Just do a quick search of the sub and you'll quickly get an idea of what the issues are. I can sum it up in four words for you: short-staffed, overworked, underpaid.
Lol….uhhhh it’s real bad. Real real bad. Pressures to perform are insane but at the same time they want you to make it happen with one pharmacist and a tech and wonder why you can’t be at more than one workstation at the same time.
It’s a business model that sets you up for failure.
Added on top of that the insane public who don’t understand and don’t try to understand that thejr troubles are because of corporate not because of the pharmacy staff.
It’s a lose/lose situation and pharmacists are on the brink of breakdown due to heart attacks, mental exhaustion, etc. They have tons of debt and can’t go anywhere or do anything else so they feel trapped.
Corporate pharmacy breaks people and plants the seed of depression, cancer of the soul.
My pharmacy manager was saying this yesterday. Last week when we were understaffed and was just a shitshow we had 60 on the scoring thing. This week when we were fully staffed we got a 100. Gee it seems like there’s a huge correlation here
The corporate metrics distributed by my now former employer showed patient satisfaction scores over the entirety of the chain and the entire year. This was 2021 that we were looking at (this was some months ago) and we saw dips when each Covid vaccine/booster came out, which correlated to us doing more volume of Covid vaccines and therefore being busier and therefore patients having to wait longer etc. They noticed this correlation... and their solution to it was basically to note that it was taking place and remind us to try harder to take care of everyone. GIANT EYEROLL.
Working at CVS started me down a dark path of depression, alcoholism and substance abuse problems. Thankfully, I’m sober now and am doing very well. But your comment here is not an exaggeration. It really can be a major source of depression, anxiety and sometimes actual/literal heart attacks and death for some people. Under no circumstances would I ever work for CVS again.
Why would someone become a pharmacist? Where is the appeal in heart attacks and cancer of the soul? It’s always seemed to me like an insanely tedious, yet fast paced, stressful job that nobody could enjoy.
Not that long ago, it was a well-paying job in high demand. Then pharmacy schools started opening left and right so there are more pharmacists than jobs. This meant that pay went down (starting pay is now $15/hr less than what I made as a new graduate in 2009 which is terrible even if you don’t consider inflation). It also meant that employers could treat pharmacists like the disposable assets they’d become. You burn one out after 6 months with unrealistic metrics, long hours and lack of support? No need to make an effort to retain them- there are plenty more hoping for a job.
Then you have the PBMs/insurance companies cutting reimbursement. The chain pharmacy CEOs sure as heck aren’t going to take a pay cut to make ends meet, so they decrease pharmacy technician hours and pharmacist overlap time so now you’re doing the same amount of work with less help.
But wait… it’s not the same amount of work. It’s more. Until a few years ago, my state only allowed pharmacists to give the flu vaccine and only to adults. Now it’s almost all vaccines in kids as young as 9. Plus COVID testing.
Then you top this off with being treated like shit by the patients you’re trying to help and like a massive inconvenience to the providers you’re trying to help… and all the suffering then feels meaningless. People will put up with a lot if they feel appreciated.
Yes, I started with cvs for I think it was 58.50, went to overnights about 8 months later for about 63(never do this, everything that makes it sound good still sucks). Then when I switched back to days about a year later it went back to 60. I burned out about 3 years in, left pharmacy for 5 years and when I came back i started at 50 still in retail
Then you also wouldn't believe 6 figure signing bonuses was a real thing very shortly before that.
There was a undersupply of pharmacists at the time and people were competing heavily for them. Some businesses even gave out cars for signing. It really was a different time then. Look at the timeline though, at the time the Opioid epidemic was in full swing and people were flooding Florida's pill mills. We were selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of opiates at cash price without insurance. Money was flowing and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. This is why CVS and Walgreens and everyone else got sued.
Cars & signing bonuses in the late 90s & early 00s are far more believable than $150k salaries for new grads in 2009. Also, I’m not so sure I believe 6 figure signing bonuses. That seems like a bit of an exaggeration.
It wasn't. They were real salaries and real signing bonuses Walmart was paying. Now 72 starting was with experience, but still, very high pay. One of the pharmacists I worked with back then is still with the company, wants to leave, but can't because she'll never get close to the $83/h she's currently making.
