if I was interviewing you and I asked you "how has working in the field of pharmacy influenced your decision to pursue a PharmD"
if you work retail you can talk about interacting with patients etc
if you work mail order you can talk about the intricacies of the USPS...i guess?
stay in retail, you will get to see and interact with your patients.
Wow, you and most others are extremely ignorant about what goes on in mail order pharmacy. First off in retail the only interacting you do with patients is taking their Rx and getting their insurance info, and then likely arguing about prices/coverage. You don't do anything really pharmacy related when it comes to patient interaction because that's the pharmacist's job.
Mail order is as different from retail as hospital is, yet the basics are the same. You still receive a script, input it, pharmacist checks and the patient gets their meds. The process is broken into different departments. So instead of you sitting behind a counter at a retail place and doing every single step, in mail order you're one cog in the machine. They don't pay techs to do shipping, they pay techs to do tech required work. I sit in front of a computer all day and enter scripts into a database. Comfy chair, huge monitor, nice desk, peace and quiet, iPod playing my tunes or lectures, 100% flexible schedule, guaranteed hours. None of this "so and so didn't show up so we need you to stay late" bullcrap that you deal with in retail and hospital. I have access to dozens and dozens of pharmacists if I have a question, and those pharmacists come from all walks of life. If I want to have patient interaction we have departments that deal with that. If I want to do compounding we have a department to do that. Lots and lots of options. I see a wide variety of scripts, so I am constantly seeing drugs I've never heard of. About the only thing we don't see is antibiotics which people need to start asap.
Is it boring? Yeah. But I'd rather deal with boring than have to deal with having my hours cut/changed, dealing with bitchy snow birds, not getting my breaks/lunch, being called in or having to stay late. Would I rather work in the hospital? Definitely, but lets get real, seniority rules and new people get the crap schedules and the crap work. Being a full time student I need stability and flexibility at work, and hospital tech work is just the opposite. There is no urgency in mail order like there is in the hospital, so if I go home sick its not a burden to the other techs. Likewise we don't have our patients sitting right in the store waiting for their prescription, so I can take my breaks/lunches whenever I want.
To the OP: As to what helps you get into pharmacy school, I don't think it matters. If you want hospital experience to put on your application, go volunteer. I think that would be a better use of your time would be to give up on tech school, volunteer at the hospital, and work as a retail tech. The money spent on tech school just isn't worth it unless you plan on doing it as a career. You don't need to go to school to be a tech. Go take the PTCB if you haven't already. Buy a book and study. If you have all your pre-reqs for pharmacy the test is a breeze.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
