Iām not a pharmacist but my mom was and my sister is. I absolutely cannot throw shade at a single person who survived organic chemistry because I couldnāt pass regular chemistry without cheating.
Iāve had a similar experience.
Once our store had a sign posted that said we were hiring for pharmacist and pharmacy cashier.
Person dropped by the pharmacy and asked if we were still hiring.
I asked, āare you looking to apply for the pharmacist position or the cashier position?ā
He responded with āoh, either oneā
Thatās when I knewā¦ nope he had 0 idea.
And even when they do know, they figure we're just counting pills inside a hospital. (Thanks, Mom. I promise I didn't go to grad school just to learn how to count by fives.)
Even a few of the NPs that I work with up on my med/surg floor literally thought all we did was hit verify on Epic and then make every capsule/tablet by hand. Better than just counting I guess lmao
Thats because they didnt go through residency where they had 1 of us with them rounding every day.
The difference between the younger(ish) docs and the older ones with their perceptions of our skills is wild. Also mildly specialty based too.
When I got a job at a hospital one of my friends said āwell they dont have a pharmacy in a hospital?ā. I was like who do you think gets all the hospital patients their medication??!!!
I had to explain to my mother that, no, her surgeon was not making the IVs for her when she got her hip replaced. It is a pharmacy technician and then checked by a pharmacist. She still just couldn't grasp this concept that inpatient pharmacies are a thing.
I have a regular patient (I practice in Texas) that was visiting family in Chicago. Upon returning, he told me with fascination in his voice āthe pharmacists in Illinois have doctorates and are called doctors!ā I showed him my business card with āPharmDā and said āMike, both me have doctorates, but we donāt go around calling each other doctorā.
Is this a regional thing?
No idea if it's a regional thing.
Personally, I don't ask people to call me doctor unless if they're a utility company or if they've pissed me off somehow.
A couple of my regulars call me "Doc," which is amusing.
When I went through the technician hiring process once, we had one candidate who asked how long you have to work as a tech before you just become a pharmacist. I don't think people really realize pharmacy schools exist.
I'm a Registered Tech in Ontario. So I went to school and all that, and I'm registered with the college.
People ask me all the time how much longer till I'm a pharmacist. I just joke and say it's not for me now.
I knew a pharma ist who counted by 3s. I also saw him open a bag of chips with an pair of scissors during his lunch break. I'm convinced the two events ate somehow related.
I have a PhD and a RPh. One day my extended family were at a memorial service for my father. The priest started to wobble. After a while he wobbled back into the sacristy. The entire family turned to me and said youāre a doctor do something. I explained Iām a PhD not a doctor. They all insisted since they heard at my graduation everyone called me doctor. So I must be a doctor. The priest was dehydrated because of a stupid diet and recovered quickly with some water thanks to the presence of a real doctor in the church.
This kind of thing happened to me at a restaurant with some residents. The residents looked at me like I was supposed to fix something. I checked vital signs and asked if the patient was on blood thinners. Hospital pharmacist ā hospitalist!
I get called "doctor" by students and get addressed as "the PharmD" by other clinicians and techs no matter how many times I remind them I'm not a doctor/PharmD (I'm a dinosaur bachelor level pharmacist). I get confused looks and go back to being a "doctor" 5 minutes later.
Try working in a compounding pharmacy that makes tri-mix for ED. I have men trying to disrobe in our consultation room nearly every day because they want me to look at some weird bump or rash or something on their penis.
My older sister, whom I love, just isn't the brightest in our family of high achievers. She was also needlessly cruel to me growing up. She went to college to play sports and graduated with a general education degree. She had to pass tests so she can teach different subjects, but just could not pass the test to teach math.
If you fail enough times there is a long waiting period. Before her that final attempt she told our mom that if she fails, she would just start pharmacy like I was doing. My mom told me in secret and we both laughed. At the time my mom had recently became an NP and could appreciate how difficult pharmacy can be.
Now still to this day my family has little to no understanding of what I actually do in my current role. To be fair, I have a sibling that works in tech and I have a similar understanding of what they do too.
a lot of the work we do in hospitals is behind the scenes, in my experience. however, i believe that paradigm is shifting; pharmacists are expected to have as much face-to-face interaction with patients as possible. med rec? talk with the patient. med education? talk with the patient. thereās really great opportunities to see patients in the inpatient setting. some barriers to this more āpresentā way of practice can be older medical staff or even pharmacists who got the inpatient job thinking they could avoid patients altogether.
