Kaiser Permanente: Washington, DC
My third APPE rotation was at a Kaiser Permanente pharmacy in Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. For anyone who doesn’t know, Kaiser Permanente is a huge corporation that has a whole health network within itself. The location I worked at was pretty central so I had a whole building with all kinds of doctors, from Adult Medicine to specialties like Oncology, and a huge pharmacy to go with it.
Our pharmacy did at least 1,000 scripts within the 8 hours I was there, which is quite a high volume, and the pharmacy was open 24 hours. We had about 7-8 pharmacists working throughout the day while I was there and about 7-9 technicians as well.
Overall the experience was very eye opening. If you want to see retail to the fullest, this is the rotation for you. I can confidently say that if you can keep up with everyone here for 6 weeks, any retail pharmacy you work at thereafter will be a breeze. But while retail was the main portion of my rotation, my preceptor was kind enough to let me shadow some of the clinical pharmacists and also introduced me to the management/business side of pharmacy.
This experience was pretty difficult and keeping up with work was hard, but I do feel like this rotation was a pivotal experience that helped me decide which route I want to go with pharmacy. If you don’t know about Kaiser, make sure to look it up and do your research! To get the rotation, there is an application that must be filled out and sent in with your CV so be sure you want it before you apply.
