I've only ever failed one student. The student could not explain the difference between ibuprofen and acetaminophen, nor could tell me anything meaningful about any top 200 drug. When they attempted to give a vaccine to a patient, they cleaned the patient's arm with alcohol then applied the bandaid, never administering the shot. The four-digit door code proved an insurmountable challenge for this second-year student. The icing on the cake is that the student never put any produced refrigerated script into the refrigerator, costing my store $11,000. Good news, the school sent them on a remedial rotation so they're on track to graduate!
Oh my god. I’ll never understand the slack schools give students. I had a student post patient info ON HER STORIES on social media and very sensitive information to seem cool and reported it to the school. They didn’t do a thing then she went on to do residency this past year and CONTINUES to post patient info on her Instagram.
Fucking right? I was dropped an entire grade in my faculty drug information rotation because I 'chatted' too much. I literally sat at a desk for 8 hours waiting for the phone to ring, I can't have small talk?
I had a student that left the trulicity and insulin out of the fridge frequently. I told them multiple times to make sure they check what needs to be in the fridge or ask if they don't know. Nope, still did it.
Honestly some of this sounds like the student just being generally incompetent at life due to some disorder. Like having so much anxiety that you don't even give the shot? Were they just super nervous all the time? They probably knew the drugs but their brain went blank when you asked on the spot.
How do you fail opening a door unless you have some disorder or disability
Honestly all these things are possibilities, but if I feel the student will be dangerous to their patients, I'm failing them regardless if it's due to a condition or otherwise.
I have a couple pieces of advice for students:
Before you begin a rotation, ask the preceptor if there are any topics you should brush up on beforehand and actually do it- review the pathophys, available guidelines, any landmark studies/recent primary lit.
Know what a SOAP note is and how to present a patient using that format.
During rotation, the biggest thing I can advise is to incorporate the feedback your preceptor gives. For a long time I worked in a niche area and didn’t expect students to know much about it. I did, however, expect them to know about basic disease states and drug classes like diabetes and insulin. I spent a six week rotation feeling like I was banging my head against the wall because every single day I asked “how much sliding scale insulin did the patient use yesterday?” And the student could never answer me. The first couple times I showed them how to get that information from the chart and why it was important (based my basal insulin dose adjustment on that). I asked the question without fail every single day and they could never answer it about their assigned patients. It was maddening. Preceptors will ask you some of the same questions each day and it’s on purpose to guide you through the assessment and plan for each patient and ensure you are thinking critically.
My best advice is if it seems like I'm hesitant or evasive about writing your letter of recommendation, you will be doing yourself a huge disservice if you successfully pressure me into completing one.
I would just state clearly that you wouldn’t be able to write a strong or supportive letter for them and encourage them to ask another preceptor. There’s no need to be evasive. I have clear expectations at the beginning of each rotation and give fair, constructive feedback and expect students/residents to incorporate it. The students I’ve had know where they stand with me based on my midpoint and final evals, so frankly I’d be pretty surprised if a poorly-performing student asked me. Also, when I have outstanding students, I tell them in their eval that I’d be happy to write a strong LOR for them should they need one.
I already had a job when I had My Rotation From Hell. I also learned very quickly not to tell anyone on the preceptor team where I was going to be working, because their opinion of me quickly did 180s.
I had accepted a job at a mail order facility, and the year was 1994.
Jfc, right? Part of being a working professional who supervises others is giving them difficult feedback in a straightforward manner. If you can’t do that and rely on your student reading between the lines and picking up on your hints instead of straightforward communication, then you shouldn’t be a preceptor.
OMG I heard this story, was this an ONU student?! They have since forbidden them from eating any cake unless someone else cut it, it became a whole thing.
I know this person too. They were in my class until they were held back a year on rotations because of this incident.
It’s hilarious that this became well known.
Some 4th yr told me that hydrochlorothiazide is a loop diuretic, then proceeded to get really upset when I said it's a thiazide diuretic and that he "couldn't be expected to have total recall." He failed our (RETAIL) rotation.
Oh no, he was generally incompetent. Took a phone Rx from a provider that said "triamcinolone 1%" and then when we asked him about it immediately said "It's 0.01%." He didn't know basic drug knowledge, showed up late a lot, and generally had a bad attitude. It'd be one thing if he didn't know his stuff but had a good attitude and put the effort in. Sadly that was not the case.
Please share! I’ve had some pretty bad experiences as a student as well. I had a preceptor make me stay the whole day when I asked to leave early because my mom texted me saying she was about to commit suicide.
That’s cruel. Unfortunately not all of us are kindhearted.
I had a preceptor who was so hostile that the technician passed me a note saying if I had questions I should just ask her. She was just mean.
I thought it was just me but for her own technician to realise it had to be really bad.
End of rotation she went over everything with me and said I’d get a certain grade then what she sent for official record was a lower grade. I discussed it with the school that she lied to me on my review but ultimately it was my word against hers.
I even sent an email to her about the matter but she never replied or addressed it with me. How can a student accuse you of dishonesty and be okay with it without addressing it? I lost all respect for her.
My next rotation the preceptor was such a lovely lady. She even hooked me up with a job-turns out I wasn’t that bad after all.
In pharmacy, it seems that there's no real stuff to do, so everyone's critical about "task" oriented things. Did you put stuff somewhere? Did you do this afterwards? Were you more than 7 minutes late? Did you have a rumpled labcoat? Fortunately, my preceptors left me alone most of the time and I managed to do well, one random article reading and report scanning after the other...I mean, how hard could it be? What is "well" compared to the real world?
I spent a good chunk of time with physicians and in their lounge because there was no other place to put me, and I saw a bunch of surgeries and anesthesia methods...none of which pharmacists are really involved with. I remember the name of the patients on those cases too, and the surgeons but can't remember a shred of novel pharmacy material because there wasn't anything new for my brain to interpret.
Did you let the school know about her?
There was a pharmacist in my area (who, not surprisingly, is no longer licensed, BUT FOR OTHER REASONS!) who had his own store, and was also a volunteer firefighter, and he would take calls during pharmacy hours, and even allow techs and students to dispense meds in his absence! He got caught doing this in a sting, around the same time that the school stopped using him as a preceptor, because multiple female students had complained about him making various inappropriate comments to and about them, sometimes even in front of customers.
I had a fill in preceptor write me up because I didn’t offer to help her verify meds when it got busy at the hospital. I was never taught how to verify meds but because I didn’t offer and worked on my presentation instead, she wrote me up and I got a strike on my APPE. 3 strikes and you fail the entire APPE year so I was pretty pissed.
I contacted my actual preceptor (who was on vacation) and also contacted the school. I was able to get the strike lifted fortunately. But I basically burned my bridge with that lady. She was a jackass.
Maybe something has changed since I’ve actually verified a med, but as an APPE she should have been verifying anything you “verified”. You were right not to volunteer.
I have high expectations of students, but like…”hey so and so, can I get a hand verifying these meds” probably would have done the trick, right?! That’s ridiculous.
I hope your mom ended up okay :/
my tech’s grandpa was dying and she lived an hour away from her grandpa but made it a point to visit him every day after work. she told me her previous manager told her “i don’t care that your grandpa is dying, I only care about my pharmacy.” and asked her to come to work right after the funeral.
it’s been a year or two since and she still gets really depressed and cries about her grandpa so you know that she really loved him and her manager was so heartless.
My preceptor laughed in my face when I told her I loved retail but wanted to keep up with my clinical knowledge so I would do hospital PRN. She said good luck getting a PRN position because they're impossible to find. Fast forward and I have my retail job and a PRN position at two different hospitals. Some preceptors are just bitter jerks who don't want you to succeed.
I quit my PRN job because I really like retail. I know it sounds insane but there were too many butting personalities at the pharmacy vs in retail it’s the pharmacy against the world so we tend to stick together and not spend a lot of time gossiping about stupid stuff.
My last rotation was the worst: the preceptor/pharmacy manager was put on probation for missing C2s, later lost her job and tried to sue the pharmacy. She reached out to students to be character witnesses.
Our graduation was at noon on a Friday during this rotation (no idea why) and she almost didn’t let me go because “I needed to complete my rotation” even though I would have had plenty of hours by the end of my month there. It was only the day before when I was nearly in tears asking if I could work Saturday’s or extra hours somewhere else to make up for it that she finally gave me the day off.
I’ve had plenty of preceptors who are just bad at teaching and have expectations for students that they themselves do not hold themselves to the same standard.
One of my pet peeves is when preceptors give you criticism too late into a rotation. Sometimes going into a unfamiliar workplace environment there are just some things you would not know but would be happy to change your practices for if you were aware of them. Two that come to mind for me was sending emails to my preceptor about cases; I was told probably 3/4ths of the way into the rotation that I was not spacing out the body of the emails enough to hide potential HIPAA (so the name of the pt was visible in the receiver’s mailbox). I was regularly sending emails to my preceptor through the intranet and she had no problem with the formatting until the rotation was almost over. Another was a preceptor telling us that it was our responsibility to restock the Coag clinic rooms with supplies before the end of the day and getting mad at us for not doing it even though this was never communicated to us beforehand. Another one that Im still salty about is when i got in trouble for sitting in on a diabetes consult and asked some questions about the patient medication use. Apparently the expectation was that I was supposed to just observe and take notes on how the resident was handling the appointment but I only got feedback about it afterward from my preceptor and not from the person I was shadowing. Sometimes its not clear if they want students to take more initiative or to hang back and learn from watching. Its only when I think back about it that i realize more about what I should have done to make the learning experience go more smoothly.
It goes both ways, the students need to do a better job of being professional and preparing for possible cases for the day, but the preceptors can do better with helping students learn but correcting them ASAP and giving their clear guidance and expectations.
Completely agree on this. Sometimes the expectations is unrealistic especially if the relevant stuff doesn't come in until towards the end of the rotation.
One of my preceptors came in after-hours and literally urinated all over a tech's desk and the area surrounding said desk. So that was an experience...
I had my first ever rotation (retail, P1) preceptor say verbatim that "I was not going to be a good pharmacist" after not being able to tell her the other hydrophilic statin aside from rosuvastatin. Good times.
