Maria Tate: When in Residency…
Originally published in the August 2022 AMCP Foundation Impacts e-newsletter.
By: Maria Tate, PharmD, PGY1 Managed Care Resident
AMCP Foundation welcomed two pharmacist residents for a rotation this spring. Maria served as a 2021-22 resident in the Postgraduate Year One (PGY1) Managed Care Pharmacy Residency at Premera Blue Cross in Seattle.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
When in Residency, do as the residents do. But what do residents do?
Residents Learn a Lot
My co-resident and I constantly asked ourselves, “Have we learned anything?” In our struggle of doing almost everything for the first time, we constantly questioned if we had really retained anything. Yet, as the year progressed, our knowledge progressed. As the year wore on, we found that answering students’ questions came more naturally. Answers to their questions seemed intuitive – yet those questions were the same ones we would ourselves have asked earlier in the residency. We had come a long way after all.
Residents Make Mistakes
“Oh my gosh, I sound like an idiot,” I told my preceptor, who very calmly reassured me, “No, you sound like a resident.” This remains my most comforting memory of my residency experience. My preceptor was underscoring that I sound like someone who is learning, which is what residency is all about. Residency is your personal haven for making mistakes. I embraced that and never shied away from an opportunity simply because I might not be good at it, or I might do a bad job initially. This is my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a chance and fail epically, then learn monumentally, with no risk to anything but my pride.
Residents Have Fun
Throughout our residency, we have had the opportunity to attend live conferences. When not actively engaged in conferences and continuing education credits, we enjoyed mountain air and open spaces in Denver, explored the waterfront and touched the Cloud Gate in Chicago, immersed ourselves in the 18th century pharmacy experience at the Apothecary Museum in DC, and came home with many memories and a few souvenirs.
Residents Grow
My residency truly has been everything it was meant to be, transforming me from student to professional. My presentations show how I have outgrown trying to tell my audience everything I researched in as much detail as possible to prove my work …to being confident in my work and condensing the information to the key points. My presentations also reflect personal growth, as I no longer need to show everything I know to feel validated. I know the work that I put in, the standards I met, and that it was a job well done.
