What exactly are clinical rotations?

[orthomyxo]

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I'm in year one of a six-year PharmD program, and I've just been wondering about the clinical rotations I'll be doing down the road. I know how med school rotations work, but what are the pharm rotations like? Do you go to different hospitals and practice in different specialties?

 

[avuong]

in your final year rotations, you rotate in different walgreens across your region. Your specialty changes every script you receive (CNS, cardiovascular, infectious diseases, etc.)

 

[Requiem]

Hahaha.

How do you know what a med school rotation entails yet, as a pharmacy student, you don't know what a pharmacy rotation entails?

 

[orthomyxo]

Hahaha.

How do you know what a med school rotation entails yet, as a pharmacy student, you don't know what a pharmacy rotation entails?

Calm down. I meant I know that med students rotate through each specialty i.e. peds, ob/gyn, family medicine, internal medicine, surgery etc. I wasn't sure if there was a such thing as a pharmacy specialty.

in your final year rotations, you rotate in different walgreens across your region. Your specialty changes every script you receive (CNS, cardiovascular, infectious diseases, etc.)

Lol, I hope you're joking about the Walgreens thing, because if you aren't, that sounds pretty damn boring. My school is surrounded by hospitals so hopefully I'll be able to do rotations in them.

 

[Aznfarmerboi]

Clinical means = dealing with people. Rotation means working at different sites. Clinical rotations allows a professional student to be exposed to different fields of their profession. A medical rotation includes a student being exposed to different specialities so that they can make a better choice on where they want to go into after they graduate. The same applies for pharmacy. In your rotation, you should be exposed to independent pharmacies, hospital, retail, sites such as nuclear pharmacy, infectious disease, oncology, insurance, etc.

 

[bananaface]

You work at like 8-10 different practice sites for 4-6 weeks each. The types of sites you are required to go to vary by school.

 

[Sparda29]

You work at like 8-10 different practice sites for 4-6 weeks each. The types of sites you are required to go to vary by school.

Just 4-6 weeks? Doesn't seem long enough to learn much.

 

[Hels2007]

Just 4-6 weeks? Doesn't seem long enough to learn much.

Main purpose for the rotation would be to give the student a "feel" for that type of setting in order for them to make an educated choice for their future. It takes a long time to be functional and useful at the place you rotate... and there just isn't enough time in rotation year to do that. There are some countries that only do two rotations, one retail and one hospital for 6 months each in Germany, for example. Yes, you can learn the setting where you are in a lot more depth, but overall I think it is far less useful for professional development. You will see once you go through them... everyone gets out of rotations what they want and what they put in. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Sparda29]

Main purpose for the rotation would be to give the student a "feel" for that type of setting in order for them to make an educated choice for their future. It takes a long time to be functional and useful at the place you rotate... and there just isn't enough time in rotation year to do that. There are some countries that only do two rotations, one retail and one hospital for 6 months each in Germany, for example. Yes, you can learn the setting where you are in a lot more depth, but overall I think it is far less useful for professional development. You will see once you go through them... everyone gets out of rotations what they want and what they put in. Nothing more, nothing less.

I guess I thought what it would have been was like if you have a 5 rotations in a semester, you do a like your ID rotation on monday, onco on tuesday, retail wednesday, ER thursday, and insurance on friday and whatnot.

 

[Hels2007]

I guess I thought what it would have been was like if you have a 5 rotations in a semester, you do a like your ID rotation on monday, onco on tuesday, retail wednesday, ER thursday, and insurance on friday and whatnot.

Then you would not learn much at all, and would be even more useless at the rotation site than in the current arrangement. 🙂

Not related to anything you said, but to something I have heard over and over and also said myself when I was younger and stupider. 😀 Students who think they are "free labor" on rotation grossly underestimate effort required of their preceptors, and even more grossly overestimate their usefulness. Exceptions probably exist, but then it is simply not a very good rotation and not a very good preceptor.

 

[Sparda29]

Then you would not learn much at all, and would be even more useless at the rotation site than in the current arrangement. 🙂

Not related to anything you said, but to something I have heard over and over and also said myself when I was younger and stupider. 😀 Students who think they are "free labor" on rotation grossly underestimate effort required of their preceptors, and even more grossly overestimate their usefulness. Exceptions probably exist, but then it is simply not a very good rotation and not a very good preceptor.

I dunno, the place where I was at for my community pharmacy rotation, I felt like he was severely limiting what I could do. He showed me how to enter a prescription into the system but never let me do it myself, even though he knew I've been at CVS for almost 3 years.

I mean, thank god the other pharmacist who works there decided to show me all the charts and stuff he came up with for HIV meds (75% of their scripts).

The other weird part about it was, they got really pissed if you forgot to remove their price sticker from the original bottle, which they gave to the HIV patients (the one that shows the AWP).

 

[Transformer]

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The other weird part about it was, they got really pissed if you forgot to remove their price sticker from the original bottle, which they gave to the HIV patients (the one that shows the AWP).

Of course they (especially the pharmacy supervisors) would get pissed off over giving patients bottles with AWP prices on them.

Most customers wouldn't feel too happy if they found out their pharmacies were making so much money off of them.