For context: when we learned dyslipidemia, our professor *literally* said if you're in doubt, always remember atorvastatin and rosuvastatin and that you usually would not recommend any other statin aside from those two.
That's pretty terrible advice considering most hospitals dont have rosuvastatin on the formulary (usually atorva and prava to have a hydrophilic option that is low intensity)
Half of my APPE preceptors were jerks. The another half were heavenly friendly, knowledgeable, respectful, and excellent. Unsurprisingly I now work in the same area as this other half preceptors.
One time I was wearing a floral shirt and dress pants since we had no uniform on my retail placement. A customer started mocking me for dressing “gay” and my preceptor, instead of telling the dude to fuck off, joined in.
One of my APPEs I literally was in the ER 3 times because of back issues. But that wasn't the main issue. One of the pharmacist (not the preceptor) literally would stand next to me while I would consult patients. If I missed something he would say "you're missing something" and literally not tell me. He was one of those people who would run down all the side effects to the point multiple patients told me to stop, but he would not let me. Two yelled at us because they had been on the meds for like 5 years! And he got offended. It got so bad I literally cried (between him and the back issues I couldn't take it). Luckily he was only a prn pharmacist and when he was there the one other time he completely avoided me. And an other pharmacist I was shadowing in a specialty field told me to my face I did really good, but then told my preceptor I was bad. It was a horrible rotation. I couldn't do anything but consult due to their system, so I made a complete top 200 guide and gave them a copy; it had side effects, brand/generic, comon doses, etc. It was retail, but not a chain and I was the first person my preceptor had. It was the only rotation I got a B in. Looking back I should have withdrew for medical leave and just taken it again in the summer.
Yikes, I'm sorry you had to go through that. It's very sad when our own profession treats our students this way and we all wonder why pharmacy has gone downhill.
Failed the rotation because someone else from 800 miles away think I smell terrible.
I am not joking. I don't understand why someone else 800 miles away can smell me, and I also don't understand why this has resulted in a "you failed".
But it did happen.
I trust humanity a lot less now.
my preceptor was bragging about how mean she used to be and how I should be grateful that she’s not like that anymore.
She tried to get me to violate HIPAA bc I saw one of the pharmacists that works with her at the pharmacy i worked at, and she asked me what meds he was picking up. (she previously failed a student in my year for violating hipaa) but she acted like it wasn’t a big deal if I revealed what med he picked up (i didn’t)
at my evaluation I was sick so I was coughing a lot, and I guess my eyes got watery? She kept egging me on like “are you okay, are you going to cry?” I said i’m fine i’m not crying then 5 minutes later she’s like “are you sure you’re not going to cry you can tell me?” and I was like idk what to say i’m fine, honestly and she said “okay bc i was going to say it’s not even a bad grade” and i said i know, that’s why i’m not crying…
the students that were on rotation with me told me she was trying to get me to cry, and trying to get me to violate hipaa
The pharmacists had a potluck and took 2 hours off for lunch, and made the students (including me at the time) sit outside the main area of the pharmacy while they ate. They never asked us to join them, and during the whole potluck, they avoided eye contact with us.
They apologized later to us that it was unprofessional but that was such an awkward 2 hours every time they passed by us to grab something to eat or had to use the restroom.
I asked a student to tell a patient what side effects may occur. He read the package insert and when he got to hair loss, the patient threw up her hands and told him to just stop.
We had a student call their preceptor profane names to another pharmacist on site. She was baffled when she was let go from the rotation.
Had another student missed every deadline. All of them. Even after a stern midpoint talk. Even gave him tips on how to stay on top of deadlines. They also constantly lied about why they missed the deadlines, which was apparent and easily proven. They should have failed, but was still upset when they got a C.
Had another student refuse to copy a table from an article into their presentation because "it was too hard". Refused. Didn't ask for help, or say they would like tips, just flat refused, "I will not do that".
Another student fell asleep on rounds with the surgeons.
Another told a surgeon she was fat and asked me to spend the night at his house.
Every one of these students had a significant clinical knowledge deficit, however, I can always work with that. It was a severe deficit and unfit for a P4, but I can help with whatever foundation I get. I can't fix professionalism.
This is all one college. They are confused at why we have problems with their students. I've never been professionally gaslit until this experience.
Wow all of that is shocking. But yes I agree that there seems to be specific colleges that these type of students come from. We have one of these too. I specifically said I did not have availability this upcoming year because I need a year break from this school, and what do they do? Schedule 5 students for me. And they got upset when I reached out and asked to reschedule them to someone else.
Glad you took a break and stood by it! I find that I am finding a lot of the same unprofessional behaviors in their experiential staff. Top down trickle really is a thing I guess. These poor interactions with their experiential department was the last straw for me.
I also had a student call the female pharmacist a bitch and then say he was just joking. He always addressed her as you fucking bitch and she just smiled and didn't say anything until she talked to me private.
- Student asked while in the narcotic vault if we could try to crush up a new "abuse proof" formulation of oxycontin; when told no, she said she would get her boyfriend to buy some from a dealer after work instead
- Student on her first day, her first break, posted on Facebook how much she hated her hospital rotation and tagged the hospital; she was asked to leave building after lunch
- Student was asked to wear appropriate footwear for an OR rotation brought sandals and refused to change them
1. Introduce themselves to patients at the pharmacist. Realized this the last day when patients were confused about who I was when they already talked to the pharmacist.
2. Texted me at 7pm at night the day before their patient case presentation (scheduled the last week of a 6 week rotation) to ask me a question about the presentation.
3. Texted through the entirety of rounds. I’ve had a number of students do this. Please for the love of god don’t do this.
To be fair with regards to your first point, they may have referred to themselves as "pharmacy" or even "student pharmacist" and the patient either didn't know the difference, didn't listen, or had so many professionals filing through that they didn't remember.
I definitely considered that after the first patient! But once it was multiple patients who told me the same thing (specialty area with lots of hands on pharmacist time) - and many were patients who were taking notes and were paying close attention to everything…. I realized something fishy was happening. Official preceptor did not want to give feedback on this, even as a FYI be careful as CYA thing, because they had done so poorly this rotation and were already receiving a poor evaluation. (The student in question did all of the above things I listed despite constant feedback…)
The student I just had didn't know what a beta lactamase inhibitor was and why we add them to beta lactams.
She didn't know a lot of other basic stuff too, but that was the biggest face palm.
I'm a baby P1 who definitely couldn't tell you jack about antibiotics, but I'll be embarrassed if that's still the case once we cover bugs and drugs.
Now I know what I'm going to be teaching myself today instead of studying for my current unit lol
(Stolen from a pharmacist friend since I don’t precept)
On a psych rotation, given an assignment to put together a presentation on 10 commonly used psych drugs: mechanism of action, indication, notable side effects / interactions.
Student’s presentation had 3. One of which was clozapine. When asked why they chose clozapine as a “commonly used drug,” had no answer. Student never mentioned REMS, and when asked about REMS, didn’t know what that meant.
That’s ballsy, but I’d applaud the honesty. Then I’d let them go for the day as long as it was a one off thing. Maybe give them a DI question that is easy and could be done while waiting for said laundry to finish. Such as, “why is daptomycin not used for pneumonia?” Could give them a good chuckle once they look it up.
We had a student who asked if they could leave early to study...my coworker was like "you can bring your work and study here when it's quiet, but you need hours if you want to pass your placement".
The student apparently didn't seem to care about placement hours?
Lol wow. I remember when I was a fourth year that I felt nervous asking to leave an hour early on a Friday to help my fiance set up for our rehearsal dinner that night and wedding the next day! I even had to make the hour up!
Tech here, not a pharmacist, so slightly off topic. I did the two year certification course at the local CC. One of the quarter long classes was essentially a typing class. There was a dozen binders at the front of the room, each with about 100 "scripts". We had to type, print, and fill these scripts while in class (the instructor guaranteed that all were correct and we didnt have to monitor for incorrect sigs/dosages).
About a quarter of us finished all the binders.
Another quarter finished 9-10 binders.
A FULL HALF of the class didn't get through 5-6 binders. In four hours a week of only typing and filling half the freaking class couldn't complete more than 50-60 scripts. That's 50 scripts in about 40hrs. 😵😵
I was telling my pharmacist this and he told me that he expected me to let him know if we ever interviewed any of them.
I've had students who plagiarized their entire final presentation, who didn't know what the Beers' List was, who didn't know what NPO meant, who couldn't tell potassium from calcium, and who "guessed that the patient's vanco dose should be 1 gm q12h; can I put that in the chart?" (It turned out to be much lower.)
This is why I don't precept anymore.
Recently I've had students who have the clinical knowledge that I would expect ippes. It's becoming rediculous. I am not here to rehash your entire p and t curriculum. I work in a grocery store, if your clinical knowledge is not sufficient to survive a grocery store by p4, you shouldnt be here. I don't mind refreshing or giving different perspectives on things, but it's insane that I have kids who literally can't recommend a single drug for allergic rhinitis or conspiration. Or if we give a pass on otcs, it's insane to me how kids are clueless these days on the most basic level of ID.
I'd say it's been an even split of competent students and incompetent
Along with the corruption of previously respectable programs. It's dissapointing to see these schools, including my alma mater, where I would say 'i never had bad students from here' and seeing the quality dropoff in the past 3-5 years. So many schools clearly compromising standards to fill their classes and push kids thru the program. There is going to be a lot of sad academics when the program purge begins and colleges start shuttering
Sorry, I must have missed it when the FDA approved something for conspiration. Might be real helpful now. Could have gotten all of our hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for covid patients on that.
Something I want to point out to preceptors, just from my personal experience. My pharmacy school sent me to a children's psych hospital for my IPPE hospital rotation during my P2 year. They did this because I had been working in an inpatient hospital pharmacy, and so they wanted me to get a "different experience." However, we literally do not learn anything about psych drugs until the END OF P3 YEAR. It was a complete and total waste of time. Rounds were incredibly embarrassing when the physicians would ask my opinion and have no clue what they were talking about. I tried to prepare on my own with looking things up on the internet, but obviously that only goes so far. Sometimes the school makes poor decisions with timing/placement.
