Rotations.......

[CuriousPharmD]

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How did you guys pick your rotations???? Was it based on your personal interests or by how easy the rotations was??? If you picked them according to which ones were the easiest, which rotations at your school are known to be easy? Thanks........

 

[kristakoch]

If I were you , I wouldn't pick rotations based on being "easy." Trust me, you won't be very happy. I know many people who thought they were picking easy rotations and got socked on them. Easy is subjective, just because I think something was easy does not mean you will. I would pick on your interests, otherwise rotations will be the longest time of your pharmacy education. If you don't like where you are, 6 weeks are a long time. Plus this is the time to really see what you want to do with your life.

SInce you seem interested in psych, MWU has one excellent rotation in psych at the North Chicago VA.. Long drive but worth it if you really want to go into psych. This one will be one of your 4th year rotations, med specialty I think

 

[ZpackSux]

Real Pharmacy Schools don't have easy rotations...

 

[CuriousPharmD]

I also heard from a pharmacist I work with it, it's better to do your rotations at teaching hospitals..can anyone agree or disagree with this statement from your own personal experiences??????

 

[kwizard]

I also heard from a pharmacist I work with it, it's better to do your rotations at teaching hospitals..can anyone agree or disagree with this statement from your own personal experiences??????

It depends. Typically the advantage of teaching hospitals is that they have more resources dedicated for teaching. Kind of obvious I guess, but this typically means more interaction w/ people from other disciplines (med students/residents, other pharm students/residents, nursing, med attendings, etc). So more interaction typically means more networking and debating for resolutions to clinical dilemmas. Basically it is just more of a ideal environment for a student b/c the environment is there to teach within clinical practice.

Non teaching places provide a different perspective which may involve more involvement in the pharmacy dept and possibly less involvement w/ other disciplines just b/c there is typically no formal rounding in non-teaching facilities as medical staff typically come and go as their time allows given they may have private practices to maintain. Therefore more of the teaching part may be more dependent on the pharmacy staff in their education of each other indepepartmental issues like clinical staff providing inservices for pharmacy staff and possibly educating nursing staff and maybe the occasional presentation to medical staff as well. Typically non-teaching places follow the "just do it" template of coming to work and doing your job then going home and they often don't have the time or resources to take on lots of students so you are best to experience both and figure out which works best for you.

 

[kkelloww]

Here's a quick question, and probably a dumb question, but when you go on rotation at a specific site, are you the only student at that particular location?

 

[kristakoch]

Here's a quick question, and probably a dumb question, but when you go on rotation at a specific site, are you the only student at that particular location?

Usually not.

 

[pinkyrx]

Here's a quick question, and probably a dumb question, but when you go on rotation at a specific site, are you the only student at that particular location?

I'm guessing that it depends on the school and the area that you do your rotations. With our school, there will be many students at a single location. There will also be multiple preceptors and some will have more than one student at a time.

 

[kwizard]

Here's a quick question, and probably a dumb question, but when you go on rotation at a specific site, are you the only student at that particular location?

Depends on the site and how many students the preceptor has agreed to take. Typically most preceptors tend to take ~2 students/rotation unless it is a real specialized rotation, preceptor time is minimal, or office space is limited so they may only take 1 student/rotation. But I'd say that 2 is the avg w/ a range of 2-4 students/rotation (the higher end being if you are covering an internal medicine/critical care service w/ mult. supplemental services and/or a preceptor really after that honorarium from the school of pharmacy).

 

[dgroulx]

At UF we pick 5 locations first. There is one called "out of state" and the rest are in Florida or southern Georgia. Then we rank our top 15 specialties that we would like for rotations. The computer will try to put your rotations in the geographic areas that you chose. After the rotations are assigned, you then have a month to swap. You can swap into a different specialty, or just move to a different area.

