Life Off-Label

If there’s one thing I wish they had stricter criteria on for pharmacy applicants, it’s pharmacy experience. Most people in my class do have some to an extent, but it always amazes me when a classmate tells me they haven’t even so much as shadowed a pharmacist before pharmacy school. Usually they have amazing grades, PCAT scores, and other extracurricular activities to make up for it, but at the end of the day there’s no substitute for pharmacy experience.

Back when I was thinking about PA school, one of the things that held me back was a lack of patient contact experience. Most schools require a minimum of 1000 hours before you apply. Considering that a PA is a second career for many people, and consequently most of your competition is full-time nurses, EMTs, anesthesia techs, and the like, 1000 hours isn’t even that much. Why do they require so much? Because it’s a very patient-oriented field and they want to know you’re completely comfortable with it. Ultimately I realized I didn’t want that much patient contact, but I’m glad I hadn’t spent time in PA school before realizing it.

On the same note, pharmacy school should require a certain number of hours in a pharmacy for applicants. It can be through volunteering, shadowing, or working as a pharmacy tech. It can be in the setting of the applicant’s choice, be it retail, hospital, compounding, etc. But it should be something.

For starters, if everyone has a certain amount of experience, We wouldn’t have as much of a need for so many IPPE hours, or we could at least be trusted to do more at our sites. I don’t know what kind of impression other P1s left before me, but every time I went to a new site, it seemed like the preceptor would assume I just randomly woke up one morning and decided to go to pharmacy school without actually setting foot in a pharmacy. And maybe that’s how it is for some students, but personally I don’t need an extensive tour of every single pharmacy I go to, as if their way of arranging the drugs is SO different from another pharmacy that I couldn’t figure it out. Nor do I need to sit there and watch everyone work as they try explaining to me what drug classes are, or how to count pills, or how to choose which size container to use. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s standing around when I know I could be doing something. So I’ve learned to bring up my past experience from the start, so my preceptor can start trusting me with more responsibilities at the site and I can actually learn something.

More importantly, however, pharmacy school is a four-year and very large financial commitment, and it’s important to know the pros and cons before getting into it. A couple posts ago, when I talked about the cynics, it was inspired by coworkers from my past job who would constantly complain about pharmacy at lunch. The nurses suck. The management sucks. The techs suck. The job saturation sucks. Robots are taking over the world, but it starts with pharmacy. Yadda yadda yadda. Every. Single. Day. And yet, I’m still so happy to be in pharmacy school and excited about being a pharmacist. It didn’t deter me from applying, and even the bashing I hear from coworkers now is not going to stop me from continuing through until graduation. I know what I’m getting into, and still see the benefit in it.

What I’ve come to realize though, is that most people apply to pharmacy school without knowing the common complaints. For example, I’ve already seen several people surprised that pharmacists don’t always work steady schedules. Well, I don’t know what made you think patients only needed their drugs between 8am and 5pm, but sorry if you were misled. I’ve already dealt with the unsteady schedule, working holidays, and up to 14-hour shifts, and even though some pharmacists do have a steady schedule, I don’t mind if mine’s not, so that’s one “con” I’m okay with. Some also didn’t realize how much the job outlook slowed down. A few years ago, people were getting cash bonuses just to work for chains, now those same chains in a lot of cities are only offering part-time floating positions. Yes, the job market is more competitive, but so is any field in this economy. I don’t mind competition, and can see other areas where pharmacy will eventually grow, so that’s another “con” I’m okay with. A few others are just now realizing that their cliche passion to “help people” includes ALL people, including some of the most unappreciative and rude human beings to ever grace the planet, and are unsure if they still want a job that deals with others so often. I know how to shrug people off, so that’s another “con” I can live with.

So, neeedless to say, some classmates are already questioning their decision and looking at other fields, and it sucks that they’re realizing it after a year of pharmacy school. It makes sense why some didn’t put much thought into it before, because as pre-pharms all we ever heard from the representatives of pharmacy schools was how pharmacy is so awesome. And pharmacy is awesome. You get to serve others and matter to patients, you usually work only 40 hour weeks, you get great pay and benefits, and its a very respectable profession. But it’s not perfect, and it takes getting out into the real world of working pharmacists to discover those imperfections and see if it’s something you still want to pursue.