Life Outside of Retail...

[freshbeatschris]

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Somebody, whether they be pre-pharm student, pharmacy student, or pharmacist, please tell me that there is life outside of retail pharmacy.

I LOATHE my job in the pharmacy. This is not at all why I am getting into this business.

Is there anyone out there who has had retail experience and some other kind of pharmacy experience that could tell me the benefits and downfalls of each? Where do you get more respect?

I am just about done with my pre-pharm requirements and I have invested a lot of time, effort, money, stress, etc. into this new career path. This job is making me question everything. I want to help people, one on one, ask them how they are feeling and actually have the time to LISTEN to what they say! Does this job exist?

Disheartened-
Chris

 

[doubleup144]

Somebody, whether they be pre-pharm student, pharmacy student, or pharmacist, please tell me that there is life outside of retail pharmacy.

I LOATHE my job in the pharmacy. This is not at all why I am getting into this business.

Is there anyone out there who has had retail experience and some other kind of pharmacy experience that could tell me the benefits and downfalls of each? Where do you get more respect?

I am just about done with my pre-pharm requirements and I have invested a lot of time, effort, money, stress, etc. into this new career path. This job is making me question everything. I want to help people, one on one, ask them how they are feeling and actually have the time to LISTEN to what they say! Does this job exist?

Disheartened-
Chris

There's life outside of retail. Try...Health-Systems, Managed Care, Industry, etc. Try searching...ASHP and AMCP both have info on their sites about non-retail careers.

Pete

 

[ApothRM]

Somebody, whether they be pre-pharm student, pharmacy student, or pharmacist, please tell me that there is life outside of retail pharmacy.

I LOATHE my job in the pharmacy. This is not at all why I am getting into this business.

Is there anyone out there who has had retail experience and some other kind of pharmacy experience that could tell me the benefits and downfalls of each? Where do you get more respect?

I am just about done with my pre-pharm requirements and I have invested a lot of time, effort, money, stress, etc. into this new career path. This job is making me question everything. I want to help people, one on one, ask them how they are feeling and actually have the time to LISTEN to what they say! Does this job exist?

Disheartened-
Chris

AMEN!!

 

[dreaminpharmd]

Try clinical pharmacy....work at a big hospital where you get to see an array of patients. Be passionate about what you do. As the clinical pharmacist told me....you need to find your niche.... I was actually inspired by him because he took on so much responsibilities...AIDS, nutrition, pain management....to name a few. Those are what interest him. The downside he said of working at his hospital was that he was underpaid for what he does. But his everyday job of talking to patients and teaming up with nurses and dietitians keeps him running. Also, he works in the AIDS clinic and able to conduct research with a medical doctor.

I questioned him where the rest of the clinical pharmacists were....and he said they were hiding in their offices. I thought that was strange.

I hope these are some words of encouragement (and make any sense). 🙂

 

[b*rizzle]

Somebody, whether they be pre-pharm student, pharmacy student, or pharmacist, please tell me that there is life outside of retail pharmacy.

I LOATHE my job in the pharmacy. This is not at all why I am getting into this business.

Is there anyone out there who has had retail experience and some other kind of pharmacy experience that could tell me the benefits and downfalls of each? Where do you get more respect?

I am just about done with my pre-pharm requirements and I have invested a lot of time, effort, money, stress, etc. into this new career path. This job is making me question everything. I want to help people, one on one, ask them how they are feeling and actually have the time to LISTEN to what they say! Does this job exist?

Disheartened-
Chris

If you wanted to give retail another chance, try a mass-merchandiser like Target (no bias or anything 😛 ) I worked in an Eckerd for close to a year and I questioned everything about my choice to go into pharmacy. I am much happier at Target. They treat their employees better and I think they have more reasonable expectations than do some of these other chain places.

But as its been said many times before, retail is not for everyone. I think if you can survive retail you can survive anything.

 

[DrugDealer]

You might want to look for a PharmaCare pharmacy in your area. They are a subsidiary of CVS and focus on "patients with complex needs", such as AIDs patients or transplant recipients. Most of their patients are taking a lot of meds, and they need help with managing them, reducing interactions, creating a daily schedule that optimizes the effect of each drug, disease state management, etc. There is more patient interaction and the stores have more of a health care feel instead of a retail feel--they don't sell garden hoses and Xmas lights. You might enjoy it.