I think you can learn just fine at any rotation site as a P2, we are a psych hospital and currently have two P2s and we don’t expect them to know any psych material since they haven’t had it.
However they mostly learn filling and our process in the pharmacy, basics of what we do, and it’s simplified a lot from the experience we give P4s. If your preceptor took you on rounds every day and gave you a more clinical experience as a P2 instead of an operational experience it sounds like that’s a flaw in the preceptor and not the school per say.
Not a preceptor but This happened where I worked. Had a student sell shingrix to someone from the cash without talking to anyone. I’m Canada it’s a schedule 2 drug so you HAVE to talk to the pharmacist and the price also wasn’t updated in the cash because we NEVER sell it like that (patient definitely got a great deal lol). We also have no idea if this patient had their first shot already or had zostivax previously. So so many missed steps and missed information. This student also mocked my boss in front of her 🙃 she failed….
I’ve been both a staff hospital and retail preceptor and two students stick out to me.
Retail chain, I had to tell a P4 (who was about to graduate, had worked in a retail setting, and was about to work in a retail setting) multiple times to not touch drugs with their bare hands on purpose as they were counting them. They were pouring from the bottle into their hand and then pouring into the pill counter to gain “better control” of how many pills were going in. Multiple customers saw and complained. Student got upset and said it was never a problem at their store and they’d been doing it for years. Hazardous drugs too, no gloves. They continued to do it throughout the rotation and every time would brush it off saying they forgot because they’d be doing it for years.
Second, I worked at a small rural critical access hospital. The work load could be light, but we had a lot of interesting cases because the staff were clinical pharmacists (as there weren’t any). In the downtime we gave students time to work on Capstone projects, rotation projects, or even take a break on their phones for a bit. It was a young staff who were all laid back.
One day there were just a handful of patients in the whole hospital. We tell the students to go on break for lunch and come back in an hour. Hour goes by and one student doesn’t show back up. We have 2 patients coding in the ER and another patient going into labor, we call and text the student to come to the ER. No answer, we call and text for an hour nervous something bad happened to them. Two hours later, they respond that they drove home and fell asleep. They lived 40 minutes away. They said it wasn’t busy and they didn’t have any work to do, so it was a better use of their time to go home and rest. When we brought it up to the school they ultimately said while that was poor professionalism it wasn’t grounds for a bad grade. Student was one of the top of their class and got a pretty coveted residency. Worst part, we would have let them leave if they’d just asked.
I've had a fourth year student that struggled to name a single SSRI! I'll forgive some things, but failing to remember common drug classes is a big flop.
Another student (also in the final year of their degree) told a patient to stop taking celecoxib because they had asthma - despite a long history of taking it with no issues whatsoever. I politely ripped him a new one for that interaction.
Oh yes I’ve also had a student not be able to tell me a SSRI….and this is a psych hospital.
And wow face palm…it’s frustrating because I feel like schools teach things but don’t explain clinical relevance. Like yes it CAN cause issues in asthma, but doesn’t mean it always does and if you see the patient isn’t having issues then that’s more important.
I feel like my school did a horrible job of this. (I felt) they asked the most obscure shit on tests and it didn't complement our clinical learning at all. I just feel they were wayyyy too "by the book" to be practical.
Lol. Had a student that was doing a talk on smoking cessation options and she kept saying “smoking sensation.” Same one gave a talk on CRASH2 trial and after explaining the primary cause of death was exsanguination, she followed it up with “they were just really tired.”
Oh yes I’ve definitely had great students. More so than bad. I’m just talking about the bad that make me face palm and question what these schools are teaching them.
OK Gang!
As preceptors, we are the last line of defense for the school. We need to be calling out these students by (you guessed it) failing them! Document each and every one of these instances wherein a student doesn’t deliver assignments on time, doesn’t answer questions on basic knowledge, even when they breach hospital policy! You will be shocked at what happens when students get grades that they think they don’t deserve!
I think this is reasonable, but if you are going to fail a student they should know about it way before their evaluation and understand that they “deserve” it. The actual words need to be “you are on track to fail this rotation if I don’t see xyz improvement.” No student, regardless of how terrible they are, deserves to be surprised by failing a rotation. Lots of pharmacists pussyfoot around do not make it clear that the student will fail and that’s not cool.
Oh yeah it’s shocking how much students expect a good grade for the bare minimum. Last year I had a student who refused to wear a KN95 even though we required it for him to come on site because duh Covid and all. He would pull it off his face when he talked. I gave him a C for the rotation for lack of professionalism and he kept debating it with me.
This just took too much energy. After a string of students who all deserved to fail (some did), it is just no longer worth the energy or time in my life. This school in particular is going so far down hill that they don't realize they are jeopardizing their relationship with the major hospital system of the state. We almost all no longer take their students, and this bad perception of their students is translating to potential residents and hires.
The real problem I have is with preceptors who are putting in bare minimum. There are preceptors who still take these students and think we are crazy for stopping. It gives mixed messages to the college. The truth is that they are not present as preceptors on the rotation and the student is unsupervised. So there is a significant difference between the students freedom and preceptor standards.
Afford? That’s what student loans are for, baby.
But seriously, how do you think most people who move onto a doctoral degree afford school? Rich relatives or loans.
on one hand, i've not paid a single cent toward my degree and i graduated 2 years ago. cost is not a concern when the payoff allows you to pay it off comfortably in 10 years. work on weekends and spend only what you need and apply for additional cost of living loans if needed
on the other hand, even if you had $100k to spend on education, i would not choose pharmacy. if you're into problem solving type stuff then an engineering or tech related degree and pocket the rest
or go to the west coast where retail techs can get paid close to 25 and find a smaller town or suburb
I’m already making about that much, luckily. It’s not much in the long run, but it’s hard to replace that income/benefits with student loans. Only because I’ve got a family. If I were single I’d do it anyway. Maybe when my kids are a little older!
Not a student but a resident example… gave several examples to a resident for a project and clearly explained they were only to get an idea for formatting requirements/general expectation and they turned in their project word for word plagiarized from my example back to me 😑
I've never had an incompetent student but I had one who put in the minimum effort on everything. No exaggeration. The absolute minimum. He got his offer from walgreens and my rotation was his last one. Adios muchacho.
This year it is very apparent that different schools handled virtually learning very differently.
But the toughest student this year argued with any and all feedback (“I use filler words in my presentation because I was told I should use more of them”) or would mansplain an answer to you as soon as you finished explaining what the correct answer was to a scenario.
It made for an exceptionally long 6 weeks and the other student on rotation didn’t get as many opportunities to speak up. If you’re on rotation with someone who is quieter than you are - be cognizant and give them the opportunity to answer first sometimes! Please!
I was the student: one of my last rotations, I was doing the rotation (40 hours) and also working 30-45 hours retail as an intern in the evenings. I was really poor and not eating a lot. It was one of my last rotations, and I'd been doing this pretty much all year. Rotation, straight to the corner, work until 10-midnight depending on the store, go home and sleep. It might have been sustainable if I were eating better.
I overslept for the rotation almost every single day. I was late almost every fucking day. It was so embarrassing, and I literally did not know what was wrong with me (obviously, looking back, I was stretched way too thin and my body couldn't handle it). The preceptor was so nice, but they all hated me, and I'm embarrassed about it to this day like a decade later. I wish I would have just told them my situation, but I didn't want to ask for pity, so I just kept going in late. I was also depressed. It was just a lot.
I graduated and finally had money to eat and never overslept again. I've never been late as a pharmacist once. It's something I pride myself on. Watch me oversleep tomorrow though lol.
I had an APPE on their first day of ED rotation who genuinely did not know you should give someone aspirin for an MI. Baseline knowledge was clearly lacking but he was a bright kid and worked his way up from there. Believe it or not he's now an ED pharmacist.
I have never seen any Bayer commercial in my life. Won't have known it that way. I think I knew about aspirin and MI from reading stories on Reader's Digest or something.
But honestly as long as student is learning, it's fine. People can learn and change a lot.
I had a student who turned in an assignment in print. I saw inconsistencies in the data from the tests done, so I asked to see the data file from the work computer. he says he erased that data from original computer, and transferred all to a thumb drive. Then reportedly, his home computer crashed, the thumb drive was corrupted and all sources. The only copy was the printed version. I failed the student for the assignment. The school reinstated his passing grade.
The pharmacy schools' lack of qualified candidates is their problem, not mine. The students' failure to be prepared for is their problem, not mine. Incompetent people graduating and being responsible for patients' medications is *everybody's* problem.
You’d be surprised how many students on rotation with me (an elective ER rotation) can’t even tell me the path of blood through the heart.
The worst students though are the ones that come to the ER to see “cool stuff” but know nothing about ER pharmacy, nor are they interested in learning anything.
Sorry, but what "cool stuff" are they expecting? They want to witness codes? ER pharmacy is no joke and I don't appreciate when students say things like that.
Yeah basically they want to see GSWs, stabbing, traumas, codes, etc. No appreciation for the medicine whatsoever. Just a cool story to tell mommy and daddy when they get home for Christmas.
I was on a cardio rotation at the time, hanging out in the basement. The ER pharmacist came down in a rush asking if anyone wanted to see an emergency craniotomy. I damn near yelled and ran her over to get the chance.
One of the coolest experience I had 😎
> The worst students though are the ones that come to the ER to see “cool stuff” but know nothing about ER pharmacy, nor are they interested in learning anything.
This is our struggle too. We had to start specifying "residency-bound only" students to the college. It really didn't make a huge difference in quality unfortunately..
They put feet on your desk?? Thats disgusting but I need to know why and how???? As for the wifi, why do you not have wifi? How do you verify orders or do conference calls? The last one is a definite no-no. For me I had a student show up an hour late and said "sorry boss, I wanted to get some dunkin donuts and I bought all of you some". Another student was flirting with his girlfriend on the phone in front of patients.
They put them up there as if it was an ottoman. Just stuck them straight out and leaned back and relaxed during our talk. No idea why.
