I have not worked in a hospital setting since my intern days which is ages ago. I do have clinical experience however working for a managed care company. Done a few gigs with LTC so I'm familiar a bit with I.V preps. NOthing major in term of kinetic dosing. Any advice I need to know on how to prepare for the interview. Frankly, I'm surprised they even offer an interview since I thought my inpatient experience was rather limited. I guess worse case scenario give my best shot and go on from there.
My first interview with a hospital. Advice needed
- Thread starter ZeroLemon
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Be prepared to answer:
1) Any supervising experience?
2) Knowledgeable about Joint Commission?
3) How you deal with conflicts?
4) Any experience with Pyxis?
5) Tell us about yourself
6) And other clinical experience if you have
1) Any supervising experience?
2) Knowledgeable about Joint Commission?
3) How you deal with conflicts?
4) Any experience with Pyxis?
5) Tell us about yourself
6) And other clinical experience if you have
Depends on the facility, I guess...At my first hospital job interview, I was only interviewed by the pharmacy people, i.e. DOP, Clinical Managers, other staff pharmacists, and lead technician. At my 2nd which is current job now, obviously the whole pharmacy department, but I was also interviewed by the group of physicians (5 or 6 of them) and hospital's CNO. This is a smaller hospital(~100 beds), chance is I will see and interact with a small group of health care providers and workers on a daily basis. Therefore, I think they'd like to know me personally really well.
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That's your typical "peer interview".
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Every hospital I interviewed at had a clinical case...mostly covered basic topics like anticoagulation, sedation, ID anxious selection/stewardship, and general prioritize room of stuff. Another hospital administered a written test and I had to do some basic conversions and build a TPN from scratch.
Not difficult if you're fresh and have done all that within the past year or two.
Not difficult if you're fresh and have done all that within the past year or two.
They gave you a clinical case and exam for a staff position?
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Yes - but all of the positions I applied for weren't "strict staff or strict clinical" and there's a movement away from hiring like that (at least in California). With the glut of PGY1's on the market, hospitals can snap up a clinically-minded practitioner, stick them in an "on paper" staff position, and elevate the acuity of the position that way.
So the titles varied from "staff pharmacist" to "pharmacist" to "clinical pharmacist" but the description of what I would be doing pretty much remained unchanged. So yes, I got a clinical case/test each time, not very difficult, but designed to poke around in how you think.
Proviso here is that I'm in California and in a bubble of sorts, not sure what is going on in the rest of the country.
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Damn I have no ideas about tpns, we outsource those.
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Its witchcraft I tell ya.
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but you still have to input it right? i agree though, completely different thought process vs. doing everything manually. i had to do both.
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I've never done it since its always done in the morning. They don't allow docs to order TPNs after 12PM.
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good skill to know, don't become one of those know-nothing/"not in my job description" union jerks you work with.
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I think I did it one time, but that was during training and I think for the most part it was pre-mixed bags of dextrose and amino acids and we just had to draw up the necessary amounts and add multivitamins and electrolytes.
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Most mid size hospital down I know are shifting towards clinimix + few custom tpns. Contracted tpns typically run you $180 or so a bag, clinimix run you $100 without the headache of it miscommunication and delays. The occasional customs isn't too much of a hassel. Larger facilities may still find an robotic compounder worth the investment, and do çentral fill for near by smaller facilities.
Also its typical for most facilities to have a cut of time or a D10 gets hung. Lytes are drawn in am so no order by early afternoon is the md's fault, and usually only on first shift in pharmacy has the manpower, clinical pharmacists, and experience with making tpns.
During my IPPEs at some crappy hospital, I was asked to go in on a saturday to help out a new rph (been working for 1 year) in the IV room. It was just the 2 of us and I've only worked retail...long story short it was a COMPLETE mess b/c he didn't want to ask the other rphs for help.
