What are schools saying about the profession

[Digsbe]

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My state did the same during my P3 year. Used to be 1,100 hours that could come from school and 400 intern hours. They upped it to 1,700 but allowed all of those hours to come from the school (and in our program we got over 2,000).

 

[lord999]

My school successfully lobbied to drop the intern requirements back in 2012 with the help of a few students. Their argument was that the P4 year and summer rotations met that experiential requirement. As someone who worked for three years as a hospital intern I wholeheartedly disagree, but what can you do. We basically took away the barrier that was holding back new graduates from surrounding states from working here. As luck would have it, no one wants to work in Arkansas and we have not been hit by saturation as hard as other parts of the country. That said, we are now in an era where a pharmacist could enter the job market having never worked a single shift in a pharmacy. Rotations have education value, but most of us would agree that they do usually expose you to actual working conditions.

Well, there's another barrier. Isn't your state the one where you have to personally meet the board when you request transfer or reciprocity into the state? They used to make it a literacy and communication exam and would not register a pharmacist like my parents who speekee Anglish not good so. That's the bad joke that the VA's down there used to have the hardest-to-understand pharmacists in the country for that reason. And if you want to know the really bad joke about Arkansas VA's is that they were the inspiration for a rather famous book: Dirty Work, by Larry Brown. And the actual case that the book takes a fictionalized look at is still something that Fayettesville never lived down.

 

[Humble Sloth]

We often hear from pharmacists how horrible the market is. Are there any students here that want to tell us what their advisors/professors are telling them?

The usual. Pushing the company line. Pharmacy is a rewarding job. Tons of jobs. MTM and clinical are really taking off! All the boomers are going to supply a ton of new jobs. Marijuana becoming legal is going to help pharmacies when it is regulated and sold at pharmacies.

And of course pharmacist as a provider status.

you can't blame them. They are just trying to survive and keep up the marketing hype.

 

[PharmDBro2017]

The usual. Pushing the company line. Pharmacy is a rewarding job. Tons of jobs. MTM and clinical are really taking off! All the boomers are going to supply a ton of new jobs. Marijuana becoming legal is going to help pharmacies when it is regulated and sold at pharmacies.

And of course pharmacist as a provider status.

you can't blame them. They are just trying to survive and keep up the marketing hype.

+1; but you forgot one... residency is required for a hospital gig.

 

[Humble Sloth]

+1; but you forgot one... residency is required for a hospital gig.

PGY1 isn't required for a staff pharmacist position. I know a guy with 2 years retail that got a staff pharm position. It's required for clinical positions but those positions barely exist.

 

[PharmDBro2017]

PGY1 isn't required for a staff pharmacist position. I know a guy with 2 years retail that got a staff pharm position. It's required for clinical positions but those positions barely exist.

No **** dude... That is the point of the thread.

What I meant: The schools are telling students that their job opportunities are basically a) retail or b) do residency (to later have a hospital gig), but that is far from the truth.

PGY1 isn't required for clinical pharmacist positions either in a lot of places.

 

[Humble Sloth]

No **** dude... That is the point of the thread.

What I meant: The schools are telling students that their job opportunities are basically a) retail or b) do residency (to later have a hospital gig), but that is far from the truth.

PGY1 isn't required for clinical pharmacist positions either in a lot of places.

Yeah schools are really selling the residency bullcrap in order to misrepresent the reality of the profession of pharmacy. If they told them the truth about how PGY1 and 2 are just busy work in soft science many more would drop out and they would lose tuition money.

 

[PharmDBro2017]

I did an Am care residency and now I teach.

Teaching is one of the few reasons I would consider doing residency, personally.

 

[med77]

Yeah schools are really selling the residency bullcrap in order to misrepresent the reality of the profession of pharmacy. If they told them the truth about how PGY1 and 2 are just busy work in soft science many more would drop out and they would lose tuition money.

It's actually scary how many of my classmates think that we can prescribe. In our law class yesterday, there were a few students who kept pressing the professor on our prescriber's rights and what it means for us and if we get DEA #s. Of course she treaded lightly and said that currently we cannot prescribe unless using a protocol in a hospital and under the physician's permission, but in the future we may be able to. Honestly, my classmates really concern me with their lack of understanding of the field/job and, hell, even the basic class material.

 

[rxdawg21]

It's actually scary how many of my classmates think that we can prescribe. In our law class yesterday, there were a few students who kept pressing the professor on our prescriber's rights and what it means for us and if we get DEA #s. Of course she treaded lightly and said that currently we cannot prescribe unless using a protocol in a hospital and under the physician's permission, but in the future we may be able to. Honestly, my classmates really concern me with their lack of understanding of the field/job and, hell, even the basic class material.

