Is being a Pharmacist stressful?

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JakeSill

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Is being a pharmacist stressful? What makes Pharmacy stressful? How is the stress compared to other jobs? I'm a tech at cvs but my store is less busy compared to other stores. The pharmacist is telling me not to become a pharmacist.

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Stress free for the past 15 years. Train your staff correctly and you should never be stressed
 
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Is being a pharmacist stressful? What makes Pharmacy stressful? How is the stress compared to other jobs? I'm a tech at cvs but my store is less busy compared to other stores. The pharmacist is telling me not to become a pharmacist.

Here's my take on it.

I love retail pharmacy .. is it stressful , yes sometimes but in the good way ..

Psychologists say there is good stress and bad ... On the physiologic side you could say stress is adrenergic activity. Personally the excitement of the fast pace and demands gets my blood pumping , it is stressful , but I feel like celebrating afterward , not self destructing .

The true answer to your question depends on what stresses you out. You could say any job is stressful or none are depending on your perspective on life and how you react to challenges.
 
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Stress is individual. With any job there will be stressful times.

I've been on rotation in hospitals and worked in retail (still a student). As far as hospital went it *appeared* to be less stressfull, at least in my view (I was doing staff hospital work, not so much clinical). Job stressors to me were dealing with some angry nurses, some arrogant physicians, heavy volume times, if staff call out/are sick and certain complicated cases that pop up. Mind you I was only doing this for a month full time as part of an APPE. I did enjoy it though and liked the people I was with, which makes things a lot better.

As far as retail goes I've been in higher volume and lower volume stores. Stress felt similar in both due to the fact that lower volume = less staff. With retail you had drug seekers, angry patients, more dealing with insurance companies and frequently not being able to contact a prescriber if something is wrong or needs changed. Many times you get the nurse/assistant and never hear anything back or if you do get in contact with the prescriber sometimes they are annoyed with you even though you are looking out for them and the patient. In my experience most younger practitioners will appreciate the calls, most older ones will not (this is annecdotal though). Most patients are fine, but it can burn you out after hearing people beg for early fills on narcotics or complain that their medication has no refills or wants to present you with 5 insurance cards/discount cards or has complicated issues with their insurance. In many cases the techs can handle insurance problems, but in some stores with high turn over you might not have competent techs that know how to deal with things as it can get complicated at times if you need to put in codes and such. Not to mention in retail many times you don't get to take a scheduled lunch or break. At the small volume store I was at the pharmacists never got a break since there was no overlap and it was just them. They'd have to try and nibble on food quickly or take extremely short bathroom breaks since they were the only one on duty. At the high volume store we had 2-3 pharmacists on staff all the time so they were able to take scheduled lunch breaks and use the restroom if needed.

All in all though I think the thing that would decrease stress, for me, would be working with competent staff and good technicians that have good personalities. Every job has stress, each one will present with problems, but in my view if you have competent staff who you don't mind being around that changes things drastically. I've worked at the same places with bad techs and good techs floating through (as well as bad/good pharmacists) and that made a world of difference depending who was working. There will of course be other times where you have a complicated patient case you'll have to work through and make decisions on which can be stressful, but that's also why you did/do 8 years of schooling in order to handle these cases. One thing that surprised me was how many medications require an intervention or may be harmful if filled as is written.
 
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No more stressful than any other job. Every job has its perks, and has stress. When you're making $6o an hour though, you really shouldn't complain. The amount of work we do for our salary really is astonishing. We delegate ( or should) most of the work to the techs and we just perform final verification. Even counseling, delegate that to the intern and eavesdrop on the conversation to make sure everything was said properly.

Never do something as a pharmacist that you can make someone else do. Your life will become exponentially easier and your salary will be exponentially amazing compared to the work you do.
 
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Right, because we have plenty of techs and interns to do the work. Easy.

You just don't know how to delegate your help. You are the captain of the ship. Take control.

You are getting paid low 6 figures plus benefits. Do you know how hard some people have to work to make that kind of money? Try selling OxyContin on the street and see how hard work is.

You get to sit back in your fancy white coat and good dental insurance. Here you are...complaining!
 
