Work experience?

[prepharmgirl09]

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Is it true that pharm schools want candidates with pharmacy work experience? I worked in operations management for a national retail pharmacy chain for one year and had a lot of interaction with RPh's and the whole pharmacy process, etc. Hopefully that counts for something. Within the last year I have tried to find a job as a pharmacy tech (FT or PT--it really didn't matter to me) and they are pretty scarce to find! Most chain pharmacies (I am speaking from where I live at) want to hire techs that have no aspirations to become RPh's and that only want to be techs and nothing more than that. It really just frustrates me that these places don't take on more pre-pharm and pharmacy students--even if its just PT on the weekends or whatever works into their school schedule. I just feel like I am missing out some really valuable work experience (working along side a RPh) and that my pharm school application is going to be stunted. I have been calling everywhere and submitting applications with no luck. I know its also a bad economy right now and that I live in a small town that has very little jobs.

I am just so frustrated with this situation! Any advice you all could give would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance 🙂

 

[stlouis79]

i got accepted with no pharmacy work experience. I did volunteer for thirty hours at a long term care pharmacy (but really most of it was just bullshi**ng with pharmacist and techs), and I spent some time (a couple days) at a hospital pharmacy talking with the staff about the profession. You should probably volunteer somewhere, if for nothing else than to get a good reference. I also worked at an optometry place so I did have experience working and communicating with patients, but really I was just a sales associate. So get out there and talk to pharmacists and try make connections and find people that will vouch for you. Then get good grades, get a decent pcat score, and when you get interviews - be confident. They wont care about experience then. They just want to make sure you dont think this is a get rich quick scheme. Hope that helps.

 

[prepharmgirl09]

i got accepted with no pharmacy work experience. I did volunteer for thirty hours at a long term care pharmacy (but really most of it was just bullshi**ng with pharmacist and techs), and I spent some time (a couple days) at a hospital pharmacy talking with the staff about the profession. You should probably volunteer somewhere, if for nothing else than to get a good reference. I also worked at an optometry place so I did have experience working and communicating with patients, but really I was just a sales associate. So get out there and talk to pharmacists and try make connections and find people that will vouch for you. Then get good grades, get a decent pcat score, and when you get interviews - be confident. They wont care about experience then. They just want to make sure you dont think this is a get rich quick scheme. Hope that helps.

Thank you for the reply! I will look into volunteering in my spare time in a variety of settings and concentrate on getting good grades, great pcat, etc. 🙂