Pharmacy Student and Clinical Experience

[CRISPRcrisps]

Hi all, I hope this is the right place to post this question.

I'm a P3 in a 4-year PharmD program with an interest in applying for medical school. I've volunteered on and off throughout pharmacy school, but I've heard mixed opinions regarding what counts as clinical experience vs non-clinical.

These are the ones I'm concerned with:

• Retail pharmacy intern: I've worked in a grocery store as an intern, where many of my activities involved MTM and CMRs, as well as a lot of med counseling in person. I also did a lot of the standard technician stuff.
• Hospital pharmacy intern: I didn't really have contact with patients or physicians. Sometimes I'd have to run meds up to the floor for a procedure, but most of my time was just spent refilling Pyxis, answering nurses' calls, or making returns.
• Free clinic volunteer: I have about 70 hours of volunteering with a free clinic, but the bulk of my work there was just filling prescriptions. We received charts from an MD and med students in the adjacent room, but I didn't really talk to them much. A senior volunteer, like a P4 or a PharmD, would usually do that.
• Pharmacy APPEs: I'm already doing IPPEs, but I'll really get more hands-on experience starting this summer. Most of my APPEs will be with a large hospital system. I expect I'll be rounding with the team, making drug recommendations, and taking histories in an actual hospital setting. However, all of these are part of the school's curriculum and are experiences I'd need in order to graduate with a PharmD, so I'm not sure if they count as clinical experience per AMCAS/AACOMAS.

So what I'm wondering is which of these are or aren't clinical experiences? I'll have to base my future activities on how these would be perceived since I otherwise don't have much clinical experience if none of these would be considered as such.

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[CRISPRcrisps]

Haven't received any feedback on this, and I still really want opinions on this. I suppose this would have been better placed in pre-allo or another subforum with more traffic?

 

[Cornfed101]

The last one sounds clinical. It doesn’t matter that it is for your pharmacy degree. The others I wouldn’t consider clinical, although they are still good experience.

 

[pharmacystudent2019]

Hi all, I hope this is the right place to post this question.

I'm a P3 in a 4-year PharmD program with an interest in applying for medical school. I've volunteered on and off throughout pharmacy school, but I've heard mixed opinions regarding what counts as clinical experience vs non-clinical.

These are the ones I'm concerned with:

• Retail pharmacy intern: I've worked in a grocery store as an intern, where many of my activities involved MTM and CMRs, as well as a lot of med counseling in person. I also did a lot of the standard technician stuff.
• Hospital pharmacy intern: I didn't really have contact with patients or physicians. Sometimes I'd have to run meds up to the floor for a procedure, but most of my time was just spent refilling Pyxis, answering nurses' calls, or making returns.
• Free clinic volunteer: I have about 70 hours of volunteering with a free clinic, but the bulk of my work there was just filling prescriptions. We received charts from an MD and med students in the adjacent room, but I didn't really talk to them much. A senior volunteer, like a P4 or a PharmD, would usually do that.
• Pharmacy APPEs: I'm already doing IPPEs, but I'll really get more hands-on experience starting this summer. Most of my APPEs will be with a large hospital system. I expect I'll be rounding with the team, making drug recommendations, and taking histories in an actual hospital setting. However, all of these are part of the school's curriculum and are experiences I'd need in order to graduate with a PharmD, so I'm not sure if they count as clinical experience per AMCAS/AACOMAS.

So what I'm wondering is which of these are or aren't clinical experiences? I'll have to base my future activities on how these would be perceived since I otherwise don't have much clinical experience if none of these would be considered as such.

I had each of these experiences listed in my work and activities and I grouped them under clinical experience and I didn’t get any questions asked. It depends on how you spin it but I always tied it down to a theme eg. patient education and counseling. It held up well in interviews because after speaking with so many patients, you can elaborate your experiences (if you had) with patient noncompliance, patient perspectives/pill burden, health literacy levels, cultural barriers, etc.

The retail one could be seen as a stretch depending on who interviews you, as no one likes to think of CVS as a clinical setting, but there IS patient counseling involved. I often talked about how frustrating the corporate pharmacy world was, etc.

For my hospital experience, I was involved in a med Ed initiative so we actually went to patient rooms and counseled using digital media and did med recs. See if you can get involved if your pharmacy departmen has any of that going on OR try to use this time to shadow after work, etc.

I would definitely consider appes = clinical, esp if you’re rounding with the team and providing pharmacotherapy options.

 

[pharmagesic]

Pharmd almost MD in two months. Message me.