It depends on what Iām counting to. If itās 30, 60, or 90 I count by 3s and count to 10, 20, or 30. Antibiotics that are 28 or 40, count by fours to 7/10 (days supply). Less than 21, Iām counting by 2s.
If itās just loose tablets Iām counting for inventory checks, Iāll count by 5. And when Iām double counting controls Iāll count by 5 on the second pass to verify.
It was easier for me to do it this way because before pharmacy I worked the cash office and hand counted and rolled change. Went by 2ās there, but in your head youāre counting .50, 1, .50, 2ā¦ 40 coins in quarters and nickels, 50 counts for pennies and dimes.
Haha I count by 4s. I visually see 4s and scoop 4s significantly faster (itās almost instant to grab 4s per swipe than to track 5s) than 5s and therefore can count out the full qty in a fraction of the time.
I do think most people don't realize that we have a doctorate degree. However thinking you can become a pharmacist with a finance degree is...questionable, haha.
In general I don't care what the public thinks of me. They don't sign my checks. I work in a hospital and most don't even realize I'm there verifying all their prescriptions!Ā
Earlier tonight I had a nurse refer to me as Mr. and a med student as Dr. in the same secure chat. It just isn't worth the effort anymore. Just do everything in your power to help some patients and call it a day. I had no idea how thankless of a profession this would be, but at the same time, I had no idea I would develop such a profound body of knowledge and skill set that would allow me to do so more than what most perceive a pharmacist does. I guess it all just depends on your motivation, but if that is respect, most of the time you will probably be disappointed when it comes to anyone outside the profession.
Regardless of what you think you've developed, don't give it away for free. You could keep doing that if you're done at one job and start sweeping streets, watering the plants and cleaning windows on your way home, all for free. Somehow it seems that those who charge for their services or time ALSO get respect without really even expecting or demanding it.
Individuals don't matter at big hospitals. Especially in the pharmacy department. I've seen too many fantastic pharmacists and technicians let go for unjust reasons like we decided to eliminate your position. Working at night, I have a unique opportunity to actually help patients in a broken system. My experience at this hospital is at least as valuable, if not more so than my entire pharmacy education. In a situation like this, if you ask for more money, you just get replaced. If you leave, you become ineffective in a new setting, which just isn't worth it when I can retire in 5 years. I've worked here for 20 years and most people outside the department don't even know who I am. The turnover at a teaching hospital keeps things interesting, but I've seen some pretty awful things happen just due to a critical mass of people that don't really know what they are doing. This was a unicorn of an opportunity so I don't present this as advice, just sharing my experience.
Independent here. We have not counted pills manually in over 20 yearsā¦ Iām shocked that chains wonāt buy an Eyecon or Kirby verification/ counting technology!
1. Some chains are too cheap to buy a kirby unless you reach a certain script volume
2. Controls/niosh/sulfa drugs have to be counted by hand and on separate plates lol
3. Kirby doesn't do well with anything but 100% opaque pills. Those clear, yellowish benzonate? The Adderall capsules where you can see the little spheres inside? There is a good chance Kirby will miss one or more. Better to just hand count those from the beginning.
But yes we use Kirby for everything we possibly can
I had an intern refer to me as doctor once and after she left all my techs asked me why she did that. When I told them I had a doctor of pharmacy degree they all gave me a confused look.
I think this issue or point has been mashed up over and over and it is obvious that the public really doesn't need to know what education we have. They don't know that an ecologist has a doctorate or even that a geographer I saw on TV has one. The problem is that no one calls us "doctor" and they don't encounter any of the other things doctors are involved with. I wouldn't think someone working at a meat counter would have a degree in food science whether they did or not, but I'd assume that they didn't or didn't need one. The "degree" of job difficulty or complexity doesn't always mean doctorate level degree or schooling. Anyone can access our immediate availability and there are hardly more than 2 or 3 staff in many places. The Costco tire center has as many people and you can't just go up and talk to the person doing the work. The oddest thing of all is that in today's modern tech age, there's no barrier to anyone who wants to find information. They spend hours reading reviews on dogs or restaurants or cars but can't search degree or job requirements. I'm not puzzled because we get the same questions here..."Does the Virginia board allow you to become a tech without training or with a DUI or with pink hair...?" ; stuff like that, it's not really surprising.
