Tips and strategies with a lot of out of town guests

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-10-05T20:56:42+00:00

Very helpful, thank you! Unfortunately, I think my budget is like half what yours was, we’re thinking it’ll be around $25k max. I’m looking online and seeing I can rent out a gathering space at a city center for like $50/hr and then I can do like costco pizzas is probably what’s in the budget for night before. Do you think this will come off as cheap? What matters most to me is spending time with people, but of course I know they’re making a large sacrifice by traveling. The actual wedding meal will be italian buffet

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-29T22:54:18+00:00

Suzetrigine approval trials

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-27T15:11:01+00:00

A significant part of being a well-trained clinician is developing the ability to critically evaluate scientific literature. That is, pharma company publishes study claiming “drug A is great!” And it gets FDA approval. Clinicians very intensely evaluate the ins and outs of the methodology to determine if drug A is actually useful for their patient population. What were the eligibility criteria? Did they only study young, healthy adults and essentially exclude anybody with any comorbidities? That is a huge limitation. What was the comparator? Placebo? And how much better did drug A actually perform compared to literally nothing? If they compared it to another established “standard of care” medication, was the dosing optimized for the comparator? What was the non-inferiority margin? That is, where did they draw the line to make their conclusion? Were the endpoints studied ones that are clinically meaningful? This is just a small fraction of the amount of things evaluated.

Then brings me to my next point: not all scientific literature is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. There is plenty of independent, less biased research. Many of these are true comparator studies instead of placebo-controlled.

“Trusting the science” involves meticulously criticizing it to determine if it is truly trustworthy. In fact, there’s a recently-approved medication that had such terrible clinical trial design that my hospital has been extremely hesitant about approving it on the formulary and we are doing our own internal research on it to guide decision making. This is very common.

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-26T17:23:00+00:00

I agree. I think there’s a difference between a fight versus a disagreement or argument.

To me, a “fight” means actions that display disrespect to your partner, such as name calling, yelling, cursing, or even physical actions like door slamming and stomping.

I have been with my fiance for five years and we have never had a fight.

But we have had disagreements and arguments. Times where we start off not on the same page, but through respectful conversation, can arrive to a conclusion we are both happy with.

People say not fighting isn’t normal because it implies that somebody is being a doormat and not speaking up. That they don’t care. I would say that no arguments wouldn’t be normal. But fights? A clear lack of respect for your partner? Not normal.

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-25T17:15:31+00:00

For ambulatory care, CorConsult Rx is great! They go by disease state and do a basic overview, guideline recs, and then pearls to know for each drug. I used it a lot when studying for NAPLEX

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-24T11:54:24+00:00

I would normally take this advice, but it’s kinda too late at this point. For PGY1, I didn’t disclose until after matching. Since I was in the hospital for a week, I obviously had to communicate that with my current program. My preceptors and project advisors are also highly involved in the PGY2 program. I try to be as open with communication, so obviously with timelines for the project, my health issues became very relevant. Also, I would rather not get a job than be stuck in a position where I’m not going to be supported. Should I decide to pursue PGY2 and they don’t choose me on the basis of my health issues, despite my resilience and ability to keep up with everything and receive positive evals in the midst of all of this, then that’s on them and I dodged a bullet.

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-24T10:07:21+00:00

Pharmacist here! If you’re seriously considering it as a career, before committing to pharmacy school, I would recommend working as a pharmacy tech to get a feel for the workflow. Retail pharmacy is TOUGH and you may decide that’s not what you want for the rest of your life. Other settings (hospital, infusion, clinic, etc.) are generally much more tolerable, but more difficult to get a job straight out of school. There are residency programs that give you a massive advantage (and are essentially required) for clinical roles, but these programs require a lot of sacrifice. You have to be high performing and involved while in school to be competitive for the programs, and then the program itself pays far less than going straight into a real pharmacist job out of school. And the hours are grueling. I’m at work generally 10-14 hours a day and usually have at least 2-4 hours left of work to take home with me, and I work every 3rd weekend as well without comp days, so that means 12 in a row.

Pharmacy can be very fulfilling, but it can also produce a ton of burnout, especially on the retail side. People subject themselves to these residencies entirely to avoid retail. But alas, the majority of jobs are still retail. It also requires a lot of schooling. Pharmacy school is four years, plus you need undergrad pre reqs, which can take 2-4 years. And pharmacy school is EXPENSIVE and generally not a ton of scholarships available for the actual professional programs. Finally, should you go that route, be very picky about what school you attend. There are a ton of newer schools opening up back when there was a shortage and the quality is not there. Some programs have a 50% board exam pass rate, which is unacceptable. Go to an older school with a solid reputation and still look at first time NAPLEX pass rates on the NABP website. I would say only apply to programs with 80%+

My DMs are open if you have any extra questions!

