My gf is in the last year of pharmacy school, she is doing the
'rotations' (field practice in hospitals, clinics, retail) just prior
to graduation.

One thing that horrifies me about her experience is the hostile
work/study environment she tells about.  For a while I thought
(probably with false preconceptions) that it is just the unavoidable
bitchyness among a lot of women working together and/or being under
immense pressure.  However, more and more I hear and experience of this
I start wondering and have some questions of my own.  I also hope
someone could give me advice on whether this is the norm and how to
deal with the situation.

It is hard to listen >10 minutes of sobbing/crying every day after she
gets home after 6pm.  She starts before 7am, yes that is more than 10
hours a day on a regular basis.  Sometimes she had to be in for 12
hours.  (Not all rotations were this bad of course.)  Last two days she
could not have lunch.  As I understand rules do not allow more than 50
hours a week, but the preceptors (the pharmacists under who the
students train) do not seem to be concerned about this.  Probably,
because they are overworked too?  I am starting to worry: is pharmacy
really a profession one wants to be in at all?  I hoped that we could
both lead a balanced life with other than just work in it.  (I am in
engineering and work/life balance is an important value for our
company, I never heard the pharse 'work/life balance' come up in
pharmacy yet.)

After these long hours she has to do projects and prepare for
presentations at home along with studying the patient profiles and
studying for exams.  I do not know how she handles it.

I thought maybe she is slow in what she is doing or she does not do it
the right way.  I guess that is possible.  Or maybe she is paying too
much attention to details when instead corners should be cut (I heard
some stories about others that may point to this.)  But I suspect that
the preceptors are too busy themselves to show how certain things need
to be done.

In the other cases the environment appeared to be very hostile.  What
most bothered me was the way she described the interactions with the
preceptors. A typical conversation goes like this:

student: - Why was the medication changed from A to B for this
patient?/Why was the dosage   adjusted? etc.
preceptor: - Well, what do YOU think this was done for?/Did you not
learn this in school?  Did you look at the patient's
chart/history/sideeffects etc?  Go look this up and tell us why.
student: - <Gives some answer on the drug interactions in question.>
preceptor: - Are you sure?  Go look it up on the computer.

Mind you this appears to be happening EVERY time with some preceptors.
A constant examination if you ask me.  I was under the impression that
students should be encouraged to ask questions; the above is a training
so that you will not.  Furthermore, above I was kind of mild about it,
I am told that some preceptors make a point of making you constantly
feel inadequate or worse: dirt.

She was given an assignment (~2 weeks long) to write a paper on shocks
(cardiac, hypovolemic(?), septic; boy I remembered!!!).  She needs to
cite every sentence and use only recent articles as references, no
textbooks or anything before 2002.  Appears to be a broad topic and
having unreasonable restrictions for the time allotted.  (I have
published 1 journal paper and 1 conference paper.)

My question is: is the above the norm?  You just have to clench your
teeth and get through it?
Maybe she is not cut out to be a pharmacist (kind of late to find out)?
What can I do to help (apart from cooking and listening)?