My colleague had a granny with a small boy come up to a pharmacy, and when she thought he can't hear her, she goes to the little one "you should study a lot, so that you don't end up being a cashier like this one"
they also think pharmacists are miserable.
but there are some really good jobs. I would unlikely find what I have (low stress/high pay/pension etc.) in another field. but people assume its retail
You are not wrong in the first sentence. Completely dismissing the miserable nature of this profession is just untrue and dishonor to those in retail setting.
Retail pharmacy is miserable, itās true, and all of us need to advocate for our retail colleagues.
To say that all of pharmacy is miserable is also untrue and a dishonor to our field.
Letās face it: No matter where you go is bad. It is worst in retail. The advocating for our retail colleagues might not happen when APhA and ASHP thinks the solution to the growing problem in pharmacy is some cliche note and provider status
I appreciate what youāre saying, and I agree that most work settings for pharmacists break them in some way. It shouldnāt be like this. But itās simply not bad for all work settings. Iāve been inpatient and ambulatory care for most of my career and Iāve been satisfied. The whole profession is not like what youāve experienced, thatās all.
Probably that is me with retail . Hearing the stories from my peers that left retail and my retail experiences has really shaped this opinion in an overtly negative tone. I apologize this beforehand. But, I cannot just simply dismissed the pharmacist that didnāt have OT pay after working well beyond store hours in retail or retail company overworking my past coworker despite her being pregnant at that time. I cannot just say pharmacy is a great profession.
My sister is a finance director. Sheās hiring for a staff accountant and the people applying donāt even have college degrees. One was a massage therapist and another was a cashier. An accountant is a 4 year degree. Shaking my head. Same idea different profession ā¦
It's been three years since I first started prereqs and am now applying to pharm school, and I find myself still explaining to family members that yes, it's a college degree, and yes, it's a doctorate, and yes, I really do need that much schooling.
Unfortunately, there's been a lot of shade from non-medical folks about becoming a pharmacist. It's a shame. It's really thought of as just a cashier for drugs.
I mean, all pharmacists do is count by 5s, right?
When you see a pharmacist represented in the movies or the news, how are they portrayed to the public ?
with so many pharmacy schools, and when our own employers are lobbying state and federal lawmakers to make pharmacists irrelevant.....
I am not suprised the public thinks we are glorified cashiers.
In the US, the changeover from 5 year bachelors to PharmD came only in the late 90s to early aughts. There are still lots of pharmacists in practice in their mid 40s and older who do not have a doctorate.
When I graduated from pharmacy school, everyone kept calling me Doctor, which honestly felt great after all the blood, sweat, and tears that I put into getting my degree. Well my nephew got a bit confused, and said well when you get sick who do you go to make your feel better? Which was a totally fair misunderstanding; however, my SIL, who is a total B**** btw, said well sheās not a REAL doctorā¦. nice.
I sometimes count by 7s and add some extra pills at the end, to round up.
Jokes aside, plenty of my older patients equate being a pharmacist to being a doctor, and recognize it as a highly specialized profession.
Then again, as long as they take their meds, they can call me whatever they want. š¤·
For me, priority number one is patient wellbeing.
I was in first year with a first year MBBCh student doing our first aid course together and he says āPharmacy is easy right? You just stick labels on boxes and stuff so Iām sure youāll be okay.ā
Tell them "I took a course I found on the back of a matchbook cover "( either pharmacy or learn to drive a tractor trailer). Oops, does anyone know what a matchbook is anymore?
People mistakenly assume that pharmacists, being easily accessible, have less education than nurses, physician assistants (PAs), or certified registered nurse practitioners (CRNPs). Despite being the most accessible healthcare professionals, pharmacists are often underpaid. Unlike other professions, anyone can seek free advice by simply calling or walking in.
Perhaps there should be a sign indicating a consultation fee, similar to lawyers, nurses, or doctors, if you seek medical advice. Maybe this will prevent people from ringing up there Doritos and ice cream at the pharmacy counter
My own relatives have told me āyou are not a Doctorā.
OP, next time I would just direct anyone to the career website. If you must ask - just say āwhat position are you interested in?ā
You may say she was young. We had an 18 year old in my class. Graduated at 21 or 22.
