Pharmacist job where I don't have to talk to people

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Seralynn

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Hi. I was just wondering if there is a job as a pharmacist I can get where I don't have to talk to people (outside of the place I work). Or at least where it is minimized as much as possible. I'm tired of everyone yelling at me for things that are not my fault or are completely reasonable requests.

I don't care if it's less money, honestly. Just wondering if anyone had any ideas.

:)

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Hmm, and here I thought people wanted to be pharmacists so they could help people.
 
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Spoken like a true pharmacist haha. From my very brief experience LTC and mail order... but they also seem like the most boring jobs.
 
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LTC for sure


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inpatient, obviously.
Anywhere that is closed door.

Let's be honest, nurses are basically as bad as the general public. And I've never been as angry at a member of the general public as I have nurses that somehow manage to lose an effing TPN the size of a small mammal that I spent 20 minutes making.
 
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You have eliminated over 90% of the pharmacist jobs that are out there. Retail alone makes up 60-70%, and even in closed door LTC facilities, you get angry calls from nurses all the time about missing meds, etc.

If you haven't started pharmacy school yet, then you might want to consider switching to clinical lab sciences, accounting, or computer programming and save yourself from $200k+ in student loans.
 
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Work as a prison pharmacist. Prisoners are locked up. No insurance company to deal with.


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Nuclear.


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Work as a prison pharmacist. Prisoners are locked up. No insurance company to deal with.


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And good benefits if it's a state or federal facility.


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inpatient, obviously.
Anywhere that is closed door.

Totes disagree.

You have to talk to so many people.


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And good benefits if it's a state or federal facility.


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Yes and a lot of attention from your "patients"


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Totes disagree.

You have to talk to so many people.


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What part do you "totes disagree" with? I guess it varies a lot on the hospital. In my hospital, we are pretty well staffed. I am assigned mostly clinical shifts. I've worked retail before so for me, it's nothing compared to how much I had to pick up the phone/ handle register/ Counsel in retail
 
What part do you "totes disagree" with? I guess it varies a lot on the hospital. In my hospital, we are pretty well staffed. I am assigned mostly clinical shifts. I've worked retail before so for me, it's nothing compared to how much I had to pick up the phone/ handle register/ Counsel in retail

In my clinical shifts I talk all day - patients, doctors, nurses, students.

When I staff it's nursing phone calls more than anything with a rare physician call.

It's all about how the hospital sets up workflow. At my per diem job the techs don't answer the phone and it's infuriating. But even with good tech phone triage there are plenty of questions for the pharmacist to answer.


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In my clinical shifts I talk all day - patients, doctors, nurses, students.

When I staff it's nursing phone calls more than anything with a rare physician call.

It's all about how the hospital sets up workflow. At my per diem job the techs don't answer the phone and it's infuriating. But even with good tech phone triage there are plenty of questions for the pharmacist to answer.


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This.

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You could also become a floater and only verify during your shift which is what half of them do anyways.
 
It's all about how the hospital sets up workflow. At my per diem job the techs don't answer the phone and it's infuriating. But even with good tech phone triage there are plenty of questions for the pharmacist to answer.


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That drives me crazy. We had to have a big meeting to get our techs onboard with answering calls and actually triaging them. A lot of nurses would automatically ask for a pharmacist then have some mundane issue like they need help with a Pyxis machine.
 
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Let's be honest, nurses are basically as bad as the general public. And I've never been as angry at a member of the general public as I have nurses that somehow manage to lose an effing TPN the size of a small mammal that I spent 20 minutes making.

Corporate is not going to get on you for fighting with a nurse
 
Nuclear.


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That's only going to work if you like going to work at 2am.

How about doing compounding? If you have your own business, it could potentially be just you and maybe a tech, and if you specialized in veterinary pharmacy, you wouldn't have to deal with insurance either.
 
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Is there any particular reason you are afraid to talk to people? Communication is a big part of pharmacy and you will have to deal with human beings no matter which area you manage to find a job.
 
People skills will be required no matter what field you go into. Please don't think it is impossible for you. It does not come naturally to everyone, God knows it wasn't natural to me but with time and practice, you will learn and grow.


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You don't want to talk to people....sounds like you have a problem. You really should see a therapist and get that worked out.

You will have to talk to people at all walks of life and in all jobs. If you hate retail pharmacy and hate talking to customers, hospital life isn't much better. Try having to deal with bitchy nurses who want their meds ASAP and bang on the pharmacy door 3 minutes after requesting it. And you thought a wait time of 15 minutes was bad. Lol.
 
You don't want to talk to people....sounds like you have a problem. You really should see a therapist and get that worked out.

You will have to talk to people at all walks of life and in all jobs. If you hate retail pharmacy and hate talking to customers, hospital life isn't much better. Try having to deal with bitchy nurses who want their meds ASAP and bang on the pharmacy door 3 minutes after requesting it. And you thought a wait time of 15 minutes was bad. Lol.

Just because OP doesn't want to deal with people doesn't mean she isn't capable. You complain about nurses and retail customers yet at the same time act like it's a big mystery as to why she doesn't want to deal with them? lol
 
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Yes, one place. On the street, i'm sure you just hand the drug, take the money and a nod or high-five...that's it. Oh and you don't have to worry about expired lic. :D
 
I've worked with informatics pharmacists who worked on the order entry system, editing order sets, fixing problems identified, etc. They worked in a cave, where it was dark, cool, and quiet.

I think they spent most of their time watching Netflix. ;)

Shh! Don't tell them our secrets!