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Operationally we cut off at noon, otherwise it's D10. I was just telling sparda to pick up some skills, too early to kick back and say it's out of his job description
One facility I interviewed at had TPN per pharmacy protocol, so MD was fully hands off and it was just the RD + PharmD managing it. We use CAPS for contracted TPN's...saves so much labor, our previous TPN workflow involved tying up a pharmacist for custom calcs, a tech for compounding, then a two-pharmacist check was employed like chemo.
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uhm, that almost becomes a patient safety issue. errors and problems are less apparent w/ parenteral compounding vs. straight PO dispensed drugs. what was the problem though...poor technique? poor workflow? not knowing where things are?
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The inpatient hospital has the robotic compounder and the LTAC uses Clinimix. Both places use a blank Clinimix instead of D10 unless the TPN that's already been hanging runs out - then they'll use D10. I wish both places would use Clinimix, but I don't think that you can get a contracted TPN within a 100 miles. So, the robotic compounder is a fail-safe.
We cut off early in the evening at both facilities whenever the clinical pharmacists go home or the LTAC closes. Both places have TPN per pharmacy protocol.Operationally we cut off at noon, otherwise it's D10. I was just telling sparda to pick up some skills, too early to kick back and say it's out of his job description
One facility I interviewed at had TPN per pharmacy protocol, so MD was fully hands off and it was just the RD + PharmD managing it. We use CAPS for contracted TPN's...saves so much labor, our previous TPN workflow involved tying up a pharmacist for custom calcs, a tech for compounding, then a two-pharmacist check was employed like chemo.
At my first job @ a small acute care general hospital, TPN's electrolye adjustment is per pharmacy, macro stuff per RD. We have tried to use Clinimix w/ or w/o E if we can, otherwise it's a sheer calculation for every single electrolytes (Na, K,Ca, Phos, Mag). The trickiest ones are NICU TPNs which I'm still afraid of doing. We have Neofax to help us with calculation but sometimes when Neofax is down or when certain things are not available and Neofax is not programmed to know not to use those, we have to manually calculate everything again. Then, we compounded those TPNs at our facility. So much time-consuming, imagine days we both adult and NICU TPNs running all over the floor, and it's down to only 2 pharmacists and 2 IV techs.
Now, with my 2nd job at an inpatient rehab, we get maybe like less than 5 TPNs/year. It's also a send-out to CAPS and the RD takes over everything as far as calculation and adjustment go. Save so much brain work and labor!
Now, with my 2nd job at an inpatient rehab, we get maybe like less than 5 TPNs/year. It's also a send-out to CAPS and the RD takes over everything as far as calculation and adjustment go. Save so much brain work and labor!
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Operationally we cut off at noon, otherwise it's D10. I was just telling sparda to pick up some skills, too early to kick back and say it's out of his job description
One facility I interviewed at had TPN per pharmacy protocol, so MD was fully hands off and it was just the RD + PharmD managing it. We use CAPS for contracted TPN's...saves so much labor, our previous TPN workflow involved tying up a pharmacist for custom calcs, a tech for compounding, then a two-pharmacist check was employed like chemo.
Yup, CAPS is the company we use also for TPNs.
Hi everyone. I have a hospital interview coming up for a staff pharmacist position. The interview is a peer interview format. Any advice on what to expect/prepare for during a peer interview would be greatly appreciated.
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With a peer interview, you want to give answers that will please everyone. Make yourself sound good, but don't make yourself sound like a threat to your future co-workers. Anything you can say to make yourself sound like you would be a helpful and friendly co-worker. Do not say anything that could be interpreted as your being difficult or weird to work with. Make sure you have eye to eye contact and interact with all the people interviewing you. It's hard to know going in, how much weight the hiring manager will give to the opinions of the peer interviewers, but they will be giving some weight to them. Peer interviewers will be primarily focused on your personality and how well you will "fit in" with them, secondarily to your technical skills, although they will look at that, because they don't want to hire someone that will be a burden to train or who they will have to continually pick up the slack for. The hiring manager is looking more for impressive experience/statistics, and what unique skills you can bring to the department and how you can help the department grow.
