Actually, Doctors Without Borders does recruit pharmacists. But they want at least 2 years hospital experience. I worked with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Indonesia during the aftermath of Java earthquake that killed more than 6000 people and left tens of thousands wounded. It was summer after second year pharmacy school and I went home to Indonesia to try and help out. I landed a job there as the assisstant pharmacy coordinator. (FYI: MSF doesn't take students as their expat volunteers, but since I'm Indonesian with American education I was considered local staff instead of expat staff = my hiring was on the spot and not through Paris or New York office)
The reason why they need hospital experience is justified because my duties were managing the dispensing for 150 bed inflatable field hospital and 2 satellite clinics, coordinating it with the nurses and physicians for special drugs that need to be administered, managing the pharmacy warehouse, managing inventory for the drugs and medical supplies (bandages, povidone iodine, sterile gauze, vaccines cold chain (imagine keeping them at 2-8 C in a 90 degree field hospital) ,etc, etc). It was a physically demanding job such as riding in a truck lifting heavy boxes, counting thousands of tablets manually. However, I loved every single second of it! Sometimes I even got to work with the logisticians in terms of fixing broken medical equipments, helping interpreting during rounds and house visits and more.
The best part was there were several American staff as well that know what US pharmacy students/ pharmacists know, so they utilized me and I got asked questions about drugs quite often as well. For example, the compatibility issues, or if the patients are on weird drugs that they never heard of before.
I'm definitely planning to work with MSF in the future. Hands down one-of-a-kind experience.
Oh and the reason I got to do so much was because the pharmacy coordinator was a French nurse and he was more than happy to delegate things to me. The pharmacist was there only for the acute phase to set up things
There is a group for MSF on Facebook that I posted my pictures on as well.