It's actually pretty boring coming from a critical care background. Might need to bring in a 3DS to keep busy during your average day.
 
Shh! Don't tell them our secrets!

It's actually pretty boring coming from a critical care background. Might need to bring in a 3DS to keep busy during your average day.
If I didn't love my current retail gig, informatics is where I'd try to land. But I'm hoping I can spend the next 20 years with my current company. :xf:
 
Some people train for it, but most of the ones I know were just staff pharmacists who got bumped over into the new position. Epic provides training in Wisconsin for new informatics pharmacists, not sure what Meditech and the other EMR systems provide.

Do informatics pharmacists usually have to move to specific locations to work? Or can they work in most cities?
 
Do informatics pharmacists usually have to move to specific locations to work? Or can they work in most cities?

Pretty much every hospital is going to have someone maintaining their drug databases and automation technology. You just will likely have to move to get a position when one becomes available, unless your content to sit at a hospital waiting and hoping. You're going to need a few years of actual practice to excel at the job.
 
Shh! Don't tell them our secrets!

It's actually pretty boring coming from a critical care background. Might need to bring in a 3DS to keep busy during your average day.

This sounds promising :). I will look into this. But, yeah. I probably do need therapy or something like that lol. Everything sounds clear in my head, but when people are actually talking to me, I panic and sound like a total idiot, or I don't say anything at all. There are often long silences on my end on the phone, and people understandably get pissed at me for it. I'm not sure if pharmacy was the best profession for me, but I suppose I would have to communicate with people no matter where I go. I guess since I'm forced to do it every day, I'll have to get better at it, right? It's just that I would never speak to people in the manner in which some of them speak to me. It freaks me out a bit when people just start yelling at me out of nowhere. I was diagnosed with social anxiety dis order twice by 2 different psychiatrists a few years apart, but I never took the medication prescribed because SSRIs are just placebos, and I figure those only work if you actually believe they will :).

But anyways, thanks for the suggestions. I suppose I'll just have to suck it up for 5 years (that seems to be the magic number to be able to apply for more interesting or desirable jobs in pharmacy) and go from there.
 
It may happen to you too. It's not impossible. People skills will be required no matter what field you go into. Please don't think it is impossible for you. It does not come naturally to everyone, God knows it wasn't natural to me but with time and practice, you will learn and grow.

This is really good advice. I agree, talking with people is like any other skill, while it comes naturally for some people, anyone will get better at it, the more the practice. A certain amount of talking is required for pretty much all jobs, and definitely for pharmacy where 90% of the jobs will require dealing with people or other departments for a good portion of the day.
 
I was diagnosed with social anxiety dis order twice by 2 different psychiatrists a few years apart, but I never took the medication prescribed because SSRIs are just placebos, and I figure those only work if you actually believe they will :).

Seems like an odd stance for a pharmacist to take.
 
Seems like an odd stance for a pharmacist to take.

Well, I certainly don't tell patients that :)! I'm not going to look up the clinical studies right now, but SSRIs being barely better than placebos (in several studies, they failed to reject the null hypothesis that there was no difference between an SSRI and placebo -- I seem to recall with sertraline especially this was a problem) is actually something we discussed in my biostats class, and later as part of journal club during one of my rotations. If anything, though, pharmacy school has made me a lot more skeptical about medication use. There are a lot of people out there on a ton of different medications, many of which they may not need.
 
Rofl

Understandable. Hate retail even though I'm great at it. Customers love me and if only I could get enough sleep I can talk my way out of anything

In my clinical shifts I talk all day - patients, doctors, nurses, students.

When I staff it's nursing phone calls more than anything with a rare physician call.

It's all about how the hospital sets up workflow. At my per diem job the techs don't answer the phone and it's infuriating. But even with good tech phone triage there are plenty of questions for the pharmacist to answer.


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Sounds delightful
 
Open up a pharmacy. Hire another pharmacist to do all the talking, phone calls and consults while you fill and handle all the billing.
 
What chain lets you do it? I can forever be floater lol
All of them, just glue yourself to the computer with some industrial strength superglue and ignore everyone and everything around you. ;)
The other pharmacists and technicians will hate you and be miserable when they find out that you are floating to them.
 
The other pharmacists and technicians will hate you and be miserable when they find out that you are floating to them.
Why would they be, that's what i would be hired for. I don't mind occasionally helping out.But as a tech, i could see why they would be mad.
 
lol i bet i wont be called again..
Depends on where you work I guess. The chains I know of just have the schedulers determine who is floating where; the stores generally do not have a say in who they get if they need staffing.
Why would they be, that's what i would be hired for. I don't mind occasionally helping out.But as a tech, i could see why they would be mad.
I'm referring to floaters that take no accountability for the problems they leave behind because they are there for 1-2 days and then off to somewhere else...you know, like deferring scripts for no apparent reason, leaving problems that could have been solved.
 
Depends on where you work I guess. The chains I know of just have the schedulers determine who is floating where; the stores generally do not have a say in who they get if they need staffing.

I'm referring to floaters that take no accountability for the problems they leave behind because they are there for 1-2 days and then off to somewhere else...you know, like deferring scripts for no apparent reason, leaving problems that could have been solved.

Yes, we had something similar happened last week. But you know people want to take the least amount of responsibility. But don't you think if floater would do it on regular basis, their hours will be reduced or wont be called again. I would guess someone would complain about this to their supervisors.


I want to be floater so that i don't have to deal with extra crap that comes with having your own store. I have seen staff pharmacist sometimes doing work of Rx manager without getting paid, i definitely want to avoid that.
 
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