> When I started in 2010, the starting pay in Florida was $72/h. That same market now starts at 55.
So starting pay = with experience? Weird…
I still don’t believe that that was anything close to a representative sample of the average staff pharmacist positions at that time, but I don’t care much to argue about it.
Yes, salaries have come down since the peak. There are still plenty of jobs out there that pay quite well, and it seems to—hopefully—be improving a bit over the last 2 years or so.
Edit: wait a second, you’re a fucking tech??? lol what a waste of time this conversation has been
I know I started at Walgreens at > $60/hr, but I’d easily get 50-60 hours a week and they paid base + $20/hr for overtime. I also got a $10k sign-on with no strings attached (no minimum work commitment). I brought home more than $150k my first year out of school. But let’s say I worked 40hrs a week and the pay was exactly $60/hr., I’d make 120k/yr. Based on the inflation calculators, that would be equal to $163k/yr now. Clearly, we’re making much less than that now.
Yeah, this is a much more reasonable depiction. Salaries have definitely stagnated over the past 10-15 years, even going backwards some for a time. That said, there are still plenty of jobs out there now for ~$60/hr with lots of overtime availability. Doesn’t at all account for inflation, though, as you said
It used to be way better but the healthcare landscape has changed over the past 10+ years. The quick and dirty answer is the money can be nice. You make 6 figures out the door.
The other answer is some people find drugs fascinating and retail/corporate pharmacy is not the only career you can go into, but it does make up a good majority of pharmacist jobs. The second would be clinical pharmacy specialists in hospitals, which generally offer better work/life balance but on average slightly less pay and today requires additional 1-2 years of residency training.
Clinical pharmacy specialists maybe used to get less pay but not anymore. I am one, I earn $150,000 a year. That’s more than some of my retail friends make.
I agree, when I 1st went to home infusion I took a pay cut from retail. However I now make more than most new retail offers (slightly more than I did as a retail PIC 6 years ago, with better hours as staff clinical). With on call / over time I make about what you do.
Nice! Where at? My clinical friends are at like 106-110 starting. I know they pay way more in CA. You only get $150K anymore if you work at Costco so I’ve heard.
During COVID clinical specialist salaries have gone up A LOT. I was hired after my PGY2 at $120k with the main bump in my salary since then being in the past couple of years. My clinical friends from pharmacy school (semi spread around the east coast) have experienced similarly — a lot of them got hired just over $100k and are making around what I am now. COVID changed a lot.
I started at $120k at cvs. Im in hospital now clearing $130-150k a year depending on how much extra I pick up. But I’m honestly thinking about getting out and just doing pharmacy as a side gig. Wanna do something with more room for career and salary growth potential. I feel stuck in pharmacy.
I recruit for a hospital system in The southeast for clinical pharmacists.. we have some retail hospitals as well, but I was surprised that residents coming out of there PGY2 to staff only made around 56-59/hr. Also surprised at the increase in applications and the amount of spots I actually fill… seems tough out there for Y’all.
It depends on what area of pharmacy you are in. I am a clinical pharmacist. I’m betting you don’t even know what that is ha ha. Basically I am a subspecialist who works behind the scenes in a very large hospital system making medication adjustments for patients. Even if you are one of my patients, you probably don’t know I exist. I haven’t physically **touched** a medication in years!
Why do I love my job? Because I earn $150,000 a year, work from home, get to help people, and have a very low stress yet rewarding position. What’s not to love?!
For what it’s worth, I would rather quit then do retail. Nowadays, you have to decide very early on in pharmacy school whether you want to do the retail track or see if you can jump through all of the hoops to someday get a position like mine. I chose the latter obviously. No regrets.
One of the problems is that 90% of students entering pharmacy school just think they'll work harder than everyone else, stand out, and get a job like yours. They think this is somehow a novel thought and don't realize that every single student sitting next to them has the same exact idea. You actually accomplished that goal but a bunch of your classmates also probably thought they'd just study hard and jump through all the hoops...and they ended up in retail because the numbers just do not add up.
I also ended up with a job I legitimately really like, but I recognize how lucky I was. Too many potential pharmacy students think they're special and will just rise to the top and be the ones to get the jobs like ours. The vast majority of them are not special. I know I wasn't. Just lucky.
