Pharmacy Shadowing!

[stardreamergurl]

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wooo! My friend's mom is hooking me up with a shadowing opportunity at a hospital!

I'm really excited to learn more about what a daily routine on the day at the job is like! I was wondering if anyone could give any pointers to questions I should ask besides the obvious:

What made you become a pharmacist?
Where did you go to school?

Actually those are the only questions i have thought of. HAHA

Well maybe...

What is the hardest part of the job?
What do you enjoy most/least?
What did pharmacy school least prepare you for?
What do you think about where pharmacy is heading?

That's all I can think of for now. Any other questions you guys can think of would be greatly aprecciated! Thanks again.

 

[R2pharmD2]

I don't know how familiar you are with retail pharmacy, but it's very different from hospital pharmacy. You might ask your pharmacist to compare hospital with retail and go into why he/she picked hospital pharmacy. That type of info might come in handy for personal statement and interview purposes.

 

[ttpharm]

Well since its your friend's mom, I wouldn't see her getting annoyed with too many questions. However, I'm sure some pharmacists, especially when its busy, do not want a lot of questions. Note her responses. If they are blunt and one worded then I would advise to just watch most of the time.

 

[it2rx]

Congratulations, stardreamergurl! That's very exciting!

I'm new to the field myself, so this may be a stupid question, but how long is the shadowing opportunity for?

You've come up with a pretty good list of questions. Here's what I might ask, if I found her receptive to questions.

- What's the most routine part of her day?
- How does she keep up with developments in the field?
- How does she expect the field/job to change in the next decade?
- What would she consider a good related or alternate career path to becoming a hospital pharmacist, and why?

It would be great if you would post about your experience afterwards!

 

[SaraPharm]

I have volunteered in a hospital pharmacy before and I enjoyed it, I did things like docking, stocking, using meditech system, inventory, organzing the drugs on the shelves...and one time mixing meds for peds...(but thats more of a pharm tech job). I was also able to attend seminars with all of the healthcare professionals in the hospital (things like opiates, lung cancer treatments, addictions, etc).

Overall, i enjoyed it but I mostly was only able to see what the techs did on a daily basis...the pharmacists were on comps,....and the pharmacist i was shadowing was more about paperwork.

overall, it was a very relaxing environment.

The one question that needs to be asked to ALL the pharmacists is how much their salary is....the pharmacists love that.

Best of luck....

 

[404075]

Well since its your friend's mom, I wouldn't see her getting annoyed with too many questions. However, I'm sure some pharmacists, especially when its busy, do not want a lot of questions. Note her responses. If they are blunt and one worded then I would advise to just watch most of the time.

I agree with this statement and i volunteer at a retail pharmacy.

I can tell when the pharmacists don't want to be bothered by their body language and tone of voice. I don't dare to bother them with un-relevant questions at that moment when the store becomes busy. I did one time, and i felt like they were mad at me

I would definitely ask your questions in the early stages of volunteering and/or when they "seem" happy.

 

[xiaoxlili]

Well since its your friend's mom, I wouldn't see her getting annoyed with too many questions. However, I'm sure some pharmacists, especially when its busy, do not want a lot of questions. Note her responses. If they are blunt and one worded then I would advise to just watch most of the time.

Yeah I agree. If you do have questions, you should probably ask her outside of her working hours. You're lucky its your mom's friend! 🙂
I volunteered at a local hospital pharmacy and never got the chance to speak to a pharmacist because they were too busy and focused on checking the prescriptions on the computers. I ended up getting most of my info from the pharmacy tech!

 

[pharmerbird]

Congrats on the opportunity! I got to shadow at the VA clinic today and a few questions I asked were...

- The difference between the clinical pharmacists versus staff pharmacists
- Who does what (techs vs. pharmacists in regards to typing, filling, IVs, ect.)
- Lots of questions for clinical pharmacists! I actually got to talk for awhile with one of them it was awesome!!

My suggestion with questions though would be if you are good at reading body language... read it! Some pharmacists did NOT want to be bothered with me and my questions, while others were so helpful and up to answer my questions.