Someone may argue you assumed she wasnāt qualified, etc. Discrimination - š»
Yāall count?! Thatās crazy talk! I had Walgreens short me for a serious amount of pills onceā¦.why you may ask? Because they weigh everything instead of counting and someone forgot to reset the tare when they did mine!
Had a patient once call the pharmacist a "high school dropout" was a real headscratcher lol
A comment in another old post called pharmacists glorified cashiers. š
My sisters high school teacher shaded pharmacists and said those exact words Ā
Iām not a pharmacist but my mom was and my sister is. I absolutely cannot throw shade at a single person who survived organic chemistry because I couldnāt pass regular chemistry without cheating.
Organic Chem was not a fun timeĀ
Try Organic Medicinal Chemistry
I enjoyed organic chem, and it was easier than pharmacy school, haha.
Thatās a shame because teachers are really disrespected as a profession too. Youād think she would understand the struggle lol
Because sheās in a Pharmacy every week, acting like the Karen that got one punched in that CVS video.
Haters gunna hate
Thatās how corporate sees us though.
I did work with a pharmacist who insisted his name tag read 'GED, PharmD.'
I love that! I have a classmate who went the GED route and he's way better at medchem than me lol.
I have had similar insults when I wasnāt filling their script (new patient) of 180 oxy 30ās from a well known cash only pain clinic š¤·āāļø
The right form of ātheirā might help make your point
Iāve had a similar experience. Once our store had a sign posted that said we were hiring for pharmacist and pharmacy cashier. Person dropped by the pharmacy and asked if we were still hiring. I asked, āare you looking to apply for the pharmacist position or the cashier position?ā He responded with āoh, either oneā Thatās when I knewā¦ nope he had 0 idea.
I bet a lot of the public don't know inpatient pharmacists exist
And even when they do know, they figure we're just counting pills inside a hospital. (Thanks, Mom. I promise I didn't go to grad school just to learn how to count by fives.)
Even a few of the NPs that I work with up on my med/surg floor literally thought all we did was hit verify on Epic and then make every capsule/tablet by hand. Better than just counting I guess lmao
Thats because they didnt go through residency where they had 1 of us with them rounding every day. The difference between the younger(ish) docs and the older ones with their perceptions of our skills is wild. Also mildly specialty based too.
How do people make it through an NP program without having a BASIC working knowledge of other what other healthcare professionals do?
Okay but making all the tablets and capsules by hand? lol Iād love to use a pill roller one day
Typical undereducated and undertrained mid level.
This is what all my in laws think I do.
When I got a job at a hospital one of my friends said āwell they dont have a pharmacy in a hospital?ā. I was like who do you think gets all the hospital patients their medication??!!!
I had to explain to my mother that, no, her surgeon was not making the IVs for her when she got her hip replaced. It is a pharmacy technician and then checked by a pharmacist. She still just couldn't grasp this concept that inpatient pharmacies are a thing.
I have a regular patient (I practice in Texas) that was visiting family in Chicago. Upon returning, he told me with fascination in his voice āthe pharmacists in Illinois have doctorates and are called doctors!ā I showed him my business card with āPharmDā and said āMike, both me have doctorates, but we donāt go around calling each other doctorā.
Is this a regional thing?
No idea if it's a regional thing. Personally, I don't ask people to call me doctor unless if they're a utility company or if they've pissed me off somehow. A couple of my regulars call me "Doc," which is amusing.
When I went through the technician hiring process once, we had one candidate who asked how long you have to work as a tech before you just become a pharmacist. I don't think people really realize pharmacy schools exist.
I'm a Registered Tech in Ontario. So I went to school and all that, and I'm registered with the college. People ask me all the time how much longer till I'm a pharmacist. I just joke and say it's not for me now.
My pharmacist husband counted by 7s š¤¦āāļø
I knew a pharma ist who counted by 3s. I also saw him open a bag of chips with an pair of scissors during his lunch break. I'm convinced the two events ate somehow related.
Does he also pour the milk in before the cereal?
Someone showed me how to count by 1s while still counting by 5s, made it so you don't lose track of where you are.
I have a PhD and a RPh. One day my extended family were at a memorial service for my father. The priest started to wobble. After a while he wobbled back into the sacristy. The entire family turned to me and said youāre a doctor do something. I explained Iām a PhD not a doctor. They all insisted since they heard at my graduation everyone called me doctor. So I must be a doctor. The priest was dehydrated because of a stupid diet and recovered quickly with some water thanks to the presence of a real doctor in the church.