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No more stressful than any other job. Every job has its perks, and has stress. When you're making $6o an hour though, you really shouldn't complain. The amount of work we do for our salary really is astonishing. We delegate ( or should) most of the work to the techs and we just perform final verification. Even counseling, delegate that to the intern and eavesdrop on the conversation to make sure everything was said properly.

Never do something as a pharmacist that you can make someone else do. Your life will become exponentially easier and your salary will be exponentially amazing compared to the work you do.


Are there pharmacists out there that really think like this?
 
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Usually not stressful, and when it is, it is appropriate (like a code blue situation and the attending has some oddball request, or pt in status and you're trying to crunch out the appropriate antiepileptic dose with a green doc on the phone while concurrently mustering your limited technician help to get going in the IV hood).

It helps to love (or really really like) what you do.

Most of the drudgery is delegated to technicians, so that helps (just be sure to help them when appropriate).

EDIT: hospital setting here, fun times.
 
Is being a pharmacist stressful? What makes Pharmacy stressful? How is the stress compared to other jobs? I'm a tech at cvs but my store is less busy compared to other stores. The pharmacist is telling me not to become a pharmacist.

Your pharmacist is probably telling you this due to the job market. I'm not going to talk doom and gloom about how bad the job market is, but a lot can change in the 8 years it takes to become a pharmacist. Simply put, due to declining third party reinbursement (in all settings), it is becoming harder and harder for pharmacists to practice in a SAFE capacity.

People can say you're lazy for thinking like this, but you never want to jeopardize your livelyhood just so you can meet some target metric. If you become a pharmacist, your only option for work is to practice pharmacy. This makes it easy for employers to paint you into a corner and force you to work in unsafe conditions. You have relatively little leverage with your employer because you are always replaceable with a cheaper, younger pharmacist with less PTO. Even if you are a seasoned manager, most supervisors beleive they can train a younger one to perform at the same level. Not that you are necessarily at risk of being terminated, you just aren't able to leverage your experience like you may in other professions.

Just some things to consider if you are weighing pharmacy vs. other career options.
 
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You just don't know how to delegate your help. You are the captain of the ship. Take control.

When you are doing 300+ a day with 2 techs in the evening 1 will be stuck at drive through and 1 stuck at pick-up... there's not much delegating to do unless you want to ring up groceries and let the tech type count and verify. There are just barely enough hours to have the que cleared at the end of the day, but not enough hours to prevent a bottleneck effect at peak times and certainly not enough hours to work comfortably.
 
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When you are doing 300+ a day with 2 techs in the evening 1 will be stuck at drive through and 1 stuck at pick-up... there's not much delegating to do unless you want to ring up groceries and let the tech type count and verify.

Tech or no tech, you are a pharmacist. Your pharmacy school should have trained you to be a multi-tasker. Ring up toilet paper, take a verbal order and approve an amoxicillin RX at the same time. Why are they paying you low six figure salary?!?
 
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When you are doing 300+ a day with 2 techs in the evening 1 will be stuck at drive through and 1 stuck at pick-up... there's not much delegating to do unless you want to ring up groceries and let the tech type count and verify.
This has been my experience too. What are you gonna do, delegate to your front store manager lol
 
Tech or no tech, you are a pharmacist. Your pharmacy school should have trained you to be a multi-tasker. Ring up toilet paper, take a verbal order and approve an amoxicillin RX at the same time. Why are they paying you low six figure salary?!?

Yeah but they aren't paying techs 6 figures... more like 8 dollars an hour so let me trade our 6 hours of weekly overlap for 30 tech hours and actually verify scripts. Or better yet just give me the tech hours... they will pay for themselves in term of inventory management alone not to mention the customer service aspect.
 
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My pharmacy (Walgreens) gets cashiers to help with pick-up when there is a long line.
That's what you're supposed to at CVS too, but all you get in return is one of the clerks anouncing "WE HAVE A LINE" over the loud speaker, thereby relinquishing them of all responsibility to help.
 
That's what you're supposed to at CVS too, but all you get in return is one of the clerks anouncing "WE HAVE A LINE" over the loud speaker, thereby relinquishing them of all responsibility to help.

True, and chances are there is only a cashier and shift supervisor in the whole building (if that). And of course whenever it is busy in the pharmacy it is also busy up front. It's not like CVS gives the front store more help then they give the pharmacy.
 
