Hello, for anyone in a specific pharmacy area, how did you decide on it? are you happy with you decision? What would you do differently? There are many specialties and I still trying to find my niche. Areas I am considering include ambulatory care, management, specialty, and informatics. Hoping to hear from others about their process in choosing their specialty. Thanks.
Choosing a pharmacy area
- Thread starter sunnys
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You act like you have a choice when you really don’t. All those specialties require a residency (management and informatics are PGY-2’s) so your best bet is to go for a general residency and sort out interests during your residency. If you’re not “residency material” then you’re going to end up counting pills in retail or unemployed, that’s how the job market is right now, so focus on being “well-rounded” in school and matching for residency first. Can’t get from point A to point C without passing through point B, so no point entertaining your “interests” until you get there.
I can’t tell you how many classmates of mine were “interested in ambcare” or “interested in hospital” or “interested in being a clinical pharmacist” but didn’t match for residency so their career aspirations have effectively been squashed.
No residency, applied to jobs, got jobs. It wasn't a commonly successful when I graduated five years ago and is even less common now.
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I made sure to get rotations in managed care, retail, hospice, amb care and inpatient to get a wide variety. I sat down with preceptors and pharmacists in every setting and asked about their quality of life, job satisfaction and work life balance. I also considered what I could see myself doing for at least next 20 years or more.
For me it was Amb care. I enjoy working in a clinic environment with other medical professionals, full access to pt chart and feel I am able to practice to the top of my license. I enjoy sitting down and educating patients on chronic disease state management, adjusting their therapies as needed and collaboration with the team. I also enjoy teaching aspect: training our medical, nurse practitioner and pharmacy students and residents.
There are many aspects of amb care pharmacy I enjoy but to sum it up it is the variety of tasks, team care, educational training and direct pt care that I enjoy the most.
I also knew I wanted a set schedule and did not want to work nights. I did my share of on call work and occasional weekends when I was inpatient and did not like it. In amb care I work bankers hours and love it.
All my students think they are going to go amb care but there are very few jobs out there in this niche.
Like others mentioned, you need to go the residency pgy1 and 2 likely route first and then get lucky to fall into a good gig . It is competitive out there.
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It came down to which clinical faculty i was able to make a connection with and get along with. I shadowed a few of them, did APPE rotations with a couple, and got a sense for which kind of work i enjoyed and which i didn't. This was also instrumental in getting the experience and letters of rec I needed to be a strong residency applicant.
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I came up with what my "dream job" would look like and then looked at what out there matches it the closest. Ironically, when I finally got to work in the area really, really close to it, I decided I would actually hate what I thought would be my dream job. A few months after that, I was offered a position in the area I knew very little about and I decided take it just because why not learn a new skill set. Several years into it, I realized that what I do for fun and what I do at work are exactly the same (though with different set of information, I am not into drugs or healthcare off the clock), so I stumbled into my "dream job" entirely by accident. And I had fun along the way.
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Yeah, realistically, there is little choice involved in specialties. The jobs are few and far between, even for those who've completed a residency (lots of residence trained pharmacists working regular hospital staff and even retail staff jobs.) And there certainly is no guarantee of getting a residency in the area you want--realistically, you will want to apply broadly and hope that someplace accepts you, but the competence is fierce.) I suspect most people who've specialized, just fell into it, they were at the right place at the right time, or knew the right person, that they were able to get into a special area, and then they stuck with it.
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A pHaRmD iS vErSaTiLe
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I was on a P/F rotation system, so I took all the wildest, wackiest clerkships except the FDA who were a bunch of arrogant jerks at the time (and I confirmed that after I joined civil service). I was in a law office, got the DEA Field Office laboratory for one of my hospital rotations before Breaking Bad was a thing, had one of my community rotations at a hospice compounding facility, picked the faculty rotation that was reputed as the weirdo which secured my graduate admissions, got the INS (now ICE) processing facility in Eloy from the DEA Office by preceptor request and learned tropical medicine pharmacy and one of the places where chloramphenicol is used (and I didn't look Hispanic). I got my professional specialty from Cardinal, and being exposed to the quiet routine of the nuclear pharmacist day, and that really was where I changed my impression of being a chain pharmacist.
And then, I wanted to work Walgreens for the rest of my career, but ultimately did not because I got tapped for the NIH fellowship and never look back (as well as getting into the place I wanted to go). I did work for Walgreens at Deerfield in my summers during school and even well into my civil service career, so I don't consider that a closed door or regret.
I actually got my academic specialty because my original choice (pharmacoeconomics) was filled by prettier, more genial people, and informatics at the time was considered to be for the losers. While money can't buy happiness, it can buy beauty, and informatics is now quite exclusive for anyone who is a real one (hint: if you define informatics by a system, that is not an informatician).
When I give advice to the class, I would tell them to work anywhere else but the environment they interned in. Then again, none of my classes work anymore, so it's hard for me to give advice to people who have not worked at all....
Of all the rotations, I would recommend working the ICE/Border Patrol through BoP one most of all if I were Arizonan. It's a different idea that that when you do the work, you're put upon by management saying that you only need to give them enough days until ICEAir brings the detainees "home" across the border. I found that rotation to question my own sense of patient values and humanity. I still am not certain on how much I personify medical nemesis today. I know that my lifetime worst encounter with a patient in Walgreens is far ahead of a typical day in the detention facility where the horses for the mounted agents were treated better medicationwise than detainees.
Ivan Illich. Medical Nemesis. Chapter 1: The Epidemics of Modern Medicine
And then, I wanted to work Walgreens for the rest of my career, but ultimately did not because I got tapped for the NIH fellowship and never look back (as well as getting into the place I wanted to go). I did work for Walgreens at Deerfield in my summers during school and even well into my civil service career, so I don't consider that a closed door or regret.
I actually got my academic specialty because my original choice (pharmacoeconomics) was filled by prettier, more genial people, and informatics at the time was considered to be for the losers. While money can't buy happiness, it can buy beauty, and informatics is now quite exclusive for anyone who is a real one (hint: if you define informatics by a system, that is not an informatician).
When I give advice to the class, I would tell them to work anywhere else but the environment they interned in. Then again, none of my classes work anymore, so it's hard for me to give advice to people who have not worked at all....
Of all the rotations, I would recommend working the ICE/Border Patrol through BoP one most of all if I were Arizonan. It's a different idea that that when you do the work, you're put upon by management saying that you only need to give them enough days until ICEAir brings the detainees "home" across the border. I found that rotation to question my own sense of patient values and humanity. I still am not certain on how much I personify medical nemesis today. I know that my lifetime worst encounter with a patient in Walgreens is far ahead of a typical day in the detention facility where the horses for the mounted agents were treated better medicationwise than detainees.
Ivan Illich. Medical Nemesis. Chapter 1: The Epidemics of Modern Medicine
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How many clinical positions can there possibly be with the graduation rate so high? arent we going to reach a point where these kids can no longer get the job? or the residency or whatever? we should probably be there already.
