People accepted with no pharmacy experience

[BlueCrayon]

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I was one of those people who didn't realize the importance of getting some experience until around when I got invited for my interview. It really wasn't possible anyways because I was (and still am) doing research full time as well as having a house and a family to take care of and taking a couple of classes, I really didn't have the time to get a pharmacy job. (I did shadow a couple friends of mine quite a bit, but no hands on exp) My question is those of you that are in the same boat, do you regret not seeing what working in a pharmacy is like before getting accepted? Also, does it help in school having that experience? Don't get me wrong, I don't regret becoming a pharmacy student, I now just kind of wish I would've tried to get some exp in a couple areas after reading how much so many people seem to hate it! Thanks for any input.

 

[Farmercyst]

I was one of those people who didn't realize the importance of getting some experience until around when I got invited for my interview. It really wasn't possible anyways because I was (and still am) doing research full time as well as having a house and a family to take care of and taking a couple of classes, I really didn't have the time to get a pharmacy job. (I did shadow a couple friends of mine quite a bit, but no hands on exp) My question is those of you that are in the same boat, do you regret not seeing what working in a pharmacy is like before getting accepted? Also, does it help in school having that experience? Don't get me wrong, I don't regret becoming a pharmacy student, I now just kind of wish I would've tried to get some exp in a couple areas after reading how much so many people seem to hate it! Thanks for any input.

I didn't have any experience either. It would have been nice, primarily so I don't feel so dumb on my IPPE's, but really I don't think it's made that much difference. As far as helping me in school, not really. None of the classes have had much to do with the dispensery or insurance processing roles I would have had as a tech or clerk. Drug names would be a bonus, but I already had a pharmacology class for techs anyway so I was kind of ahead of the game in that area anyway.

 

[RxWildcat]

I'd say having retail experience would only beneficial for knowledge of drug names and maybe some basic drug information. You also might not have realized what you've gotten yourself into, job-wise that is. Retail pharmacy definitely isn't for everyone, but I'm glad I worked there prior to school because now I know there's no way in hell I could do that forever! 😀

 

[mike36]

I don't regret not having experience before hand. For one thing, I would have had to take a huge pay cut to be a pharm tech. I was already working 50+ hours a week, so I didn't really have time to get a second job as a pharm tech. Well, I guess I could have, but I didn't want to do that to myself.

Like people have said, I think the main benefits of having the experience is exposure to the field (do I really want to do this?) and familiarity with drug names.

 

[medicalCPA]

I'm glad that there are people who got accepted to pharmacy school with no experience. It gives me hope. I do not think I would make a sub-par pharmacist, but there are some on this board who would deny admission to people like me.

 

[BlueCrayon]

I'm glad that there are people who got accepted to pharmacy school with no experience. It gives me hope. I do not think I would make a sub-par pharmacist, but there are some on this board who would deny admission to people like me.

I'm sure there are many of us who actually get accepted with no experience...I also think I would make a good pharmacist, but like you said many people feel very strongly that one should have experience before getting accepted. From the above posters, it sounds as though it doesn't make a huge difference in classes, but of course it might help give you a head start on drug names. I can deal with that. I do, however, wish I would've done it just to make sure I wasn't going to hate it. I gotta feeling I won't though. 😛

 

[Pianopooh]

I didn't have pharmacy experience prior to entering pharmacy school. I would have preferred that I did, it would make pharmacy practice a lot more easier. Anyone who works at a pharmacy have the upper hand in seeing the drugs already, knowing how a pharmacy works, etc. It made my year a lot harder to get through, but it's do-able.

 

[PharmDstudent]

I'll put it this way- if you want to know workflow, time management, and the good vs bad aspects of pharmacy, you need experience. Someone can tell you a hundred times that retail is more strenuous than hospital pharmacy (vice versa if there are multiple STATs or codes at a hospital), but you won't know why until you see it in practice for a long period of time. You'll only know that those situations exist, but you won't know how they really occurred, because you don't understand the entire process and how it works in practice.

For example, I remember being a technician and running around a 500 bed hospital with a fully loaded IV cart and trying to squeeze into nursing stations to access the fridge, tubing STAT medications STAT because the pharmacist was practically frantic about getting the medication up to the patient, pulling drugs that had to be filled, filling crash (emergency medications) carts, filling patient medication drawers on the floors, doing returns for d/c patients' medications, checking for expired medications, hand delivering TPNs and expensive medications, prepackaging tablets that needed to be in a unit-dosed, and plenty of other stuff.
I'm sure that if someone else on this forum would describe to you what their technician duties were at their hospital, they wouldn't be exactly the same; they may not even be similar depending on where they worked.

If you're a go-with-the-flow type of person that can do anything successfully, then I don't think pharmacy experience is critical.
It just depends on how adaptable you are. I'm not saying that people should have to put up with unreasonable requests, but you can't expect someone else to do the parts of your job that you don't care for if you're not willing to do them yourself.

 

[b*rizzle]

I don't regret not having experience before hand. For one thing, I would have had to take a huge pay cut to be a pharm tech. I was already working 50+ hours a week, so I didn't really have time to get a second job as a pharm tech. Well, I guess I could have, but I didn't want to do that to myself.

Like people have said, I think the main benefits of having the experience is exposure to the field (do I really want to do this?) and familiarity with drug names.

I don't think it's that simple. Context is everything. Makes it much easier to learn/remember stuff from therapeutics modules. I definitely feel like I have the advantage over classmates who'd never worked in a pharmacy before.