Usually not stressful, and when it is, it is appropriate (like a code blue situation and the attending has some oddball request, or pt in status and you're trying to crunch out the appropriate antiepileptic dose with a green doc on the phone while concurrently mustering your limited technician help to get going in the IV hood).

It helps to love (or really really like) what you do.

Most of the drudgery is delegated to technicians, so that helps (just be sure to help them when appropriate).

EDIT: hospital setting here, fun times.

That's really the worst situation. Being in a code, or having an extremely critical new admission to the ICU, then the physician requests some off the wall thing you've never heard of, you have no idea if it is safe, and there is no information on it anywhere. You don't have time research it. It's a judgement call. Those are the stressful nights.

It also can be stressful when working with technicians who expect you to make their work your priority, even if they are preparing medication that isn't due for 12 hours and you're in the middle a of new admission that you just can't seem to finish because of constant interruptions. Okay, that isn't stressful as much as it is annoying.
 
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It also can be stressful when working with technicians who expect you to make their work your priority, even if they are preparing medication that isn't due for 12 hours and you're in the middle a of new admission that you just can't seem to finish because of constant interruptions. Okay, that isn't stressful as much as it is annoying.

That is tough but setting expectations is key - I'm usually pretty good with making their work a priority when time is available, but I'll just straight up say X is a priority because this-and-that and Y needs to wait, go take care of Z in the meantime. Or I'll say "I need to pull you from Y and take care of X STAT, hit the intercom bell when you're done."

Techs are task oriented by the nature of their job, so I remind them there's a clinical situation going on and they get with the program quick (they're healthcare providers too, they're on the ward floors as much as I am, sometimes more). Every now and then if I get push back, it's usually because they get fire/anger from fellow techs or supervisors because task Y was not done or pushed to the next shift, so I reassure them that "I'll take care of that" and actually follow through later and let other staff know I purposefully redirected them away and/or authorized overtime.

That last part is key, it shows you're backing them up...some pharmacists don't get that and work in isolation, unaware of the world & consequences their technicians live in (completely different from pharmacists).
 
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What are the hours like? The CVS I work in, you work a 13 hour shift one day and you're off the next day. Then on friday and saturday, one week you work both fridays and saturday. So it turns out to be 36+ hours 1 week and the other week 50+ hours.
 
Depends on the setting that you are in and also how you define stress. I know a handful of CVS pharmacists that love what they do and a majority of others that hate it. Personally, I love hospital pharmacy and I don't find it nearly half as stressful as retail, if at all. But then there are other days, maybe one every month where I'm slightly stressed in the hospital setting too (mainly due to short staffing). Overall, hospital>retail (personal preference)
 
In a typical retail chain there isn't a minute out of the day that you don't feel "pressured" by the volume of work to do. As far actual stress goes, it can get extremely bad when you are short staffed or have new technicians. There have been times when there are literally 6 cars in the drive through, 10 customers in the store 2 phone lines ringing and you just have 1 or 2 technicians helping you. This is when things start to get out of hand... eventually one of the customers will lose their patience and everything just turns into a giant cluster f*ck.
 
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After reading all these comments I am very unsure about my decision of getting into pharma next year... I just got my BS. Right now all I know is I don't want anything like my current job (I work at a grill). Dealing with uncooperative people , stressful environment while doing work of 5 persons, no breaks and lunch time, and no flexibility, little sense of accomplishment. This is exactly what I have to deal with and im not happy with it. I always thought pharma was supposed to be the lesser stressful counterpart to an MD career in high paying health sciences. Is this what I am to expect after 4 year more of study with debts? I want money but I don't want to have the work suck the life out of me. I want to travel, build a better physique, get better at singing and guitar, and many more things. Is pharmacy really for me?
 
A lot of stores are run into the ground and you'll probably die inside a little more each day and instead of going home and preparing a nutritious pre work meal before a great workout, you'll probably grab a 1,000+ calorie fast food meal and pass out on the couch as soon as you get home. Your description of your current job sounds like a lot of pharmacies.
 
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Back when I was still practicing, I was at a meetup with a woman who at the time was an assistant manager at Steak & Shake. In the midst of our conversation, she said, "How do you know so much about fast food? I thought you were a pharmacist" and I replied, "I am, but I haven't always been, and the jobs are not as different as most people might think they are."
 
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