Breaking into retail with only hospital (internship) experience

[hye345]

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So, everyone says how hard it is to get a hospital position if you only have retail experience during school (though these days, a residency is also *highly recommended*). I'm wondering if the opposite is true: if someone (in this case, me) has mostly (inpatient) hospital experience during school, just how much of a disadvantage are they at if they want to work in a retail setting after graduation?

 

[farmadiazepine]

If a monkey can do it, so can you.

 

[gwarm01]

Breaking into retail? Has it really come to this?

 

[Dred Pirate]

huh????? why oh why would you want to go to retail if you already have the hospital experience?

 

[hye345]

huh????? why oh why would you want to go to retail if you already have the hospital experience?

It's not a given yet, I'm just realizing that for most of my time in school, I may have looked at retail pharmacy with ****-tinted glasses (even though my retail experience only consists of a few months at Target during P1 year), and always thought of hospital pharmacy as a potential escape from that; hence, when I was ranking rotations last year, I chose community as the last one. Not the smartest move for keeping one's options open, but hindsight...

Well, my first rotation is acute care, and I've been at it a week. Maybe its just the setup, or the learning curve of having to painstakingly recall all the stuff we learned for the past 3 years, or senioritis or whatever, but I'm starting to get bored of it already: time goes by so slow during rounding/discussions. If this trend continues over the coming months (admittedly a big if, considering its just the first week), I don't think I'd have the stamina to take on a residency.

 

[wagrxm2000]

You better hope to end up in a slow store or it will be tough.

 

[Rxtillidie]

Lmao it's certainly not gotten to this! Break into retail? You don't need any experience anywhere to break into retail! The only advantage for people that interned in retail prior is an easier learning curve I guess.

 

[BidingMyTime]

Of course, hospital pharmacy employers prefer employees with hospital experience. And the reverse is true of retail, retail pharmacy employers prefer employees with retail pharmacy. Still, plenty of pharmacists with no hospital experience get jobs in hospital, and plenty of pharmacists with no retail experience get jobs in retail. It's just extremely unlikely to happen in a big city or desirable area to live. What locale you are looking in, will determine how hard it is to jump from hospital into retail (and to get any kind of pharmacist job for that matter.)

I'm pretty sure there was a thread several months about from someone asking how to get a retail job with only hospital experience (they had been searching for awhile, and where not having any luck.) So the people here posting that retail will hire "anyone", like Dred Pirate often says, this isn't 2006 anymore.