I've learned more on rotations than sitting in class. It's important to choose many different specialties to expand your interests, not what is perceived to be easy. Our required rotations are Ambulatory Care (8 weeks), Adult Medicine (8 weeks), Drug Information (4 weeks), Community (4 weeks), and your choice of pediatrics/geriatrics/oncology (4 weeks). I chose Oncology, but was assigned Geriatrics. We have 4 other rotations of 4 weeks each, which are your electives. We also have a "month off" rotation.

My current rotation is geriatrics and the hospital I am at usually has 2 students. But, I'm here by myself. I am responsible for all the work of 2 students, so I don't get much of a break. The hospital is small, but I still have to check for renal dosing requirements, & IV to PO meds for every patient. This is normally divided between 2 students. I can't do that work until the afternoon, because my morning is spent being a pharmacist. They hired 2 pharmacists to fill the vacancies, but they don't start until next month. So, they have me doing final checks before drugs go out which leaves the pharmacists free for order entry and fielding telephone calls. The pharmacy is not open 24 hours, so in the morning we have to process all orders from the night before.

My next rotation is drug information and there are also 2 students at that site. But, most only have one student at a time.

 

[no-see-um]

we don't pick.

 

[kkelloww]

At UF we pick 5 locations first. There is one called "out of state" and the rest are in Florida or southern Georgia. Then we rank our top 15 specialties that we would like for rotations. The computer will try to put your rotations in the geographic areas that you chose. After the rotations are assigned, you then have a month to swap. You can swap into a different specialty, or just move to a different area.

I've learned more on rotations than sitting in class. It's important to choose many different specialties to expand your interests, not what is perceived to be easy. Our required rotations are Ambulatory Care (8 weeks), Adult Medicine (8 weeks), Drug Information (4 weeks), Community (4 weeks), and your choice of pediatrics/geriatrics/oncology (4 weeks). I chose Oncology, but was assigned Geriatrics. We have 4 other rotations of 4 weeks each, which are your electives. We also have a "month off" rotation.

My current rotation is geriatrics and the hospital I am at usually has 2 students. But, I'm here by myself. I am responsible for all the work of 2 students, so I don't get much of a break. The hospital is small, but I still have to check for renal dosing requirements, & IV to PO meds for every patient. This is normally divided between 2 students. I can't do that work until the afternoon, because my morning is spent being a pharmacist. They hired 2 pharmacists to fill the vacancies, but they don't start until next month. So, they have me doing final checks before drugs go out which leaves the pharmacists free for order entry and fielding telephone calls. The pharmacy is not open 24 hours, so in the morning we have to process all orders from the night before.

My next rotation is drug information and there are also 2 students at that site. But, most only have one student at a time.

I imagine the day goes by pretty quickly because you are so busy. Do you ever find yourself doing things which you don't feel trained for and no one is around to double check your work?

 

[dgroulx]

I imagine the day goes by pretty quickly because you are so busy. Do you ever find yourself doing things which you don't feel trained for and no one is around to double check your work?

No, not at this point in my schooling. I've had 16 weeks of rotations and I'm quite comfortable doing just about any job. I'm very careful with checking meds before they go out to the floor. The only thing that gets double checked are my change orders from IV to PO Levaquin, renal dosing and vanco dosing. The pharmacist writes direct orders for Vanco. The ID physicians just leave it up to the pharmacy to do the kinetics and change the doses and/or interval.

I'm quite busy and the day does go by very quickly. Right now, I'm working on an in-service to present to the pharmacists next week on 3 new antibiotics that have been added to their formulary. I also have to do an in-service for nursing and a project with microbiology to update resistance patterns & susceptibilities for the hospital. Oh, I also have another project since this is a geriatric rotation. I'm going to be looking at alzheimer med usage at this location. All of this needs to be done in another two and a half weeks, which is why my holiday is being spent on the computer. I don't have time to do it during my working hours.

 

[bananaface]

If you get to pick, you should do so based on breadth and percieved personal interests.