Using select hospital pharmacies and competency based objectives, students will gain an appreciation for the profession of pharmacy as practiced in the hospital setting and develop professional attitudes, judgment, and skills needed to function in that setting. In this controlled learning environment, in contrast to unsupervised circumstance, competency pertinent to the hospital setting is the goal and end result and supersedes an employer-employee relationship. The student will observe/participate in daily operations.
The hospital pharmacy Early Practice Experience is an integral element of pharmacy training in view of the significant number of pharmacy practitioners who choose this field as a career path. The goal of this rotation is to expose students (through practice, participation, observation, and dialogue) to all activities related to a hospital pharmacy environment. The student will develop professional attitudes, judgment, concern for the hospitalized patient, and an appreciation for the impact of hospital practice on the health care system. In addition, the student will apply didactic information to the hospitalized patient regarding drug therapy, process prescriptions in a manner compatible with state of the art hospital pharmacy practice, learn the importance of policy development in the patient care arena, and expose the student to a variety of clinical settings.
Skills and experience gained during this four-week experience have been divided into three tiers: basic, intermediate, and advanced. These tiers reflect the level of skill involved and where the emphasis should be placed, especially early in the experience. To assure that all students attain a basic level of competency in the skills needed for daily operations of the hospital pharmacy, preceptors should have students advance through the tiers in order, saving advanced skills for the end of the four-weeks. We encourage preceptors and students to aim to achieve the advanced tier competencies, but this should not be at the expense of attaining the basic and intermediate skills. Therefore, the first two tiers have been designated as required skills and the third tier as optional skills.