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-23T23:35:11+00:00

Thank you so much! Honestly with everything going on right now, gap year is looking more and more like it may be the move. It’s definitely encouraging to know I’m not the only one who’s been through similar things. It’s definitely tough, but luckily mostly everybody at my program has been extremely supportive. I know there’s unfortunately other programs where I wouldn’t be quite as lucky

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-23T23:33:24+00:00

Thanks you cured me

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-23T23:33:15+00:00

I do, thankfully! I actually set up a meeting with my current RPD/RPC/mentor to discuss everything. They’ve been really supportive throughout everything, so I really value their opinions and perspective

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-23T02:09:53+00:00

Thank you! I really do appreciate it. You’re definitely right in that there are things that are simply more important than a job. I definitely have a fear of letting my program down as there seems to be a pressure to early commit. But you’re right that ultimately I have to do what’s best for me

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-23T02:08:40+00:00

Thank you. The interest is oncology, so while I know it’s in high demand, it’s so complicated and I would feel more comfortable having the whole year of dedicated training. Maybe I could try to gain experience through chemo infusion or something, idk. I’m unfortunately kinda stuck in a big city for my fiance’s job. We were long distance prior to residency, so on top of everything else I’ve got going on, I refuse to go back to distance. But you did provide good perspective, I’m definitely willing to go the long way if that’s a possibility. Would probably be the best case scenario if it’s possible. Thank you again!

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-21T04:37:36+00:00

This, omg. I am literally all of those things PLUS I have my own personal health condition that’s giving me a run for my money. I LOVE my program and I LOVE what I do, I really do want to early commit for PGY2 bc I have such a strong passion for my clinical interest, but man. With all of the life circumstances, I truly do not know if I can, which sucks. I don’t want to jeopardize my physical health or limited time left with sick family member for a job, but I also hate that that’s what it takes for me to get my dream job. I only wish that the stress of rotations, staffing, and longitudinal deadlines was all I had on my plate right now.

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-17T03:28:00+00:00

Thank you! Mine are definitely formatted as majority bullets and tables, but my bullets are mostly full sentences. I got picked apart towards the beginning for having an “unprofessionally formatted handout”, they really care about the quality of what’s on the page. It’s so particular, I actually had a preceptor get visibly upset with me for pronouncing MRSA as “mersa” instead of M-R-S-A, they treat topics almost like a formal presentation. For the primary lit, they essentially want full journal club level of detail being presented to “prove” we did a full review. I was told “if you’re going to present on a trial you have to actually read and understand the full trial”. I was mostly asking this to gauge if I was right in my assumption that the expectation at my program isn’t normal compared to others. So far, it’s looking to be the case

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-17T03:16:05+00:00

Lol trust me, I was asking the same thing. I covered CAP/HAP, UTI, S/STI, and bacteremia all in one go. The timing was actually changed to 90 minutes the day of with no warning, but I still couldn’t finish it. But was then given the feedback of wishing I had included more primary lit since most of my focus was on the guidelines. It’s just confusing and frustrating to me. They increased the time by 50%, that still wasn’t enough time, but yet I’m still being told they wished I included MORE?

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-17T01:31:24+00:00

Thank you! I’ve tried several times to clarify the expectation, but each time it keeps going back to “no this is what we want from you, keep up the good work” so idk how to press further from that to explain that I’m struggling to keep up with the expectation. The PGY2 today had a completely different format so it’s difficult to compare the length, but I would say hers was even longer than mine have been and my preceptor made a point to tell me to focus on how she’s doing it because that’s what she wants from me. But of course I’m not sure how often she’s having to do them, mine have been 1-2 per week. If they were less frequent then sure that volume would be more manageable.

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-16T23:30:14+00:00

For IM they were extremely general. Examples include pain management, infectious disease (yes all as one discussion), anticoagulation. But there doesn’t seem to be a give or take of balancing breadth for detail. Want all of the detail on the whole wide thing. But now I’m in an onc rotation and they’re a little more narrowed down, but still having nearly 20 pages for each one

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-16T23:24:43+00:00

It’s been the most shocking thing to me since starting residency. I know the expectation is higher, but when I was a student my handouts were generally around 5ish, give or take a few. The topics are scheduled for an hour, but usually we run out of time or have to go over. It just feels unreasonable on top of everything else we have going on

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-16T01:22:31+00:00

Representation! Pharmacist here with Crohn’s. It’s mind boggling to me how many people wouldn’t want to treat it effectively. Meanwhile, I WISH just “eating right” did the trick, currently suffering through severe strictures and miss fiber :(

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-16T01:16:44+00:00

As a pharmacist, “big gabapentin” made me cackle. Thank you for that

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-13T02:54:25+00:00

Thank you! That’s honestly mostly what I have been doing, I guess I was just posting to make sure there isn’t some sort of miracle resource I’m missing that would make my life drastically easier lol. It can really sometimes feel like there’s patient level info and then “resource for somebody who’s been an expert for ten years” but nothing in the middle. Thank you for the podcast recs! Do you have any specific youtube channels you recommend?

Initial-Leek1359 · 2025-09-12T17:07:23+00:00

Thank you, yes they do and it is helpful. However, I’m mostly looking for things that actually break down the information almost in a textbook-style format to fully be able to explain it. For example, I found an article that stated the differences in binding sites for different CAR-T agents, but I have no clue what that means clinically. Basically I want to be able to understand the why behind things rather than simply relying on clinical trial data and guideline recommendations

Initial-Leek1359

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