When will the last of the unsaturated areas be saturated?

[owlegrad]

I’m not talking about the part time pick-em-off-the-street techs who are just looking for anything that pays the bills, I’m talking about the career techs who quite frankly are more knowledgeable than P1-P2’s at the very minimum. I agree that techs may not understand clinical guidelines or lab testing as well as pharmacy students but the NAPLEX hardly tests on clinical questions anyways. When 50% of your points comes from math/calculations questions, 25%-30% of the questions are about random drug trivia (aka brand/generic names, indications, dosage form stuff) and another 20-25% of questions are actually based on therapeutics, I would think that it will be easy enough to score a 75% on the exam. What does everyone say in those NAPLEX study help threads? Focus on calculations (which has nothing to do with what you learn in pharmacy school).

50% of the points come from calculations? I doubt that very much although I am too lazy to check the actual percent. I doubt most techs could even pass that portion of the exam to be frank. You think any tech anywhere has a clue how to calculate osmolarity?

Even the stuff you are giving techs credit for, like brand/generic, you are overrating them. I can’t even tell you how many times I have had a tech tell me why they can’t change an NDC when when the problem is the products aren’t AB rated. No kidding you can’t change the NDC, that is literally the computer doing its job of preventing you from making a mistake.

Again maybe 5% of career techs could pass. I would be interested in testing your theory just to see the results.

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[owlegrad]

I doubt even some current pharmacist would know some of that. The pharmacist I worked with didn't even know NAC was used to reverse APAP overdose (He thought it was just some random OTC dietary supplement). Heck, the only drug he knew that was cleared hepatically as APAP.

Sure we all know “that” pharmacist or even multiple “those” pharmacists. And truly you are right, I have no idea how they passed. But just because they somehow passed doesn’t mean other people with even less training/education will.

 

[mentos]

How often do you catch day supply or quantity errors from data entry? One per hour?

If you hand the average tech a script for amoxicillin 400mg/5mL but you only have 250mg/5mL in stock, they can't do the conversion. They will tell the customer it's out of stock instead.

You think these techs know the Cockroft-Gault formula off the top of their head?

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

You think these techs know the Cockroft-Gault formula off the top of their head?

The average retail pharmacist won’t know this either because you don’t work with lab results/medical histories in that setting.

 

[BidingMyTime]

The average retail pharmacist won’t know this either because you don’t work with lab results/medical histories in that setting.

No, but I bet the average retail pharmacist (unlike the average pharmacy technician) would at least know why the Cockroft-Gault formula is important, and know when it's needed (and know to look it up, if they ever needed to in the retail setting.)

 

[owlegrad]

The average retail pharmacist won’t know this either because you don’t work with lab results/medical histories in that setting.

The average retail pharmacist probably knew it at one point since they passed their exams. They could probably relearn it long enough to pass again.

The average retail tech has never even heard of it. Your argument is dumb.

 

[mentos]

The average retail pharmacist won’t know this either because you don’t work with lab results/medical histories in that setting.

They would know to memorize it for the exam and how to use it. Whereas the tech has never heard of it.

 

[hye345]

Are you guys seriously setting up a pissing contest between pharmacist and technician in terms of drug knowledge and the ability to pass an arbitrary test?

 

[Judgment Dragon]

2 years.

 

[sunshao]

I doubt technicians could pass it. IMO, the exam was more of what I learned in my rotations and studying from exams. I had difficult topics: immunocompromised, cancer, ID, OI. I felt it was more clinical then anything, which technicians don't really learn. RxPrep is nice and would help a little with understanding guideline standards, but I doubt a technician can handle the massiveness of that beastly book.

 

[BaSsHeAd]

in reply to OP, it has already happened. there is a vacancy in BFE near where i work and the opening received 82 applications. mind you, this place is about 2 hours away from a decently sized town

 

[Xenophylia]

Yes - and this is my response every single time I hear the saturation argument comes up. I always say, “there may be a saturation of pharmacists, however there is not a saturation of quality pharmacists.”

And this would matter if Chain pharmacy cared about the "talent" of their staff. But they just don't. Expendable and easily replaced warm body with a license is how they see even their most competent staff. And the *****s are grouped with the good ones. No incentive to even try in retail anymore.

 

[Mambo#5]

in reply to OP, it has already happened. there is a vacancy in BFE near where i work and the opening received 82 applications. mind you, this place is about 2 hours away from a decently sized town

Lol so true. I know a couple places like that. One that I can think of doesn’t even have a cell signal and they received 80 applications 2 years ago.