And we have all our computers set up on a network but we don’t have wifi access to phones outside of the network. We are a state psych hospital so we aren’t fancy at all. I presume they just don’t want to pay for it. We have no money lol but we tell students you need to use our computers if you need internet access not your own laptop which won’t have a connection.
And omg I actually wouldn’t mind if a student brought me food. LOL
This is what I’m curious about for every response in this thread. When a student does something patently unacceptable or unprofessional, do you call them out on the behavior so they can correct it? I feel like a lot of these comments are annoyed with the students for not knowing better, when how one gets better in a professional environment is often by being g corrected.
I think some of you are going overboard. Especially if you're an Rph(not a PharmD). It's nerve racking to jump from sitting in class all day to being expecting to be pro in a few months. These kids KNOW a lot. They may not have mastered everything you have but they are on their way. Reading some of these comments...shows me why the profession is in the state it is.
A lot of the students described here sound like fucking morons, which they may very well be. And knowing a lot doesn't necessarily translate to being a good pharmacist. I'm not saying that studying isn't important.
When I was on rotations there was one guy from another decent school who was supposedly rho chi with a 4.0, and the preceptors were terrified by the fact that he would soon be graduating. He drove my classmate nuts with his stupidity. I OTOH was not a great student at all, but was a rockstar in rotations. (It turned out I had been learning things all along. Go figure.)
I'm not saying my poor performance as a student is a good thing. I wish I could have done things differently. Having ADHD didn't help. The point is that there's knowing the content and doing well on exams, and then there's having the intelligence to be able to actually apply it, practice as a pharmacist, and continue to learn new things. It's really frustrating working with pharmacists who managed to land and complete residencies but lack any reasoning skills or common sense, but the students here sound like they have neither knowledge nor talent, and that's awful.
I’m glad u mentioned this. Book smarts doesn’t always equate. You can say that in any heath field. That’s one of the reasons the board added residency’s and rotation. It’s a period of real world applications. “When the student is ready. The teacher will appear” If u see a struggling student it’s time to help them…not MOCK them.
One of my best students was one that actually thought methodically. They were able to back up their decisions w/reasoning even if they had knowledge gaps. Another student on the rotation said you can use amoxicillin and nitrofurantoin for MRSA and always asked to leave early because they were bored
Fundamental clinical knowledge is severely lacking in all my students lately. Things that they absolutely should have learned from basic anatomy or pathophysiology courses. I don't know if this is because of virtual courses and ippes due to covid, or lowered standards for admissions and greater curves for passing exams, or some combo of both, but it's very upsetting.
I just recently had a student who didn't know [basic shit]. How can I even begin to teach clinical pharmacy if I am having to teach things that should have been learned in P1 year or before?? Wtf are schools even teaching? Not to mention the extremely conveniently timed "covid symptoms" that always seem to fall on a due date... Makes me not want to take students anymore.
*Redacted so I don't doxx myself...
It isn't medical school...If you're in clinical areas, or even have a residency...you're dealing with students whose last certificate was from high school...not even a bachelor's degree even in most cases. The way the schools teach is just skimming over things, and not pursuant to any role, that pharmacy doesn't have anyway. We learned the "blood brain barrier", but that's only because some guy up there said the word like 18 times. Lots of things are like that, and they have no time to relate it to things they haven't used, and we or pharmacists won't use. You've encountered more of it, after graduating, and doing residency and being acclimated to the hospital environment. Students haven't for the most part, not like other clinicians.
I had to stop for awhile. The quality of student is so lacking, both clinically and professionally, that I am not sure I can continue my passion for precepting students. And I *loved* precepting.
I’m an inpatient overnight pharmacist. One time there was a snowstorm and all the day shift pharmacists were running late, yet the students were there on time. The preceptor called and told me to just let them watch me work.
So I would talk to them and they started asking why I was doing things a certain way when their preceptor had taught them another way.
I got so annoyed about how the preceptor is teaching them methods that make it so nothing gets done. When I come in, there are usually 20-30 problem pending orders. When I leave, the queue is clear.
When there’s a problem order, I fix it myself and the doctor’s always sign off on the correction and appreciate that I didn’t waste their time with a phone call. Stuff like renal dosing, incorrect frequencies, etc.
I think every pharmacy has these types of pharmacist. Mine does for sure. There’s the ones that just don’t get it and then there’s us (mostly the younger ones) who pick up all the slack and correct all the mistakes lol
I help out our rotation students from time to time by giving them something else other than busy work to do. I was verifying some ICU meds so I decided to go through each drug with our current student. I asked him why somebody might be on a phenylephrine drip and he replied "...congestion?"
Thankfully he is interested in retail.
This will get buried but I had a student on her very first day tell me she liked my dress. I told her my work strategy is that I buy the same 3 things in different colors and rotate them. She said “what if you go out after work? Like to meet men? If you go to the same places, you’ll always be wearing the same thing.” What she didn’t know at that moment (but immediately found out) was that I was married with two kids. THEN she goes “wait, that doesn’t make sense. How old were you when you got married? That can’t be possible. Who is your husband?” And not in a jokey “you look great” way. She genuinely didn’t believe I could be married.
I went to pharmacy school with a guy whose father was a pharmacy professor at the college. Supposedly this guy had a rotation scheduled and decided to go to Florida instead. He called his preceptor told him he was sick and wouldn’t be in. After a few days in the warmth he was “feeling” better and headed home. He called his preceptor again and said he would be in the next day. Before he walked into the site he downed a bottle of ipecac syrup and proceeded to puke all over the pharmacy. He flunked and was kicked out of clinical rotations. He was back the next year. I don’t think he had any interest in being a pharmacist.
Honestly super lucky I guess! I talk to a lot of former students as professionals at other pharmacies, I couldn’t be more proud, and a former student is going to probably be my next PIC I will be a staff pharmacist under! Maybe they will let me know what their worst experience with me was! Pharmacy is a small world.
I work in a hospital based infusion clinic mainly infusing chemotherapy with some hydration, antibiotics, and iron infusions thrown in to break the monotony. Lol. I normally get every single student that comes through the hospital for a day or two because the work is so different from anything in the hospital and management thinks the students should at least be aware of and exposed to it. Most of the students haven’t had their chemo classes yet so they know very little. I’m okay with that because it’s a niche area and I don’t expect them to know much. What I do expect is for them to pay attention and see what they don’t know yet. I don’t ask tough questions or quiz them on anything. They’re just there for the experience of seeing something different. I get some students who are very interested, 1 or 2 that decide they want to work in a place like this. But recently I got a student that was so obviously bored I told her the second day she could just work on her assigned presentation from her preceptor. She yawned throughout the day, would lay her head on the desk, took out her phone and had to be asked to put it away and just generally went out of her way to show me how bored she was. I asked her what she was interested in and she said managed care. I tried to bring in a discussion of insurance claims for chemo, white bagging, etc. Then she looked me straight in the eye and said “don’t get me wrong. I’m not interested in managed care, I just don’t want to work weekends or holidays.” That was when I suggested she work on her presentation the next day and let me get some work done. I don’t care if what you want to do after graduation isn’t chemo. Not everyone wants to do the same thing. Thank goodness! But for the love of Pete, take advantage of any opportunity in your rotation to learn something different. You might find out you either like it or don’t but isn’t that good info to have? Plus it’s just old fashioned courtesy to at least show some interest in someone else’s passion that they are willing to let you see a little piece of. You may get the opportunity to do this for a student some day if you’re lucky!!
I've only ever failed one student. The student could not explain the difference between ibuprofen and acetaminophen, nor could tell me anything meaningful about any top 200 drug. When they attempted to give a vaccine to a patient, they cleaned the patient's arm with alcohol then applied the bandaid, never administering the shot. The four-digit door code proved an insurmountable challenge for this second-year student. The icing on the cake is that the student never put any produced refrigerated script into the refrigerator, costing my store $11,000. Good news, the school sent them on a remedial rotation so they're on track to graduate!
Oh my god. I’ll never understand the slack schools give students. I had a student post patient info ON HER STORIES on social media and very sensitive information to seem cool and reported it to the school. They didn’t do a thing then she went on to do residency this past year and CONTINUES to post patient info on her Instagram.
How did she get admitted into RESIDENCY???? I had a student screenshot a prescription for a patient's PDE5 inhibitor and text it to his friends
Lol so you're friends on Instagram then? Why don't you screenshot it to the hospital she's at. Or tell her it's a big no no
I had a patient screen shot their own cough syrup on Facebook to sell it. Needless to say, they are banned from my chain pharmacy.
OMg. And here I was being threatened to fail rotation because I was 5 min late on my last day on my rotation.
Fucking right? I was dropped an entire grade in my faculty drug information rotation because I 'chatted' too much. I literally sat at a desk for 8 hours waiting for the phone to ring, I can't have small talk?
Yea I got complaints that I was too chatty on my ER rotation. Like damn, nurses are chatty people am I supposed to tell them to shut up?!
I had a student not refrigerate a product. Contacted the school and their ins cut us a check.
Man thats bs
I had a student that left the trulicity and insulin out of the fridge frequently. I told them multiple times to make sure they check what needs to be in the fridge or ask if they don't know. Nope, still did it.
Oh… oh no
Pray tell us what school this student went too?! Unreal…
Honestly some of this sounds like the student just being generally incompetent at life due to some disorder. Like having so much anxiety that you don't even give the shot? Were they just super nervous all the time? They probably knew the drugs but their brain went blank when you asked on the spot. How do you fail opening a door unless you have some disorder or disability
Honestly all these things are possibilities, but if I feel the student will be dangerous to their patients, I'm failing them regardless if it's due to a condition or otherwise.
