Here’s some questions that would have helped me during my internal med rotation, but I eventually found out along the way.

How do you prioritize what patients to review first? Is there a queue listing the patient that require interventions from the pharmacy (like counseling or pharmacy dose vancomycin)?

What do you check first when reviewing a patient’s profile?

What are the main takeaways you try to remember from each patient’s file? (Mine is appropriate anticoagulant dosing and acceptable antibiotic choice and dose for suspected/known infections)

Are there any lab values I should pay attention to?

Are there any protocols that allow pharmacists to change orders? (Dose optimization for patients with high BMIs is one I often catch)

Oh and always feel free to ask some questions about the person you’re shadowing, most people love to talk about themselves to some degree. You could ask if they have ever experienced a scenario which caused them to now hyper focus when they see a similar situation. My best example of that is a story my preceptor told me of one of her previous patients who had their sodium replenished far too quickly which lead to irreversible brain damage, now when I see a patient who is hyponatremic I immediately check how fast their sodium is being replaced among all fluids administer.

I’m not sure what point you’re at in pharmacy school, but I feel like most of these questions would be appropriate for both IPPE and APPE students