 

[JustFillIt]

And this would matter if Chain pharmacy cared about the "talent" of their staff. But they just don't. Expendable and easily replaced warm body with a license is how they see even their most competent staff. And the *****s are grouped with the good ones. No incentive to even try in retail anymore.

I guess I just don’t agree with this. This has not been the case in my experience

 

[Xenophylia]

I guess I just don’t agree with this. This has not been the case in my experience

It's great if you don't agree and have had a different experience. I worked for a chain where this was true. They would hire virtually anyone, then expect their partner to take up the slack. I had a pharmacy manager who did virtually none of her manager functions. But she was "hot"- at least according to management- and was allowed to do whatever she wanted when she wanted. If she didn't do her manager stuff, it was passed on to me. This was one of the big reasons why I eventually left. They kept pharmacists at other stores who were awful and the stores suffered for it.

 

[Farcus]

andetocal evidence but start hospital job after residency in 2014, saw a lot of recruit hunter emailing me in 2014-2016, hospital jobs, some with bonus/clinical jobs in middle of nowhere texas or west side of texas or somewhere in texas no one wants to go, now I don't receive them.

 

[mentos]

andetocal evidence but start hospital job after residency in 2014, saw a lot of recruit hunter emailing me in 2014-2016, hospital jobs, some with bonus/clinical jobs in middle of nowhere texas or west side of texas or somewhere in texas no one wants to go, now I don't receive them.

I graduated in 2014, the only flyer in the mail I've ever gotten was in 2016 for a new LTC inviting me for an interview. I went for it and they told me I was the 30th or so person that they interviewed. It paid $40/hr with on-call on weekends and unpaid overtime. I asked how often they leave at the normal scheduled time and they said rarely. Hard pass.

Sadly that offer will soon become the norm.

 

[sfachine]

At least they were upfront about it.

 

[owlegrad]

That is a terrible offer for today, let alone 2016!

 

[Litha]

I graduated in 2014, the only flyer in the mail I've ever gotten was in 2016 for a new LTC inviting me for an interview. I went for it and they told me I was the 30th or so person that they interviewed. It paid $40/hr with on-call on weekends and unpaid overtime. I asked how often they leave at the normal scheduled time and they said rarely. Hard pass.

Sadly that offer will soon become the norm.

Geeeez, that's depressing.

I did a job exactly like that fresh out of school in 2016. I was paid $55/hr and it still wasn't enough for the amount of crap I had to deal with being on-call. LTC could be a good job but it has really gone downhill (from the perspective of a person working at one that was bought out by the red devil).

 

[Xenophylia]

Yeah, not terrible if you do LTC for an indy. I work nights to keep the others from being on call, and as such am never on call myself. Also don't work weekends. When I'm off, I'm off....

 

[sfachine]

Do you get paid for being on call?How much do you get if you actually need to go in?How often does it happen?

 

[VictorOfHungerGames]

Just spoke to a navy recruiter. Military is not even taking applications for pharmacists. lol. He said even if he wanted to help out, they won't even ask or let him fill out a document for recruiting pharmacists. Its over fam. lol.

 

[KaliVera]

Midwest student here. My school is cutting admissions since new schools are opening so even here we're getting saturated.

 

[bhattirx]

Walmart recently advertised some open "pharmacist manager" positions in Arizona on the WIRE with "relocation potential"!

Tucson (posted 8/29/19) - southern part of the city, probably ratchet WM (> 20% poverty rate for that zip code)
Douglas (posted 8/8/19) - "enjoy sunny days and star-studded nights" - on the Mexico border, SE corner of the state, ~120 miles from Tucson
Nogales (posted 7/10/19) - "most diverse and interesting destinations" - on the Mexico border, ~66 miles from Tucson

Script range 1800-2600/week. CS dispensing rate sub 5%

Maybe not so bad if you speak good Spanish. Doesn't get as hot as on the Colorado River in northern/western AZ

Those are all the same market FYI

"WIRE" what job site is that??

 

[mentos]

Midwest student here. My school is cutting admissions since new schools are opening so even here we're getting saturated.

Good. Hopefully all the schools shut down. There is no more need for any pharmacists for at least 10 years.

 

[sozetone]

Well OP, you started this thread in sept 2019. They are now saturated. That fast! lol