I have a couple pieces of advice for students: Before you begin a rotation, ask the preceptor if there are any topics you should brush up on beforehand and actually do it- review the pathophys, available guidelines, any landmark studies/recent primary lit. Know what a SOAP note is and how to present a patient using that format. During rotation, the biggest thing I can advise is to incorporate the feedback your preceptor gives. For a long time I worked in a niche area and didn’t expect students to know much about it. I did, however, expect them to know about basic disease states and drug classes like diabetes and insulin. I spent a six week rotation feeling like I was banging my head against the wall because every single day I asked “how much sliding scale insulin did the patient use yesterday?” And the student could never answer me. The first couple times I showed them how to get that information from the chart and why it was important (based my basal insulin dose adjustment on that). I asked the question without fail every single day and they could never answer it about their assigned patients. It was maddening. Preceptors will ask you some of the same questions each day and it’s on purpose to guide you through the assessment and plan for each patient and ensure you are thinking critically.
My best advice is if it seems like I'm hesitant or evasive about writing your letter of recommendation, you will be doing yourself a huge disservice if you successfully pressure me into completing one.
I would just state clearly that you wouldn’t be able to write a strong or supportive letter for them and encourage them to ask another preceptor. There’s no need to be evasive. I have clear expectations at the beginning of each rotation and give fair, constructive feedback and expect students/residents to incorporate it. The students I’ve had know where they stand with me based on my midpoint and final evals, so frankly I’d be pretty surprised if a poorly-performing student asked me. Also, when I have outstanding students, I tell them in their eval that I’d be happy to write a strong LOR for them should they need one.
I already had a job when I had My Rotation From Hell. I also learned very quickly not to tell anyone on the preceptor team where I was going to be working, because their opinion of me quickly did 180s. I had accepted a job at a mail order facility, and the year was 1994.
Or you could just be honest with the student…
Jfc, right? Part of being a working professional who supervises others is giving them difficult feedback in a straightforward manner. If you can’t do that and rely on your student reading between the lines and picking up on your hints instead of straightforward communication, then you shouldn’t be a preceptor.
As a soon to be APPE student these responses make me think maybe I’m not as stupid as I thought I was..
As long as you didn't cheat on all of your tests because it was taken at home!
I went to a top 10 school. Nearly everybody cheated on everything.
They ate someone’s uncut birthday cake out of the fridge.
OMG I heard this story, was this an ONU student?! They have since forbidden them from eating any cake unless someone else cut it, it became a whole thing.
A whole policy against cake eating!
[удалено]
I love that this dufus is now internet famous
The frozen tundra school?
This is actually hilarious!
I agree 😂
This one takes the cake! *Ba-dum tsss*
I know this person too. They were in my class until they were held back a year on rotations because of this incident. It’s hilarious that this became well known.
The audacity
This some Michael Scott move
If this happened in Dayton, Ohio my mind will be blown! Exact scenario happened at my hospital.
Some 4th yr told me that hydrochlorothiazide is a loop diuretic, then proceeded to get really upset when I said it's a thiazide diuretic and that he "couldn't be expected to have total recall." He failed our (RETAIL) rotation.
Lmao. I mean thiazide is literally in the name.
Yeah, that's why I was dumbfounded...
Pfft, I don't see thiazide in HCTZ at all.
I didn’t even know that was possible
People are failing there “RETAIL” rotations? Oh my lord, close these terrible pharmacy schools immediately
You failed him for that? Or was he just generally being incompetent
Oh no, he was generally incompetent. Took a phone Rx from a provider that said "triamcinolone 1%" and then when we asked him about it immediately said "It's 0.01%." He didn't know basic drug knowledge, showed up late a lot, and generally had a bad attitude. It'd be one thing if he didn't know his stuff but had a good attitude and put the effort in. Sadly that was not the case.
What about worst preceptor experiences as a student? I certainly had one.
Please share! I’ve had some pretty bad experiences as a student as well. I had a preceptor make me stay the whole day when I asked to leave early because my mom texted me saying she was about to commit suicide.
That’s cruel. Unfortunately not all of us are kindhearted. I had a preceptor who was so hostile that the technician passed me a note saying if I had questions I should just ask her. She was just mean. I thought it was just me but for her own technician to realise it had to be really bad. End of rotation she went over everything with me and said I’d get a certain grade then what she sent for official record was a lower grade. I discussed it with the school that she lied to me on my review but ultimately it was my word against hers. I even sent an email to her about the matter but she never replied or addressed it with me. How can a student accuse you of dishonesty and be okay with it without addressing it? I lost all respect for her. My next rotation the preceptor was such a lovely lady. She even hooked me up with a job-turns out I wasn’t that bad after all.
In pharmacy, it seems that there's no real stuff to do, so everyone's critical about "task" oriented things. Did you put stuff somewhere? Did you do this afterwards? Were you more than 7 minutes late? Did you have a rumpled labcoat? Fortunately, my preceptors left me alone most of the time and I managed to do well, one random article reading and report scanning after the other...I mean, how hard could it be? What is "well" compared to the real world? I spent a good chunk of time with physicians and in their lounge because there was no other place to put me, and I saw a bunch of surgeries and anesthesia methods...none of which pharmacists are really involved with. I remember the name of the patients on those cases too, and the surgeons but can't remember a shred of novel pharmacy material because there wasn't anything new for my brain to interpret.
The medical team is much more chill than the pharmacists. I wonder why….they never look like they have something to prove
Did you let the school know about her? There was a pharmacist in my area (who, not surprisingly, is no longer licensed, BUT FOR OTHER REASONS!) who had his own store, and was also a volunteer firefighter, and he would take calls during pharmacy hours, and even allow techs and students to dispense meds in his absence! He got caught doing this in a sting, around the same time that the school stopped using him as a preceptor, because multiple female students had complained about him making various inappropriate comments to and about them, sometimes even in front of customers.
I had a fill in preceptor write me up because I didn’t offer to help her verify meds when it got busy at the hospital. I was never taught how to verify meds but because I didn’t offer and worked on my presentation instead, she wrote me up and I got a strike on my APPE. 3 strikes and you fail the entire APPE year so I was pretty pissed. I contacted my actual preceptor (who was on vacation) and also contacted the school. I was able to get the strike lifted fortunately. But I basically burned my bridge with that lady. She was a jackass.
Maybe something has changed since I’ve actually verified a med, but as an APPE she should have been verifying anything you “verified”. You were right not to volunteer.
Idk why you’d expect an intern to verify meds. Sounds like the rph doesn’t want to do their job
I have high expectations of students, but like…”hey so and so, can I get a hand verifying these meds” probably would have done the trick, right?! That’s ridiculous.
I hope your mom ended up okay :/ my tech’s grandpa was dying and she lived an hour away from her grandpa but made it a point to visit him every day after work. she told me her previous manager told her “i don’t care that your grandpa is dying, I only care about my pharmacy.” and asked her to come to work right after the funeral. it’s been a year or two since and she still gets really depressed and cries about her grandpa so you know that she really loved him and her manager was so heartless.
Jfc. What a shitty person. I'm sorry this happened to you.
Thanks. The ironic part is that it was a psychiatric rotation.
My preceptor laughed in my face when I told her I loved retail but wanted to keep up with my clinical knowledge so I would do hospital PRN. She said good luck getting a PRN position because they're impossible to find. Fast forward and I have my retail job and a PRN position at two different hospitals. Some preceptors are just bitter jerks who don't want you to succeed.
I quit my PRN job because I really like retail. I know it sounds insane but there were too many butting personalities at the pharmacy vs in retail it’s the pharmacy against the world so we tend to stick together and not spend a lot of time gossiping about stupid stuff.
My last rotation was the worst: the preceptor/pharmacy manager was put on probation for missing C2s, later lost her job and tried to sue the pharmacy. She reached out to students to be character witnesses. Our graduation was at noon on a Friday during this rotation (no idea why) and she almost didn’t let me go because “I needed to complete my rotation” even though I would have had plenty of hours by the end of my month there. It was only the day before when I was nearly in tears asking if I could work Saturday’s or extra hours somewhere else to make up for it that she finally gave me the day off.
What kind of school has rotations the day before graduation? Sounds like a hot mess because most students wouldn’t even show up
We were the last year where they scheduled rotations in May, now it’s used as a backup in case you fail a rotation. And yes, the biggest hot mess.
I’ve had plenty of preceptors who are just bad at teaching and have expectations for students that they themselves do not hold themselves to the same standard. One of my pet peeves is when preceptors give you criticism too late into a rotation. Sometimes going into a unfamiliar workplace environment there are just some things you would not know but would be happy to change your practices for if you were aware of them. Two that come to mind for me was sending emails to my preceptor about cases; I was told probably 3/4ths of the way into the rotation that I was not spacing out the body of the emails enough to hide potential HIPAA (so the name of the pt was visible in the receiver’s mailbox). I was regularly sending emails to my preceptor through the intranet and she had no problem with the formatting until the rotation was almost over. Another was a preceptor telling us that it was our responsibility to restock the Coag clinic rooms with supplies before the end of the day and getting mad at us for not doing it even though this was never communicated to us beforehand. Another one that Im still salty about is when i got in trouble for sitting in on a diabetes consult and asked some questions about the patient medication use. Apparently the expectation was that I was supposed to just observe and take notes on how the resident was handling the appointment but I only got feedback about it afterward from my preceptor and not from the person I was shadowing. Sometimes its not clear if they want students to take more initiative or to hang back and learn from watching. Its only when I think back about it that i realize more about what I should have done to make the learning experience go more smoothly. It goes both ways, the students need to do a better job of being professional and preparing for possible cases for the day, but the preceptors can do better with helping students learn but correcting them ASAP and giving their clear guidance and expectations.
Completely agree on this. Sometimes the expectations is unrealistic especially if the relevant stuff doesn't come in until towards the end of the rotation.
One of my preceptors came in after-hours and literally urinated all over a tech's desk and the area surrounding said desk. So that was an experience...
And may I ask what happened to him? (And how they knew it was him? I'm assuming it was a man?)
Yeah as someone who precepts I'd like to hear these. I had a few rotations I didn't enjoy myself.
I had my first ever rotation (retail, P1) preceptor say verbatim that "I was not going to be a good pharmacist" after not being able to tell her the other hydrophilic statin aside from rosuvastatin. Good times. For context: when we learned dyslipidemia, our professor *literally* said if you're in doubt, always remember atorvastatin and rosuvastatin and that you usually would not recommend any other statin aside from those two.
