Personal Placement Service - decision time!

Personal Placement Service (PPS) is a service offered by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists which takes place at their Midyear Clinical Meeting (MCM).  It allows employers and potential employees to meet face-to-face for a mini-interview at Midyear.  In addition to traditional job opportunities, PPS is also a venue for those interested in pharmacy residencies.  Participation in PPS is not universal so it is important to understand the factors which will predict whether a PGY-1 residency program will participate in PPS.  The programs most likely to participate are:

• Large programs which offer both PGY-1 and PGY-2 positions
• Large employers which may also have multiple job openings as well
• Pharmaceutical industry fellowships
• Programs geographically located close to where the MCM will be held ( this will be Florida in 2013)

Decision time is here because early-bird prices for PPS applicants expire on October 21st (prices go from $70 to $130 for students).  Although the ASHP meeting is not until December, if you are interested in participating in PPS, you should consider getting started now so that you can secure an interview slot at the meeting.  Once you register for PPS, employers and residency directors will be able to find you in searches for PPS participants.  You will also be able to express your interest in participating programs.  Because PPS involves scheduled interview times, not everyone who wants an interview will receive one.  Programs will be looking for your qualifications as well as whether what they are offering matches what you are looking for.  

Although what happens at PPS is an "interview," different programs have different practices.  Some may treat PPS as a pre-screening activity where they will ask tough questions and try to get to know each applicant so that they can decide who moves to the next round.  Others will treat PPS as an opportunity to showcase their program and attract interested applicants.  It will be tough to determine which is which but if you are extended an offer to interview at PPS, it is always a good idea to ask whether there is anything specific you need to do to prepare for the interview.

To best take advantage of the PPS experience, avoid looking at programs which are located in your city.  Programs will want to use that time to look at applicants more geographically distant and you can always work on scheduling a visit with programs in your town when things are less hectic.  Make sure you make that face-to-face connection, however.  It is strange for a program to receive first contact with a local applicant when the application arrives.  You don't want the program to think they are your last choice or back-up program if they are not.

More about PPS will be posted on this web site in November.

Academic/Research Fellowships vs. Industry Fellowships. What's the difference?

I know this is the "Residency Preparation Blog" but why not include fellowships?  There are a lot of similarities between residencies and fellowships but a few important differences in terms of what these opportunities have to offer as well as how to go about applying for a position.  There is just one potentially confusing thing to clear up first since there are two types of post-graduate fellowships in pharmacy.  According to ASHP, an academic pharmacy fellowship (usually 2 years, possibly 3) is a "directed, highly individualized, postgraduate program designed to prepare the participant to become an independent researcher."  These types of programs are almost always affiliated with an academic institution and are peer-reviewed by the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, which has rigorous standards for quality and types of activities.  Some may offer graduate degrees as well.  Pharmacists completing an academic pharmacy fellowship often go on to work in academia but some may also work in a research area for a pharmaceutical company as well.

A postgraduate industry fellowship, on the other hand, is a one- or two-year position with the pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical industry designed to prepare a pharmacist for a pharmaceutical industry career.  While many are affiliated with academic institutions, the primary experiential learning occurs with a sponsor company in a specific focus area.  The academic affiliation allows for didactic teaching and precepting opportunities as well as faculty collaboration to help with scientific publications and presentations.  Fellows also become integral parts of the day-to-day functions of their pharmaceutical industry department while learning how to problem-solve and become an active member of a project team.  As many as 17% may not be affiliated with a college of pharmacy, so it is important to make that distinction when researching programs if the goal is to work with pharmacy faculty and students.

In a recent survey of industry fellowships affiliated with colleges of pharmacy published in AJHP in 2012, the following trends were identified:

• 64% were headquartered in New Jersey, 14% in Massachusetts, and 11% in North Carolina.
• Medical affairs (medical information, medical communications, medical science liaisons) fellowships made up 39% of fellowship positions available followed by clinical research (32%), regulatory affairs (9%), commercial (8%), health economics/outcomes (8%) and pharmacovigilance (4%).
• The most common first position following completion of an industry fellowship was in the pharmaceutical industry (93%); 56% were with the same company where the graduate completed a fellowship.
• In the first 1 - 5 years after fellowship completion, 81% of the 271 graduates (from 2005 - 2009) remained with pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical companies.

There are currently only proposed guidelines for industry fellowship uniformity, so the types of experiences and oversight is likely to be highly variable.  To learn more about these proposed guidelines, review the article published by Larochelle PA and colleagues published in the American Journal of Pharmceutical Education in 2009.  

The process for peer-review of academic/research fellowships is detailed and rigorous.  To learn more about these types of fellowships and the standards for peer review, visit ACCP's Peer Review of Fellowships web page.

Roseman residency history file

On Friday, June 15th, all Roseman University P3s received an email containing a document describing where students from Roseman University have done residency in previous years.  The document also described where our faculty trained and where they are currently affiliated with residency programs.  While it is not possible to provide names of alumni, some faculty have kept in touch with these former students and can contact them on your behalf.