They will be in for quite the rude awakening

 

[Pharmd = Phake Doctor]

My school successfully lobbied to drop the intern requirements back in 2012 with the help of a few students. Their argument was that the P4 year and summer rotations met that experiential requirement. As someone who worked for three years as a hospital intern I wholeheartedly disagree, but what can you do. We basically took away the barrier that was holding back new graduates from surrounding states from working here. As luck would have it, no one wants to work in Arkansas and we have not been hit by saturation as hard as other parts of the country. That said, we are now in an era where a pharmacist could enter the job market having never worked a single shift in a pharmacy. Rotations have education value, but most of us would agree that they do usually expose you to actual working conditions.

So I clocked in 800 hours of intern time during P1 for nothing. Just kidding. I learned a lot more from my jobs than I did doing role-playing at my IPPE.

 

[BMBiology]

I thought this was a relic from the BSPharm days. At least that's what they told us in Iowa when they removed the requirement. Previously there were no APPE or IPPEs, but now that is all included in the PharmD program? Maybe I'm off on that part. Technically in Iowa the hour requirement is still there, but now it can be satisfied by in-school intern hours.

Using APPE and IPPE as real experience does not work. Nobody is going to train someone for 4 weeks knowing this person will leave next week. Of all of my rotation, I only spent maybe a week dispensing. That is the bread and butter for this profession. Without knowing the basic things like different formulations, different dosage, you can't work as a pharmacist. You are in a world of hurt when reality hit you in the face.


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[Niosh]

Using APPE and IPPE as real experience does not work. Nobody is going to train someone for 4 weeks knowing this person will leave next week. Of all of my rotation, I only spent maybe a week dispensing. That is the bread and butter for this profession. Without knowing the basic things like different formulations, different dosage, you can't work as a pharmacist. You are in a world of hurt when reality hit you in the face.

I guess my question then would be what was the real intent of the internship hours of the past? Was it to train potential employees like you suggest? Or was it to teach new pharmacy students the things we teach in an APPE/IPPE?
I feel like the old internships as required by law were there as a way to force the APPE/IPPE type experience that we have now and that the training type experience from a current internship should fall on the employer.
Both are definitely needed, I'm just not sure that emoployee-type training should be a part of school curriculum. That being said I still "train" students on the basics of my job despite it not being the sam

 

[PharmDoReMe]

My school has been pretty honest about the market and theyre well aware of the uphill battle they face especially since it's a new school. We've had plenty of students match for residencies though, and hopefully land jobs afterwards, but in general most end up going into community.

My professors so far (in the couple months I've been here haha) have been honest and forthright about how pharmacy has changed and is absolutely not in the same area it used to be, and how it needs to be changed because the market simply isn't good right now. It was actually one of the first things mentioned during orientation week. I don't see my school personally doing too too much, except offer research positions and make sure students keep a certain gpa to stay in school, as well as make sure we've got more than enough hours logged by the time we graduate in order to take our states boards. (Not sure how other schools are that are more established.)

I really like pharmacy as a career choice but I'm not even sure how I could help the school be better, let alone the profession.

 

[lord999]

I guess my question then would be what was the real intent of the internship hours of the past? Was it to train potential employees like you suggest? Or was it to teach new pharmacy students the things we teach in an APPE/IPPE?
I feel like the old internships as required by law were there as a way to force the APPE/IPPE type experience that we have now and that the training type experience from a current internship should fall on the employer.
Both are definitely needed, I'm just not sure that emoployee-type training should be a part of school curriculum. That being said I still "train" students on the basics of my job despite it not being the sam

The real intent was to be an potential employee as well as learn certain tricks at the IPPE/APPE level. Until the late 1990s, it was expected that the BS Pharmacy candidate would get their 500 hours within pharmacy school for the IPPE/APPE experience but be required to turn in 1000 hours of paid experience. Most states required it to be paid as licenses used to be tied to employment, not being employed for more than 1 continuous year would inactivate a license, and most states did not want to give a license to someone that was not employable. I echo the above where the paid internships taught me so much more than my APPEs as you have to perform. When a BS Pharmacy graduated, the majority were expected to be work-ready, which is something that I can't say about the PharmD's in the last six classes that I taught where that is the exception (and the exceptions were mostly those who actually worked rather than study all the time). What the residency year has become is a badly paid replacement for that 1000 outside hour requirement, which that really was supposed to be a year where you were taught advanced methods of dealing with patients.