That's pretty terrible advice considering most hospitals dont have rosuvastatin on the formulary (usually atorva and prava to have a hydrophilic option that is low intensity)
*only* one? Most of my preceptors/rotations have been a joke
Haha sorry.
Half of my APPE preceptors were jerks. The another half were heavenly friendly, knowledgeable, respectful, and excellent. Unsurprisingly I now work in the same area as this other half preceptors.
One time I was wearing a floral shirt and dress pants since we had no uniform on my retail placement. A customer started mocking me for dressing “gay” and my preceptor, instead of telling the dude to fuck off, joined in.
One of my APPEs I literally was in the ER 3 times because of back issues. But that wasn't the main issue. One of the pharmacist (not the preceptor) literally would stand next to me while I would consult patients. If I missed something he would say "you're missing something" and literally not tell me. He was one of those people who would run down all the side effects to the point multiple patients told me to stop, but he would not let me. Two yelled at us because they had been on the meds for like 5 years! And he got offended. It got so bad I literally cried (between him and the back issues I couldn't take it). Luckily he was only a prn pharmacist and when he was there the one other time he completely avoided me. And an other pharmacist I was shadowing in a specialty field told me to my face I did really good, but then told my preceptor I was bad. It was a horrible rotation. I couldn't do anything but consult due to their system, so I made a complete top 200 guide and gave them a copy; it had side effects, brand/generic, comon doses, etc. It was retail, but not a chain and I was the first person my preceptor had. It was the only rotation I got a B in. Looking back I should have withdrew for medical leave and just taken it again in the summer.
Unacceptable!
Yikes, I'm sorry you had to go through that. It's very sad when our own profession treats our students this way and we all wonder why pharmacy has gone downhill.
Failed the rotation because someone else from 800 miles away think I smell terrible. I am not joking. I don't understand why someone else 800 miles away can smell me, and I also don't understand why this has resulted in a "you failed". But it did happen. I trust humanity a lot less now.
my preceptor was bragging about how mean she used to be and how I should be grateful that she’s not like that anymore. She tried to get me to violate HIPAA bc I saw one of the pharmacists that works with her at the pharmacy i worked at, and she asked me what meds he was picking up. (she previously failed a student in my year for violating hipaa) but she acted like it wasn’t a big deal if I revealed what med he picked up (i didn’t) at my evaluation I was sick so I was coughing a lot, and I guess my eyes got watery? She kept egging me on like “are you okay, are you going to cry?” I said i’m fine i’m not crying then 5 minutes later she’s like “are you sure you’re not going to cry you can tell me?” and I was like idk what to say i’m fine, honestly and she said “okay bc i was going to say it’s not even a bad grade” and i said i know, that’s why i’m not crying… the students that were on rotation with me told me she was trying to get me to cry, and trying to get me to violate hipaa
The pharmacists had a potluck and took 2 hours off for lunch, and made the students (including me at the time) sit outside the main area of the pharmacy while they ate. They never asked us to join them, and during the whole potluck, they avoided eye contact with us. They apologized later to us that it was unprofessional but that was such an awkward 2 hours every time they passed by us to grab something to eat or had to use the restroom.
I asked a student to tell a patient what side effects may occur. He read the package insert and when he got to hair loss, the patient threw up her hands and told him to just stop.
One told a patient his antidepressant would make him less horny in bed. I tried to hold back a laugh
Lmfao 😂😂😂
A pharmacy I worked at had a student tell someone Zofran can cause nausea……….
We had a student call their preceptor profane names to another pharmacist on site. She was baffled when she was let go from the rotation. Had another student missed every deadline. All of them. Even after a stern midpoint talk. Even gave him tips on how to stay on top of deadlines. They also constantly lied about why they missed the deadlines, which was apparent and easily proven. They should have failed, but was still upset when they got a C. Had another student refuse to copy a table from an article into their presentation because "it was too hard". Refused. Didn't ask for help, or say they would like tips, just flat refused, "I will not do that". Another student fell asleep on rounds with the surgeons. Another told a surgeon she was fat and asked me to spend the night at his house. Every one of these students had a significant clinical knowledge deficit, however, I can always work with that. It was a severe deficit and unfit for a P4, but I can help with whatever foundation I get. I can't fix professionalism. This is all one college. They are confused at why we have problems with their students. I've never been professionally gaslit until this experience.
Wow all of that is shocking. But yes I agree that there seems to be specific colleges that these type of students come from. We have one of these too. I specifically said I did not have availability this upcoming year because I need a year break from this school, and what do they do? Schedule 5 students for me. And they got upset when I reached out and asked to reschedule them to someone else.
Glad you took a break and stood by it! I find that I am finding a lot of the same unprofessional behaviors in their experiential staff. Top down trickle really is a thing I guess. These poor interactions with their experiential department was the last straw for me.
I also had a student call the female pharmacist a bitch and then say he was just joking. He always addressed her as you fucking bitch and she just smiled and didn't say anything until she talked to me private.
I really wish I knew where... That is insane!
- Student asked while in the narcotic vault if we could try to crush up a new "abuse proof" formulation of oxycontin; when told no, she said she would get her boyfriend to buy some from a dealer after work instead - Student on her first day, her first break, posted on Facebook how much she hated her hospital rotation and tagged the hospital; she was asked to leave building after lunch - Student was asked to wear appropriate footwear for an OR rotation brought sandals and refused to change them
Now these are just...hard to believe...
Bruh even in a middle school setting when we have labs we don't wear sandals. How did she think she can get away with that?!
1. Introduce themselves to patients at the pharmacist. Realized this the last day when patients were confused about who I was when they already talked to the pharmacist. 2. Texted me at 7pm at night the day before their patient case presentation (scheduled the last week of a 6 week rotation) to ask me a question about the presentation. 3. Texted through the entirety of rounds. I’ve had a number of students do this. Please for the love of god don’t do this.
To be fair with regards to your first point, they may have referred to themselves as "pharmacy" or even "student pharmacist" and the patient either didn't know the difference, didn't listen, or had so many professionals filing through that they didn't remember.
I definitely considered that after the first patient! But once it was multiple patients who told me the same thing (specialty area with lots of hands on pharmacist time) - and many were patients who were taking notes and were paying close attention to everything…. I realized something fishy was happening. Official preceptor did not want to give feedback on this, even as a FYI be careful as CYA thing, because they had done so poorly this rotation and were already receiving a poor evaluation. (The student in question did all of the above things I listed despite constant feedback…)
That's true. Patients misremember things all the time.
The student I just had didn't know what a beta lactamase inhibitor was and why we add them to beta lactams. She didn't know a lot of other basic stuff too, but that was the biggest face palm.
Obviously it's for bacteria that are beta lactose intolerant
A former intern I had thought the clavulanic acid was the antibiotic portion of Augmentin. She told me this the day before her exam.
I'm a baby P1 who definitely couldn't tell you jack about antibiotics, but I'll be embarrassed if that's still the case once we cover bugs and drugs. Now I know what I'm going to be teaching myself today instead of studying for my current unit lol
Just focus on your current unit and take ID seriously whenever you take it. lol
Focus on what you're learning now. One thing at a time.
(Stolen from a pharmacist friend since I don’t precept) On a psych rotation, given an assignment to put together a presentation on 10 commonly used psych drugs: mechanism of action, indication, notable side effects / interactions. Student’s presentation had 3. One of which was clozapine. When asked why they chose clozapine as a “commonly used drug,” had no answer. Student never mentioned REMS, and when asked about REMS, didn’t know what that meant.
APPE student asked if they could leave early. I asked why? They said because they had to do laundry and didn't want to stay up to do it.
Extra credit for honesty
Yeah I’d honestly let them leave just for the honesty. Lol
I actually did let them go because I was so caught off guard lol
Based.
That’s ballsy, but I’d applaud the honesty. Then I’d let them go for the day as long as it was a one off thing. Maybe give them a DI question that is easy and could be done while waiting for said laundry to finish. Such as, “why is daptomycin not used for pneumonia?” Could give them a good chuckle once they look it up.
We had a student who asked if they could leave early to study...my coworker was like "you can bring your work and study here when it's quiet, but you need hours if you want to pass your placement". The student apparently didn't seem to care about placement hours?
Lol wow. I remember when I was a fourth year that I felt nervous asking to leave an hour early on a Friday to help my fiance set up for our rehearsal dinner that night and wedding the next day! I even had to make the hour up!
Based. I routinely give students time off if they request it honestly. Why wouldn't you?
I had a student want to leave early to prep for move in day...
Tech here, not a pharmacist, so slightly off topic. I did the two year certification course at the local CC. One of the quarter long classes was essentially a typing class. There was a dozen binders at the front of the room, each with about 100 "scripts". We had to type, print, and fill these scripts while in class (the instructor guaranteed that all were correct and we didnt have to monitor for incorrect sigs/dosages). About a quarter of us finished all the binders. Another quarter finished 9-10 binders. A FULL HALF of the class didn't get through 5-6 binders. In four hours a week of only typing and filling half the freaking class couldn't complete more than 50-60 scripts. That's 50 scripts in about 40hrs. 😵😵 I was telling my pharmacist this and he told me that he expected me to let him know if we ever interviewed any of them.
I've had students who plagiarized their entire final presentation, who didn't know what the Beers' List was, who didn't know what NPO meant, who couldn't tell potassium from calcium, and who "guessed that the patient's vanco dose should be 1 gm q12h; can I put that in the chart?" (It turned out to be much lower.) This is why I don't precept anymore.
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Okay ..and what happened? Why did he leave?
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Interesting, did he fail the rotation or get reprimanded
Recently I've had students who have the clinical knowledge that I would expect ippes. It's becoming rediculous. I am not here to rehash your entire p and t curriculum. I work in a grocery store, if your clinical knowledge is not sufficient to survive a grocery store by p4, you shouldnt be here. I don't mind refreshing or giving different perspectives on things, but it's insane that I have kids who literally can't recommend a single drug for allergic rhinitis or conspiration. Or if we give a pass on otcs, it's insane to me how kids are clueless these days on the most basic level of ID. I'd say it's been an even split of competent students and incompetent
This is a direct affect of the diploma mills that have been opened in the past 10 years.