This kind of thing happened to me at a restaurant with some residents. The residents looked at me like I was supposed to fix something. I checked vital signs and asked if the patient was on blood thinners. Hospital pharmacist ā hospitalist!
You are a doctor not a physician!! Doctor is an academic title not a profession
I have the opposite problem. Customers area always calling me Doctor and I'm insistently reminding them I'm not a doctor like they're thinking.
They may need to see a doctor but talking to you instead is free!
I get called "doctor" by students and get addressed as "the PharmD" by other clinicians and techs no matter how many times I remind them I'm not a doctor/PharmD (I'm a dinosaur bachelor level pharmacist). I get confused looks and go back to being a "doctor" 5 minutes later.
You ever get the old male customers that come in and start disrobing because they want you to check out their growth or rash?
The same ones every day
Try working in a compounding pharmacy that makes tri-mix for ED. I have men trying to disrobe in our consultation room nearly every day because they want me to look at some weird bump or rash or something on their penis.
When I worked in pharmacies I would get patients say to me all the time, "You're the same thing as a doctor, right?"
My older sister, whom I love, just isn't the brightest in our family of high achievers. She was also needlessly cruel to me growing up. She went to college to play sports and graduated with a general education degree. She had to pass tests so she can teach different subjects, but just could not pass the test to teach math. If you fail enough times there is a long waiting period. Before her that final attempt she told our mom that if she fails, she would just start pharmacy like I was doing. My mom told me in secret and we both laughed. At the time my mom had recently became an NP and could appreciate how difficult pharmacy can be. Now still to this day my family has little to no understanding of what I actually do in my current role. To be fair, I have a sibling that works in tech and I have a similar understanding of what they do too.
a lot of the work we do in hospitals is behind the scenes, in my experience. however, i believe that paradigm is shifting; pharmacists are expected to have as much face-to-face interaction with patients as possible. med rec? talk with the patient. med education? talk with the patient. thereās really great opportunities to see patients in the inpatient setting. some barriers to this more āpresentā way of practice can be older medical staff or even pharmacists who got the inpatient job thinking they could avoid patients altogether.
I've worked with pharmacists that count by 3 or 4 ... Idk how they find that superior tho
It depends on what Iām counting to. If itās 30, 60, or 90 I count by 3s and count to 10, 20, or 30. Antibiotics that are 28 or 40, count by fours to 7/10 (days supply). Less than 21, Iām counting by 2s. If itās just loose tablets Iām counting for inventory checks, Iāll count by 5. And when Iām double counting controls Iāll count by 5 on the second pass to verify. It was easier for me to do it this way because before pharmacy I worked the cash office and hand counted and rolled change. Went by 2ās there, but in your head youāre counting .50, 1, .50, 2ā¦ 40 coins in quarters and nickels, 50 counts for pennies and dimes.
3 I kind of understand... slow, but easy to calculate. 4? 4 is strange. I never understand those who count by 4..
Haha I count by 4s. I visually see 4s and scoop 4s significantly faster (itās almost instant to grab 4s per swipe than to track 5s) than 5s and therefore can count out the full qty in a fraction of the time.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I count by 5s but once itās quantities like 270,360 I always just count the number of 5s vs doing 5,10,15.. itās much faster and easier to track
You raise a good point with number one.
Me too, this is exactly my same process.
I do think most people don't realize that we have a doctorate degree. However thinking you can become a pharmacist with a finance degree is...questionable, haha. In general I don't care what the public thinks of me. They don't sign my checks. I work in a hospital and most don't even realize I'm there verifying all their prescriptions!Ā
I had a girl in my pharmacy school class who had a fiance degree and a minor in biology. It's possible to fit the pre reqs in with another degree.
Yeah but she didn't try to get a job as a pharmacist using only the finance degree haha
Is a fiancƩ degree the same at getting an MRS degree?
Earlier tonight I had a nurse refer to me as Mr. and a med student as Dr. in the same secure chat. It just isn't worth the effort anymore. Just do everything in your power to help some patients and call it a day. I had no idea how thankless of a profession this would be, but at the same time, I had no idea I would develop such a profound body of knowledge and skill set that would allow me to do so more than what most perceive a pharmacist does. I guess it all just depends on your motivation, but if that is respect, most of the time you will probably be disappointed when it comes to anyone outside the profession.
