Practice Philosophy Questions

Can you communicate in writing or verbally why you want to do a residency and how residency training will benefit you in meeting the goals of your "ideal" pharmacy career? Consider the following questions:

-What are 3-5 areas of pharmacy that interest you right now (examples: cardiology, cardiology, infectious disease, anticoagulation, clinical informatics, managed care, diabetes)?
-Are there areas of pharmacy for which you know you definitely don't want to practice? For instance, if you know you aren't interested in oncology, it wouldn't make sense for you to apply to a hospital well known for care of its inpatient/outpatient acute oncology services and BMT (since one or more of these areas are likely to be a required rotation).
-How much autonomy do you want in your practice setting?
-Do you want to work in an inpatient setting or outpatient setting?
-If you want to work in an inpatient setting, do you want a large hospital with specialized pharmacy services or a smaller, community hospital where the pharmacists perform a wide variety of tasks?
-If you want to work in an inpatient setting, how important is it to you to be in teaching hospital which also trains other learners such as medical residents or nursing students?
-Do you want interactions with prescribers to be on formal patient rounds or are you comfortable with communication through written notes in the chart?
-If you want to work in an inpatient setting, do you want to complete staffing requirements in centralized pharmacy or decentralized pharmacy areas?
-If you want to work in an outpatient setting, do you want to see general internal medicine patients or patients in a specialty clinic (examples: anticoagulation management, metabolic syndrome, HIV, etc.)?
-If you want to work in an outpatient setting, do you also want to be affiliated with a pharmacy with dispensing responsibilities?
-Do you want to teach pharmacy students in either a formalized classroom setting or co-precepting IPPE or APPE students on clinical rotations?
-If you are interested in teaching, how important is it to seek a residency program which offers a teaching certificate?
-How important is clinical research to you? Do you want the opportunity to participate in multiple IRB-approved projects?
-What are your goals regarding publishing clinical research?
-What are your short-term (1-2 year) pharmacy goals? Do you want to complete a PGY2?
-What are your longer-term (5 year) pharmacy goals?
-How do you feel about Board Certification (Go to: www.bpsweb.org for more information)?
-What do you consider threats or opportunities to the profession of pharmacy (example: How do you think implementation of the Affordable Care Act will impact pharmacy?)?
-What are common characteristics you want in all of the residency programs for which you are submitting applications?

These questions are very important as you begin researching residency programs and determining how you envision your residency training to be. Very soon you will be writing letters of intent to residency programs. Your letter should include detailed information regarding the above questions. In addition to evaluating how well of a "fit" you are to the residency program, residency programs will be considering how well their program meets your needs. If you are able the above questions in detail, you will stand out as more mature residency candidate with a clearer vision of pharmacy practice.

To get you started, I recommend the following resources:
Leinum CJ, Trapskin PJ. Writing a personal philosophy of practice. Am J Health Syst Pharma. 2011 Jan 15;68:116-117.