 

[dgroulx]

You might try grocery store retail. It is a slower pace and you really get to know your patients.

I found in hospital rotations that there is very little patient contact. You mainly look at charts when rounding. I mentioned this during an internship interview and the interviewer told me to check into things like anticoagulation clinics. You can use clinical skills and still deal with and help patients.

 

[freshbeatschris]

You might try grocery store retail. It is a slower pace and you really get to know your patients.

I've noticed this. My b-friend and I go into Dominicks about every Saturday and we make an intentional loop by the pharmacy to see what's going on. The pharmacist is always there sitting down, reading and jumps to see if he/she can help us. That is such a polar opposite of my pharmacy.

 

[freshbeatschris]

You might want to look for a PharmaCare pharmacy in your area. They are a subsidiary of CVS and focus on "patients with complex needs", such as AIDs patients or transplant recipients. Most of their patients are taking a lot of meds, and they need help with managing them, reducing interactions, creating a daily schedule that optimizes the effect of each drug, disease state management, etc. There is more patient interaction and the stores have more of a health care feel instead of a retail feel--they don't sell garden hoses and Xmas lights. You might enjoy it.

This sounds EXACTLY like what I'm looking for. I will look into this. Thank you very much for this suggestion.

Chris

 

[Moxxie]

Chris, another thing that you might think about checking into (when you're in pharm school) is the VA health care system. I've had the chance to shadow some of the clinical pharmacists at my local VA and they have really intriguing jobs.

At the VA, clinical pharmacists have their own scope of practice and hold their own clinics. So for example, in the diabetes clinics that I shadowed, the pharmacists see patients, give examinations, go over lab work and tests, then actually prescribe meds to try to keep the patient in the best state possible. Some of the patients that they see are very complex cases - they have diabetes, HBP, high cholesterol, depression, and other things. They are often undereducated and have low incomes. So it's not only a struggle to balance their meds, but also to ensure compliance. It sounds frustrating, but it's also very rewarding.

There are other pharmacists at the VA that are the more traditional pharmacists - they have both an outpatient and an inpatient pharmacy. The outpatient pharmacy is a lot like retail except that you don't have to deal with insurance issues and can usually contact the prescribing MD very easily. The inpatient pharmacy was a little boring to me - the RPHs pretty much sat at a computer and approved rxs as they were entered into the computer system (or rejected them if they saw interactions). They did mix IVs and help with discharges, though, which was more interesting.

I hope this helps! (retail isn't the end all of everything!)

P.S. One thing I have noticed, and that doesn't really have much to do with the topic, was some anomosity between the pharmd and BS Rphs. The PharmDs I've worked with have been the clinical pharmacists, and while they respect the B.S. rphs (who are usually the older employees in the dispensing pharmacies), they seemed to scoff at their clinical knowledge. And the B.S. Rphs that I have met (at least at the VA) have an attitude that the new pharmds are all about fancy clinical knowledge but couldn't dispense a rx to save their life. Have any of you guys seen this?

 

[Sosumi]

P.S. One thing I have noticed, and that doesn't really have much to do with the topic, was some anomosity between the pharmd and BS Rphs. The PharmDs I've worked with have been the clinical pharmacists, and while they respect the B.S. rphs (who are usually the older employees in the dispensing pharmacies), they seemed to scoff at their clinical knowledge. And the B.S. Rphs that I have met (at least at the VA) have an attitude that the new pharmds are all about fancy clinical knowledge but couldn't dispense a rx to save their life. Have any of you guys seen this?

At the hospital I work, it sometimes happens. One of the responsibilities of the clinical pharmacists is to write up the protocol sheets for heparin and PCA. The older dispensing pharmacists were like, how come the sheet makes no sense and wasn't practical for entry? It's because the clinicals have no dispensing experience, so they didn't factor how illegible the sheets were and missing the check marks.

My friend who works at another hospital has a pharmacy director who's trying to revamp their pharmacy. They were in a very sad state before he arrived, so he basically cleaned house. He keeps the good BS pharmacists to enter orders and mainly hires PharmD's so he can push his informatics vision forward where basically the pharmacist will be looking over the shoulder of the prescriber.