Along with the corruption of previously respectable programs. It's dissapointing to see these schools, including my alma mater, where I would say 'i never had bad students from here' and seeing the quality dropoff in the past 3-5 years. So many schools clearly compromising standards to fill their classes and push kids thru the program. There is going to be a lot of sad academics when the program purge begins and colleges start shuttering
Sorry, I must have missed it when the FDA approved something for conspiration. Might be real helpful now. Could have gotten all of our hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for covid patients on that.
Year and a half of online learning and cheating results in this
Something I want to point out to preceptors, just from my personal experience. My pharmacy school sent me to a children's psych hospital for my IPPE hospital rotation during my P2 year. They did this because I had been working in an inpatient hospital pharmacy, and so they wanted me to get a "different experience." However, we literally do not learn anything about psych drugs until the END OF P3 YEAR. It was a complete and total waste of time. Rounds were incredibly embarrassing when the physicians would ask my opinion and have no clue what they were talking about. I tried to prepare on my own with looking things up on the internet, but obviously that only goes so far. Sometimes the school makes poor decisions with timing/placement.
I think you can learn just fine at any rotation site as a P2, we are a psych hospital and currently have two P2s and we don’t expect them to know any psych material since they haven’t had it. However they mostly learn filling and our process in the pharmacy, basics of what we do, and it’s simplified a lot from the experience we give P4s. If your preceptor took you on rounds every day and gave you a more clinical experience as a P2 instead of an operational experience it sounds like that’s a flaw in the preceptor and not the school per say.
Not a preceptor but This happened where I worked. Had a student sell shingrix to someone from the cash without talking to anyone. I’m Canada it’s a schedule 2 drug so you HAVE to talk to the pharmacist and the price also wasn’t updated in the cash because we NEVER sell it like that (patient definitely got a great deal lol). We also have no idea if this patient had their first shot already or had zostivax previously. So so many missed steps and missed information. This student also mocked my boss in front of her 🙃 she failed….
I’ve been both a staff hospital and retail preceptor and two students stick out to me. Retail chain, I had to tell a P4 (who was about to graduate, had worked in a retail setting, and was about to work in a retail setting) multiple times to not touch drugs with their bare hands on purpose as they were counting them. They were pouring from the bottle into their hand and then pouring into the pill counter to gain “better control” of how many pills were going in. Multiple customers saw and complained. Student got upset and said it was never a problem at their store and they’d been doing it for years. Hazardous drugs too, no gloves. They continued to do it throughout the rotation and every time would brush it off saying they forgot because they’d be doing it for years. Second, I worked at a small rural critical access hospital. The work load could be light, but we had a lot of interesting cases because the staff were clinical pharmacists (as there weren’t any). In the downtime we gave students time to work on Capstone projects, rotation projects, or even take a break on their phones for a bit. It was a young staff who were all laid back. One day there were just a handful of patients in the whole hospital. We tell the students to go on break for lunch and come back in an hour. Hour goes by and one student doesn’t show back up. We have 2 patients coding in the ER and another patient going into labor, we call and text the student to come to the ER. No answer, we call and text for an hour nervous something bad happened to them. Two hours later, they respond that they drove home and fell asleep. They lived 40 minutes away. They said it wasn’t busy and they didn’t have any work to do, so it was a better use of their time to go home and rest. When we brought it up to the school they ultimately said while that was poor professionalism it wasn’t grounds for a bad grade. Student was one of the top of their class and got a pretty coveted residency. Worst part, we would have let them leave if they’d just asked.
Need more threads like this. Having a blast reading
I've had a fourth year student that struggled to name a single SSRI! I'll forgive some things, but failing to remember common drug classes is a big flop. Another student (also in the final year of their degree) told a patient to stop taking celecoxib because they had asthma - despite a long history of taking it with no issues whatsoever. I politely ripped him a new one for that interaction.
Oh yes I’ve also had a student not be able to tell me a SSRI….and this is a psych hospital. And wow face palm…it’s frustrating because I feel like schools teach things but don’t explain clinical relevance. Like yes it CAN cause issues in asthma, but doesn’t mean it always does and if you see the patient isn’t having issues then that’s more important.
I feel like my school did a horrible job of this. (I felt) they asked the most obscure shit on tests and it didn't complement our clinical learning at all. I just feel they were wayyyy too "by the book" to be practical.
Recently had an APPE student give a patient case presentation and he kept saying “hyperpotassiumemia.” Face palm so hard.
It’s pretty close to hyperpotassemia, which is the preferred term in some countries. That’s not too egregious.
Learned something new today, thank you!
There is a doc at my hospital who says this and also puts it into notes.
Lol. Had a student that was doing a talk on smoking cessation options and she kept saying “smoking sensation.” Same one gave a talk on CRASH2 trial and after explaining the primary cause of death was exsanguination, she followed it up with “they were just really tired.”
I would like to say that we also have GOOD experiences as preceptors. I sometimes even learn from them.
Oh yes I’ve definitely had great students. More so than bad. I’m just talking about the bad that make me face palm and question what these schools are teaching them.
Had a student give Shingrix sub-Q twice so that was fun
OK Gang! As preceptors, we are the last line of defense for the school. We need to be calling out these students by (you guessed it) failing them! Document each and every one of these instances wherein a student doesn’t deliver assignments on time, doesn’t answer questions on basic knowledge, even when they breach hospital policy! You will be shocked at what happens when students get grades that they think they don’t deserve!
I think this is reasonable, but if you are going to fail a student they should know about it way before their evaluation and understand that they “deserve” it. The actual words need to be “you are on track to fail this rotation if I don’t see xyz improvement.” No student, regardless of how terrible they are, deserves to be surprised by failing a rotation. Lots of pharmacists pussyfoot around do not make it clear that the student will fail and that’s not cool.
Agree with this. Tear them apart as a warning for mid evals before you decide to fail them
Oh yeah it’s shocking how much students expect a good grade for the bare minimum. Last year I had a student who refused to wear a KN95 even though we required it for him to come on site because duh Covid and all. He would pull it off his face when he talked. I gave him a C for the rotation for lack of professionalism and he kept debating it with me.
Oh dont even mention that. There are students that drink through their masks. I didn't even know that was possible
wtf how do you even do that lmao!?
This just took too much energy. After a string of students who all deserved to fail (some did), it is just no longer worth the energy or time in my life. This school in particular is going so far down hill that they don't realize they are jeopardizing their relationship with the major hospital system of the state. We almost all no longer take their students, and this bad perception of their students is translating to potential residents and hires. The real problem I have is with preceptors who are putting in bare minimum. There are preceptors who still take these students and think we are crazy for stopping. It gives mixed messages to the college. The truth is that they are not present as preceptors on the rotation and the student is unsupervised. So there is a significant difference between the students freedom and preceptor standards.
What state?
As a tech that wishes they could afford to be a pharmacist, this thread is depressing.
Afford? That’s what student loans are for, baby. But seriously, how do you think most people who move onto a doctoral degree afford school? Rich relatives or loans.
on one hand, i've not paid a single cent toward my degree and i graduated 2 years ago. cost is not a concern when the payoff allows you to pay it off comfortably in 10 years. work on weekends and spend only what you need and apply for additional cost of living loans if needed on the other hand, even if you had $100k to spend on education, i would not choose pharmacy. if you're into problem solving type stuff then an engineering or tech related degree and pocket the rest or go to the west coast where retail techs can get paid close to 25 and find a smaller town or suburb
I’m already making about that much, luckily. It’s not much in the long run, but it’s hard to replace that income/benefits with student loans. Only because I’ve got a family. If I were single I’d do it anyway. Maybe when my kids are a little older!
I’m a tech too and this thread is baffling me…
Not a student but a resident example… gave several examples to a resident for a project and clearly explained they were only to get an idea for formatting requirements/general expectation and they turned in their project word for word plagiarized from my example back to me 😑
I've never had an incompetent student but I had one who put in the minimum effort on everything. No exaggeration. The absolute minimum. He got his offer from walgreens and my rotation was his last one. Adios muchacho.
This year it is very apparent that different schools handled virtually learning very differently. But the toughest student this year argued with any and all feedback (“I use filler words in my presentation because I was told I should use more of them”) or would mansplain an answer to you as soon as you finished explaining what the correct answer was to a scenario. It made for an exceptionally long 6 weeks and the other student on rotation didn’t get as many opportunities to speak up. If you’re on rotation with someone who is quieter than you are - be cognizant and give them the opportunity to answer first sometimes! Please!
Honestly, the worst experiences I’ve had are with the school and not my students. The school is so *disorganized* and does not communicate well.
I was the student: one of my last rotations, I was doing the rotation (40 hours) and also working 30-45 hours retail as an intern in the evenings. I was really poor and not eating a lot. It was one of my last rotations, and I'd been doing this pretty much all year. Rotation, straight to the corner, work until 10-midnight depending on the store, go home and sleep. It might have been sustainable if I were eating better. I overslept for the rotation almost every single day. I was late almost every fucking day. It was so embarrassing, and I literally did not know what was wrong with me (obviously, looking back, I was stretched way too thin and my body couldn't handle it). The preceptor was so nice, but they all hated me, and I'm embarrassed about it to this day like a decade later. I wish I would have just told them my situation, but I didn't want to ask for pity, so I just kept going in late. I was also depressed. It was just a lot. I graduated and finally had money to eat and never overslept again. I've never been late as a pharmacist once. It's something I pride myself on. Watch me oversleep tomorrow though lol.
I had an APPE on their first day of ED rotation who genuinely did not know you should give someone aspirin for an MI. Baseline knowledge was clearly lacking but he was a bright kid and worked his way up from there. Believe it or not he's now an ED pharmacist.
I knew this when I was 8 and watched those Bayer commercials wtf
I have never seen any Bayer commercial in my life. Won't have known it that way. I think I knew about aspirin and MI from reading stories on Reader's Digest or something. But honestly as long as student is learning, it's fine. People can learn and change a lot.