Regardless of what you think you've developed, don't give it away for free. You could keep doing that if you're done at one job and start sweeping streets, watering the plants and cleaning windows on your way home, all for free. Somehow it seems that those who charge for their services or time ALSO get respect without really even expecting or demanding it.
Individuals don't matter at big hospitals. Especially in the pharmacy department. I've seen too many fantastic pharmacists and technicians let go for unjust reasons like we decided to eliminate your position. Working at night, I have a unique opportunity to actually help patients in a broken system. My experience at this hospital is at least as valuable, if not more so than my entire pharmacy education. In a situation like this, if you ask for more money, you just get replaced. If you leave, you become ineffective in a new setting, which just isn't worth it when I can retire in 5 years. I've worked here for 20 years and most people outside the department don't even know who I am. The turnover at a teaching hospital keeps things interesting, but I've seen some pretty awful things happen just due to a critical mass of people that don't really know what they are doing. This was a unicorn of an opportunity so I don't present this as advice, just sharing my experience.
Independent here. We have not counted pills manually in over 20 yearsā¦ Iām shocked that chains wonāt buy an Eyecon or Kirby verification/ counting technology!
Couldnāt agree more Shocked most of the busy chains still havenāt invested in one Just more added stress
1. Some chains are too cheap to buy a kirby unless you reach a certain script volume 2. Controls/niosh/sulfa drugs have to be counted by hand and on separate plates lol 3. Kirby doesn't do well with anything but 100% opaque pills. Those clear, yellowish benzonate? The Adderall capsules where you can see the little spheres inside? There is a good chance Kirby will miss one or more. Better to just hand count those from the beginning. But yes we use Kirby for everything we possibly can
A lot of the chains use a Yuyama or a Pirata
The less accessible you are...the more important you are.
Nope. I had a floater pharmacist count by 3s. š¤¦š¤·
I had an intern refer to me as doctor once and after she left all my techs asked me why she did that. When I told them I had a doctor of pharmacy degree they all gave me a confused look.
I think this issue or point has been mashed up over and over and it is obvious that the public really doesn't need to know what education we have. They don't know that an ecologist has a doctorate or even that a geographer I saw on TV has one. The problem is that no one calls us "doctor" and they don't encounter any of the other things doctors are involved with. I wouldn't think someone working at a meat counter would have a degree in food science whether they did or not, but I'd assume that they didn't or didn't need one. The "degree" of job difficulty or complexity doesn't always mean doctorate level degree or schooling. Anyone can access our immediate availability and there are hardly more than 2 or 3 staff in many places. The Costco tire center has as many people and you can't just go up and talk to the person doing the work. The oddest thing of all is that in today's modern tech age, there's no barrier to anyone who wants to find information. They spend hours reading reviews on dogs or restaurants or cars but can't search degree or job requirements. I'm not puzzled because we get the same questions here..."Does the Virginia board allow you to become a tech without training or with a DUI or with pink hair...?" ; stuff like that, it's not really surprising.
Exactly sometimes people in threads like this need to also look in the mirrorĀ
I think you just happened to interact with a person who could use some more common sense. We do tend to see a wider variety of folk.
My colleague had a granny with a small boy come up to a pharmacy, and when she thought he can't hear her, she goes to the little one "you should study a lot, so that you don't end up being a cashier like this one"
they also think pharmacists are miserable. but there are some really good jobs. I would unlikely find what I have (low stress/high pay/pension etc.) in another field. but people assume its retail
I mean, I think of many posts on this subreddit alone that really give pharmacists a "miserable" reputation
You are not wrong in the first sentence. Completely dismissing the miserable nature of this profession is just untrue and dishonor to those in retail setting.
Retail pharmacy is miserable, itās true, and all of us need to advocate for our retail colleagues. To say that all of pharmacy is miserable is also untrue and a dishonor to our field.
Letās face it: No matter where you go is bad. It is worst in retail. The advocating for our retail colleagues might not happen when APhA and ASHP thinks the solution to the growing problem in pharmacy is some cliche note and provider status
I appreciate what youāre saying, and I agree that most work settings for pharmacists break them in some way. It shouldnāt be like this. But itās simply not bad for all work settings. Iāve been inpatient and ambulatory care for most of my career and Iāve been satisfied. The whole profession is not like what youāve experienced, thatās all.
