work in retail first and then hospital?

[s1lver]

Spoke to a friend of a friend who does the hiring at a Hospital and she pretty much guaranteed me a Pharmacy Tech job next month. I have zero experience with anything Pharmacy-related and I haven't even started my pre-reqs yet. I took the PTCE a while back and passed.

I'm asking because my original plan was to work in retail first for a few months and then switch to Hospital (so I can experience both settings) but now I'm having second thoughts.

Is there anything in retail that I wouldn't learn in a Hospital? If you were me, what would you do?


Thanks.

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[alpha12]

Spoke to a friend of a friend who does the hiring at a Hospital and she pretty much guaranteed me a Pharmacy Tech job next month. I have zero experience with anything Pharmacy-related and I haven't even started my pre-reqs yet. I took the PTCE a while back and passed.

I'm asking because my original plan was to work in retail first for a few months and then switch to Hospital (so I can experience both settings) but now I'm having second thoughts.

Is there anything in retail that I wouldn't learn in a Hospital? If you were me, what would you do?


Thanks.

Do hospital first than retail.

 

[RAMPHARMD]

Working in retail has you interact directly with the patient where as patient to pharmacist interaction is slim to none in a hospital setting. I would say that if you are a "people person" the retail setting is more for you. A big thing that you don't have to deal with in the hospital setting that you spend a large portion of your time with in retail is insurance processing and its pesky, yet inevitable rejections and prior authorizations. If your schedule allows you to do so, I suggest working in one environment and volunteering in the other to obtain the most insight into the pharmacy world as possible - It wouldn't look bad on an application either ;-)

 

[RxWildcat]

Inpatient or outpatient? You will learn a ton of common drugs in retail, just being familiar with names, strengths, and dosages will help a lot in school.

 

[Gitana]

You say you haven't even started your prereqs, so you have probably two years ahead of you as a pre-pharm. At least from looking at websites like careerbuilder, after one year experience in a hospital you can start making anything from $14-18/hr, whereas in retail you will probably still be around $9-$10/hr.

Pick the one that pays better. You can still volunteer or even just do some shadowing in the other one. You just want enough experience so that you can 1) understand what it entails day-to-day and 2) put it in your application.