phco.29.5.491

Evidently the students aren't the only ones suffering.
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for posting this link. I had been hearing rumors in the last month that IPPE was becoming a very hot topic among faculty, but I didn't realize that it was on the radar screen of quite such influential faculty as the authors of this article.

My school has had a lot of issues relating to IPPEs partly because of where we happened to fall in the visit cycle for reaccreditation. So, apparently we were one of the earlier schools that had to put the 300 hour requirement into effect.
 
Sparda29 said:
Is it true that you're not allowed to touch **** when you're on IPPE?
Click to expand...

It really depends on your preceptor. I've been at some sites where I sit around and shadow and others where I'm allowed to count, type, make IVs, check charts, obviously being checked because they don't know me. Like I said, depends on the site and how comfortable they are with students.
 
it all depends on site and preceptor

at my hospital ippe...i just did some filling, and sat around the rest of the time

it was very exciting🙄
 
The entire concept of IPPE is dumb, IMO. What's happening is that schools are taking away rotations from the final year of advanced rotations and putting them in between school years.

Basically what you wind up with is a bunch of clueless kids wandering around rotation sites being, well, clueless...and this is done in opposition to having a bunch of kids that have finished the classroom portion of pharmacy school adding breadth to their knowledge base with more rotations.

I disagree with the entire concept. Plus, the execution of the entire thing from the ACPE was a cluster****.

My class was among the final to have 11 month-long rotations after our 4th year...I can't imagine how much dumber and how much different my life would be if I had to take away my three last rotations. I work at rotation #9...rotation #10 was with a member of the National Acadamies of Practice...I've never learned as much in my life during the course of a month...and #11 was with a young faculty member that learned me a ton and actually embraced my bizarre obsession with pharmacology.

But...that's just me...
 
Last edited:
UCSF is telling the ACPE that they don't think the 300 hours for IPPE's is necessary. However, the ACPE disagrees. So the IPPE thing is kind of up in the air at the moment. They're trying to focus on competencies instead so we have a list of competencies that we need to fulfill. They reassure us that we'll graduate though. Is UCSF the only school that is fighting the ACPE on the IPPE issue? Just curious. . .
 
chibipinkbunny said:
Is UCSF the only school that is fighting the ACPE on the IPPE issue? Just curious. . .
Click to expand...
I hope not! 😎


I think the ACPE organization needs to be canned. It's worthless, for all I'm concerned...
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
The entire concept of IPPE is dumb, IMO. What's happening is that schools are taking away rotations from the final year of advanced rotations and putting them in between school years.

Basically what you wind up with is a bunch of clueless kids wandering around rotation sites being, well, clueless...and this is done in opposition to having a bunch of kids that have finished the classroom portion of pharmacy school adding breadth to their knowledge base with more rotations.
Click to expand...

On many levels, I agree it would be better to have finished the classroom portion of pharmacy school before starting rotations. But at the same time, I think it really depends on the student and the type of rotations.

For example, I have 4 to 5 years of outpatient pharmacy experience and I'm starting school this fall. I believe I would have a better chance of catching on faster with the knowledge learned in a community/outpatient pharmacy setting than in a hospital one. Nonetheless, since my pharmacy program is 2 + 2, I'll have plenty of chances to apply the classroom knowledge in my later 2 years of rotations, no?
 
Some administrators at UIC said they have heard of several school trying to fight ACPE on the IPPE rules.

I had my P-1 look at chart and then give a presentation on a major disease state that person had.
 
PharmDstudent said:
I hope not! 😎


I think the ACPE organization needs to be canned. It's worthless, for all I'm concerned...
Click to expand...

Then what do you suggest to avoid the Pharm-D becoming the product of diploma mills or do you think we should just throw in the towell?
 
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