Experience Working in a Psychiatric Hospital Pharmacy

Jessica Bocanegra, Pharm.D. Candidate 2026

During my time working at a psychiatric hospital, I learned a lot about what it takes to run a facility of this caliber. The hospital, in particular, contains 1,070 beds with varying units from long term care, adult in-patient, child and adolescent, detox, ICU, ER, OR, dual diagnosis, county jail, and more. As pharmacy interns in the in-patient pharmacy department, we were responsible for all the medications being dispensed throughout the hospital. The pharmacy was split up into three sections, long-term care, psychiatric, and ICU. For psychiatric, our responsibilities included filling cassettes, going on rounds to deliver those cassettes and stocking our Pyxis cabinets. I have learned a lot about varying psychiatric medications, their utilization, about the vast amount of psychiatric disorders, and regimens to follow. For the ICU, we were responsible for filling carts for the ICU and detox units. Rounds were done every hour to deliver requested medications or to drop off IVs at the specified units. Working at a psychiatric hospital offered me exposure to compounding and IV prep as well as learning about the various psychiatric medications available and their uses in helping this patient population.