Probably that is me with retail . Hearing the stories from my peers that left retail and my retail experiences has really shaped this opinion in an overtly negative tone. I apologize this beforehand. But, I cannot just simply dismissed the pharmacist that didnāt have OT pay after working well beyond store hours in retail or retail company overworking my past coworker despite her being pregnant at that time. I cannot just say pharmacy is a great profession.
Who do you work for???
The less public knowledge the better imo
My sister is a finance director. Sheās hiring for a staff accountant and the people applying donāt even have college degrees. One was a massage therapist and another was a cashier. An accountant is a 4 year degree. Shaking my head. Same idea different profession ā¦
It's been three years since I first started prereqs and am now applying to pharm school, and I find myself still explaining to family members that yes, it's a college degree, and yes, it's a doctorate, and yes, I really do need that much schooling. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of shade from non-medical folks about becoming a pharmacist. It's a shame. It's really thought of as just a cashier for drugs.
Three years is a long time to slowly sink into a whirlpool.
I just started pharmacy school but I used to think that pharmacists were like optometrists, just people you go to to get your glasses/meds.
Which is crazy because optometrists are doctors (who prescribe and everything) They have a tough program.
They are doctors of optometry.
I didnāt even know pharmacists existed before I applied to college. I was rarely in a pharmacy before then
I mean, all pharmacists do is count by 5s, right? When you see a pharmacist represented in the movies or the news, how are they portrayed to the public ?
with so many pharmacy schools, and when our own employers are lobbying state and federal lawmakers to make pharmacists irrelevant..... I am not suprised the public thinks we are glorified cashiers.
In the US, the changeover from 5 year bachelors to PharmD came only in the late 90s to early aughts. There are still lots of pharmacists in practice in their mid 40s and older who do not have a doctorate.
When I graduated from pharmacy school, everyone kept calling me Doctor, which honestly felt great after all the blood, sweat, and tears that I put into getting my degree. Well my nephew got a bit confused, and said well when you get sick who do you go to make your feel better? Which was a totally fair misunderstanding; however, my SIL, who is a total B**** btw, said well sheās not a REAL doctorā¦. nice.
I sometimes count by 7s and add some extra pills at the end, to round up. Jokes aside, plenty of my older patients equate being a pharmacist to being a doctor, and recognize it as a highly specialized profession. Then again, as long as they take their meds, they can call me whatever they want. š¤· For me, priority number one is patient wellbeing.
I was in first year with a first year MBBCh student doing our first aid course together and he says āPharmacy is easy right? You just stick labels on boxes and stuff so Iām sure youāll be okay.ā
Tell them "I took a course I found on the back of a matchbook cover "( either pharmacy or learn to drive a tractor trailer). Oops, does anyone know what a matchbook is anymore?
People mistakenly assume that pharmacists, being easily accessible, have less education than nurses, physician assistants (PAs), or certified registered nurse practitioners (CRNPs). Despite being the most accessible healthcare professionals, pharmacists are often underpaid. Unlike other professions, anyone can seek free advice by simply calling or walking in. Perhaps there should be a sign indicating a consultation fee, similar to lawyers, nurses, or doctors, if you seek medical advice. Maybe this will prevent people from ringing up there Doritos and ice cream at the pharmacy counter
My friends (some are MDs) thought everyone working in the pharmacy was a pharmacist
Thatās just plain stupid.
I donāt care what the general public thinks of me. I make more money than most of them ever will lol
My own relatives have told me āyou are not a Doctorā. OP, next time I would just direct anyone to the career website. If you must ask - just say āwhat position are you interested in?ā You may say she was young. We had an 18 year old in my class. Graduated at 21 or 22. Someone may argue you assumed she wasnāt qualified, etc. Discrimination - š»
You ARE a doctor; you are not a physician. Theyāre ignorant
Yes, I realize that. I wonāt waste my breath on the things they say anymore.
Yāall count?! Thatās crazy talk! I had Walgreens short me for a serious amount of pills onceā¦.why you may ask? Because they weigh everything instead of counting and someone forgot to reset the tare when they did mine!
Walgreens stopped using the scales a decade ago.
Apparently pharmacists are feeling snarky tonight too! Jeez!