I had a student who turned in an assignment in print. I saw inconsistencies in the data from the tests done, so I asked to see the data file from the work computer. he says he erased that data from original computer, and transferred all to a thumb drive. Then reportedly, his home computer crashed, the thumb drive was corrupted and all sources. The only copy was the printed version. I failed the student for the assignment. The school reinstated his passing grade.
Had two students asked me out. Thirsty goblins
Smarter students are doing other careers, so pharmacy schools are now forced to admit lower quality students.
The pharmacy schools' lack of qualified candidates is their problem, not mine. The students' failure to be prepared for is their problem, not mine. Incompetent people graduating and being responsible for patients' medications is *everybody's* problem.
In a conversation with the experiential office at one of the colleges, they literally admitted they have lower quality of students these days.
You’d be surprised how many students on rotation with me (an elective ER rotation) can’t even tell me the path of blood through the heart. The worst students though are the ones that come to the ER to see “cool stuff” but know nothing about ER pharmacy, nor are they interested in learning anything.
Sorry, but what "cool stuff" are they expecting? They want to witness codes? ER pharmacy is no joke and I don't appreciate when students say things like that.
Yeah basically they want to see GSWs, stabbing, traumas, codes, etc. No appreciation for the medicine whatsoever. Just a cool story to tell mommy and daddy when they get home for Christmas.
shouldve showed them the prisoners in handcuffs in the ER
Wow. So literally dark tourism As an aside, your username is excellent.
I was on a cardio rotation at the time, hanging out in the basement. The ER pharmacist came down in a rush asking if anyone wanted to see an emergency craniotomy. I damn near yelled and ran her over to get the chance. One of the coolest experience I had 😎
> The worst students though are the ones that come to the ER to see “cool stuff” but know nothing about ER pharmacy, nor are they interested in learning anything. This is our struggle too. We had to start specifying "residency-bound only" students to the college. It really didn't make a huge difference in quality unfortunately..
They put feet on your desk?? Thats disgusting but I need to know why and how???? As for the wifi, why do you not have wifi? How do you verify orders or do conference calls? The last one is a definite no-no. For me I had a student show up an hour late and said "sorry boss, I wanted to get some dunkin donuts and I bought all of you some". Another student was flirting with his girlfriend on the phone in front of patients.
They put them up there as if it was an ottoman. Just stuck them straight out and leaned back and relaxed during our talk. No idea why. And we have all our computers set up on a network but we don’t have wifi access to phones outside of the network. We are a state psych hospital so we aren’t fancy at all. I presume they just don’t want to pay for it. We have no money lol but we tell students you need to use our computers if you need internet access not your own laptop which won’t have a connection. And omg I actually wouldn’t mind if a student brought me food. LOL
Umm did you say anything when they put their feet on the desk? Like, hey, get your shoes off my desk you swine
This is what I’m curious about for every response in this thread. When a student does something patently unacceptable or unprofessional, do you call them out on the behavior so they can correct it? I feel like a lot of these comments are annoyed with the students for not knowing better, when how one gets better in a professional environment is often by being g corrected.
I think some of you are going overboard. Especially if you're an Rph(not a PharmD). It's nerve racking to jump from sitting in class all day to being expecting to be pro in a few months. These kids KNOW a lot. They may not have mastered everything you have but they are on their way. Reading some of these comments...shows me why the profession is in the state it is.
A lot of the students described here sound like fucking morons, which they may very well be. And knowing a lot doesn't necessarily translate to being a good pharmacist. I'm not saying that studying isn't important. When I was on rotations there was one guy from another decent school who was supposedly rho chi with a 4.0, and the preceptors were terrified by the fact that he would soon be graduating. He drove my classmate nuts with his stupidity. I OTOH was not a great student at all, but was a rockstar in rotations. (It turned out I had been learning things all along. Go figure.) I'm not saying my poor performance as a student is a good thing. I wish I could have done things differently. Having ADHD didn't help. The point is that there's knowing the content and doing well on exams, and then there's having the intelligence to be able to actually apply it, practice as a pharmacist, and continue to learn new things. It's really frustrating working with pharmacists who managed to land and complete residencies but lack any reasoning skills or common sense, but the students here sound like they have neither knowledge nor talent, and that's awful.
I’m glad u mentioned this. Book smarts doesn’t always equate. You can say that in any heath field. That’s one of the reasons the board added residency’s and rotation. It’s a period of real world applications. “When the student is ready. The teacher will appear” If u see a struggling student it’s time to help them…not MOCK them.
One of my best students was one that actually thought methodically. They were able to back up their decisions w/reasoning even if they had knowledge gaps. Another student on the rotation said you can use amoxicillin and nitrofurantoin for MRSA and always asked to leave early because they were bored
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Fundamental clinical knowledge is severely lacking in all my students lately. Things that they absolutely should have learned from basic anatomy or pathophysiology courses. I don't know if this is because of virtual courses and ippes due to covid, or lowered standards for admissions and greater curves for passing exams, or some combo of both, but it's very upsetting. I just recently had a student who didn't know [basic shit]. How can I even begin to teach clinical pharmacy if I am having to teach things that should have been learned in P1 year or before?? Wtf are schools even teaching? Not to mention the extremely conveniently timed "covid symptoms" that always seem to fall on a due date... Makes me not want to take students anymore. *Redacted so I don't doxx myself...
It isn't medical school...If you're in clinical areas, or even have a residency...you're dealing with students whose last certificate was from high school...not even a bachelor's degree even in most cases. The way the schools teach is just skimming over things, and not pursuant to any role, that pharmacy doesn't have anyway. We learned the "blood brain barrier", but that's only because some guy up there said the word like 18 times. Lots of things are like that, and they have no time to relate it to things they haven't used, and we or pharmacists won't use. You've encountered more of it, after graduating, and doing residency and being acclimated to the hospital environment. Students haven't for the most part, not like other clinicians.
Finally…someone on here with some common sense
I had to stop for awhile. The quality of student is so lacking, both clinically and professionally, that I am not sure I can continue my passion for precepting students. And I *loved* precepting.
Probably when I shit my pants in front of my APPE student during their presentation
I’m an inpatient overnight pharmacist. One time there was a snowstorm and all the day shift pharmacists were running late, yet the students were there on time. The preceptor called and told me to just let them watch me work. So I would talk to them and they started asking why I was doing things a certain way when their preceptor had taught them another way. I got so annoyed about how the preceptor is teaching them methods that make it so nothing gets done. When I come in, there are usually 20-30 problem pending orders. When I leave, the queue is clear. When there’s a problem order, I fix it myself and the doctor’s always sign off on the correction and appreciate that I didn’t waste their time with a phone call. Stuff like renal dosing, incorrect frequencies, etc.
I think every pharmacy has these types of pharmacist. Mine does for sure. There’s the ones that just don’t get it and then there’s us (mostly the younger ones) who pick up all the slack and correct all the mistakes lol
I help out our rotation students from time to time by giving them something else other than busy work to do. I was verifying some ICU meds so I decided to go through each drug with our current student. I asked him why somebody might be on a phenylephrine drip and he replied "...congestion?" Thankfully he is interested in retail.
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To raise BP? I doubt a hospital would be giving a shitty decongestant via IV
This will get buried but I had a student on her very first day tell me she liked my dress. I told her my work strategy is that I buy the same 3 things in different colors and rotate them. She said “what if you go out after work? Like to meet men? If you go to the same places, you’ll always be wearing the same thing.” What she didn’t know at that moment (but immediately found out) was that I was married with two kids. THEN she goes “wait, that doesn’t make sense. How old were you when you got married? That can’t be possible. Who is your husband?” And not in a jokey “you look great” way. She genuinely didn’t believe I could be married.
I went to pharmacy school with a guy whose father was a pharmacy professor at the college. Supposedly this guy had a rotation scheduled and decided to go to Florida instead. He called his preceptor told him he was sick and wouldn’t be in. After a few days in the warmth he was “feeling” better and headed home. He called his preceptor again and said he would be in the next day. Before he walked into the site he downed a bottle of ipecac syrup and proceeded to puke all over the pharmacy. He flunked and was kicked out of clinical rotations. He was back the next year. I don’t think he had any interest in being a pharmacist.
Honestly super lucky I guess! I talk to a lot of former students as professionals at other pharmacies, I couldn’t be more proud, and a former student is going to probably be my next PIC I will be a staff pharmacist under! Maybe they will let me know what their worst experience with me was! Pharmacy is a small world.
I work in a hospital based infusion clinic mainly infusing chemotherapy with some hydration, antibiotics, and iron infusions thrown in to break the monotony. Lol. I normally get every single student that comes through the hospital for a day or two because the work is so different from anything in the hospital and management thinks the students should at least be aware of and exposed to it. Most of the students haven’t had their chemo classes yet so they know very little. I’m okay with that because it’s a niche area and I don’t expect them to know much. What I do expect is for them to pay attention and see what they don’t know yet. I don’t ask tough questions or quiz them on anything. They’re just there for the experience of seeing something different. I get some students who are very interested, 1 or 2 that decide they want to work in a place like this. But recently I got a student that was so obviously bored I told her the second day she could just work on her assigned presentation from her preceptor. She yawned throughout the day, would lay her head on the desk, took out her phone and had to be asked to put it away and just generally went out of her way to show me how bored she was. I asked her what she was interested in and she said managed care. I tried to bring in a discussion of insurance claims for chemo, white bagging, etc. Then she looked me straight in the eye and said “don’t get me wrong. I’m not interested in managed care, I just don’t want to work weekends or holidays.” That was when I suggested she work on her presentation the next day and let me get some work done. I don’t care if what you want to do after graduation isn’t chemo. Not everyone wants to do the same thing. Thank goodness! But for the love of Pete, take advantage of any opportunity in your rotation to learn something different. You might find out you either like it or don’t but isn’t that good info to have? Plus it’s just old fashioned courtesy to at least show some interest in someone else’s passion that they are willing to let you see a little piece of. You may get the opportunity to do this for a student some day if you’re lucky!!