Please tell me pharm.D is for me

jenfromsocal · Dec 10, 2007

My background is BS in Bio from CSUN with 3.5ish. I've worked as a HS bio teacher for a year. Applied to pharm school and have been accepted to Touro and waitlisted at UOP. Just interviewed at Western, and have 3 more interviews that I will attend.

My concern: I started to work as a technician at a retail store and I don't think I am doing a good job. I frequently make mistakes (maybe 15-20% of time) when i enter prescriptions in amount of pills and sometimes pull wrong drugs from shelf. most of the time this occurs when i am on my 7th hour of the shift. I've only been working for 3 weeks though.

I've always been prone to making mistakes in life, like making wrong turns on the road, making careless mistakes on math problems.

I am concerned that when there will be no pharm.D checking my work, i will do something wrong and my patient will die 🙁. But, i love the profession. What do you guys think?

WVUPharm2007 · Dec 10, 2007

You'll get better. Plus, retail is only one of the many options a pharmacist has.

Aznfarmerboi · Dec 11, 2007

jenfromsocal said:
My background is BS in Bio from CSUN with 3.5ish. I've worked as a HS bio teacher for a year. Applied to pharm school and have been accepted to Touro and waitlisted at UOP. Just interviewed at Western, and have 3 more interviews that I will attend.

My concern: I started to work as a technician at a retail store and I don't think I am doing a good job. I frequently make mistakes (maybe 15-20% of time) when i enter prescriptions in amount of pills and sometimes pull wrong drugs from shelf. most of the time this occurs when i am on my 7th hour of the shift. I've only been working for 3 weeks though.

I've always been prone to making mistakes in life, like making wrong turns on the road, making careless mistakes on math problems.

I am concerned that when there will be no pharm.D checking my work, i will do something wrong and my patient will die 🙁. But, i love the profession. What do you guys think?

Dont worry. You will get better really soon. If you do pursue retai as a pharmacistl, most retailers have technology that makes sure the medication gets checked at least two times from the moment a technician scans the bottle to the computer verfication process itself. Mistakes happen (I still make them after 4-5 years of experience), but you will have pleanty of time to fix it. Your pharmacy school wont let you graduate unprepared, I can guarantee you that.

eelo · Dec 11, 2007

jenfromsocal said:
My background is BS in Bio from CSUN with 3.5ish. I've worked as a HS bio teacher for a year. Applied to pharm school and have been accepted to Touro and waitlisted at UOP. Just interviewed at Western, and have 3 more interviews that I will attend.

My concern: I started to work as a technician at a retail store and I don't think I am doing a good job. I frequently make mistakes (maybe 15-20% of time) when i enter prescriptions in amount of pills and sometimes pull wrong drugs from shelf. most of the time this occurs when i am on my 7th hour of the shift. I've only been working for 3 weeks though.

I've always been prone to making mistakes in life, like making wrong turns on the road, making careless mistakes on math problems.

I am concerned that when there will be no pharm.D checking my work, i will do something wrong and my patient will die 🙁. But, i love the profession. What do you guys think?

I have a saying that generally works for most situations in life: it's only a mistake if you refuse to fix it.

Three weeks on the job? No sweat. You did a year as a school teacher-- you can do anything. ;-)

andrewattheU · Dec 11, 2007

there are ways for your work to be checked and generally for medications the tech checks it first then you check it so you should be good as far as that goes. Good luck on your decision 😀

kpunk101 · Feb 5, 2008

jenfromsocal said:
My background is BS in Bio from CSUN with 3.5ish. I've worked as a HS bio teacher for a year. Applied to pharm school and have been accepted to Touro and waitlisted at UOP. Just interviewed at Western, and have 3 more interviews that I will attend.

My concern: I started to work as a technician at a retail store and I don't think I am doing a good job. I frequently make mistakes (maybe 15-20% of time) when i enter prescriptions in amount of pills and sometimes pull wrong drugs from shelf. most of the time this occurs when i am on my 7th hour of the shift. I've only been working for 3 weeks though.

I've always been prone to making mistakes in life, like making wrong turns on the road, making careless mistakes on math problems.

I am concerned that when there will be no pharm.D checking my work, i will do something wrong and my patient will die 🙁. But, i love the profession. What do you guys think?

Hey
We all make mistakes, but after time you will definitely get the hang of things and all that good stuff. Good luck on deciding where to go, just do what your gut tells you...if you really love the profession you can do several things not just retail..since you taught maybe you can teach others about pharmacy too!! Good luck jenfromsocal.=)

FixLittlePeople · Feb 5, 2008

I totally know what you mean by making little mistakes here and there, like math problems or when putting together the car after working on it for 3 hours and forgetting to put in a nut. The only way I have found to beat my "carelessness" is to prepare better and pay more attention (write things down). I had the same anxiety over this at one point, but only in the back of my head. Over the years I have gotten better by forcing myself to focus.

rxlynn · Feb 5, 2008

Three weeks is not really a good test yet - I felt like it took me 6 months of full-time tech work before I really had a good grasp of the basics of the job. Try to get into a routine where you do the same things in the same order when you type or put together a prescription - that will help you avoid some mistakes. Also, I suggest to new techs that they try to spend some time figuring out what the drugs you are dispensing are for (just generally, not anything fancy with mechanism of action). That will also help you in the long run if you know that this particular drug is an antibiotic, but the patient is asking a question about their high blood pressure med.

HoosierPharmD · Feb 5, 2008

I agree that you cannot learn everything in three weeks. I work with several techs that still pull the wrong med and they have been there 15+ years, and they will tell you that you can never know everything as a tech.

About being a failure as a pharmacist, have confidence in yourself🙂 You got into pharm school for a reason. . . because you care about providing the best medical care to someone. I also agree with other posts saying that after pharmacy school, you will be well prepared.

If you have any doubts about a script (as a tech), you can always look up the difference in a book. I have been a CPhT for a year, and when I make a mistake, I correct it and ask why the meds are different so I learn from my mistakes and a little about what the med is used for.

Please tell me pharm.D is for me

jenfromsocal

New Member

WVUPharm2007

imagine sisyphus happy

Aznfarmerboi

Senior Member

eelo

Full Member

andrewattheU

Full Member

kpunk101

Full Member

FixLittlePeople

Admitted Pharmacy Student

rxlynn

Senior Member

HoosierPharmD

Full Member

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