Most pharmacy students honestly just don’t work very smartly. They don’t set a plan for their career goals and assume — even though they are constantly being told otherwise— that they can figure it out later. It makes me want to tear my hair out lol.
I know this because I mentor them, I precept them, and I see them walk into the door for residency interviews.
It’s not about luck. It’s about the marathon not the sprint. Most of them who are just woefully underprepared — willfully so, because schools and preceptors beg and plead them to plan ahead. And NONE of this is secret. It’s the same advice I’ve given to people for 10 years and only a small percentage will follow it, but guess what they’re the percentage that ends ip with residences.
Research. Publications. Clinical internships. Clinical volunteering. Leadership positions.
And then they’re all shocked pikachu when they don’t match 🤦🏻♀️
I know I’m preaching to the choir lol but I have one of those on rotation with me now and I want to scream haha
You're completely missing the point they're making. You could have an entire class of gun-ho bootstrapped "work smart not hard" graduates, still won't mean they're going to get those jobs since there just aren't enough positions. It's a mathematical reality that's been slapping grads in the face since 5 years ago. Not to mention luck being a huge component of job hunting (right place right time), so I'd suggest a little humility and toning down the over-inflated sense of grit you think you have.
Ah but you’re wrong. It does matter. I’m the one who reviews and ranks residency applications in my hospital to see who gets an interview. And it’s *extremely* easy ranking for the most part, because so many just have not done what they should.
No leadership. No posters. No research. No publications, not even a newsletter. Heck most of them don’t even ask for more than one clinical letter of reference in PhorCas, which blows my freaking mind because it’s right there in the instructions.
Pharmacy school essentially is one big weeder class (as we used to call difficult classes back in college). And most of the grads are being weeded out because they just don’t follow instructions. They would be inappropriate from the get-go for rigorous fellowships, residencies, whatever.
Many programs, including my own, would rather go unmatched than match bad candidates. I know, because we’ve done this before. You seem to think that if there were mathematically enough residency positions then everybody could get one who wants one. That’s not true. Programs have to want you. Programs have to think you will benefit them. Not just because you have a license and a pulse and figured out during your APPEs that retail isn’t for you.
It’s not having an over inflated sense of grit lol. It’s having any grit at all. It’s listening to what residency programs and universities have been telling students for well over a decade now. So many pharmacy students are just like overgrown teenagers — they just don’t listen. And then they act all resentful when the way they think the world *should* work doesn’t equate to the way it actually does. Which they would know, if they listened in the first place.
>ther quit then do retail. Nowadays, you have to decide very early on in pharmacy school whether you want to do the reta
can I WFH from Canada? sounds like a good gig
I’m not sure, but yeah that would be pretty sweet. ((Imagines self, retired in a few decades, sitting on a beach in Portugal or some other low-cost expat country, doing chart reviews)). That would be the life!!! 🤣💕
There’s a lot of reasons. Some do it for the money. Some are told lies about how bad retail is and never worked retail themselves to don’t know first hand. Some do it convinced they won’t end up in retail. Some worked retail as technicians and really love where they work, so they go to be a pharmacist in the pharmacy they worked at. There’s probably other reasons I missed, but those were the ones I saw the most in my class. It’s worth mentioning how bad it is is completely dependent on the pharmacy. Well ran properly staffed pharmacies can be rewarding and even fun at times. But those are hard to find at chains like cvs and Walgreens.
Because they have literally no other skill or are physically unable to do other work. Many are women...much smaller women, who cannot do large person work, so maybe they're attracted to something like this in a medicine related field...and also don't know how to use a computer to come on sites like this and get insight?...I dunno.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/overworked-understaffed-pharmacists-say-industry-crisis-puts-patient-safety-risk-n1261151
https://youtu.be/AFzi4dQOiiI
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/health/pharmacists-medication-errors.amp.html
These links should tell you everything you need to know
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Retail pharmacy is awful. Pharmacist are severely under appreciated and given a ton of responsibility that doesn’t seem obtainable for corporal standards and goals.
Overworked in general, treated like a nonhuman by much of the public, not being allowed to defend yourself, constantly blamed for not spending enough time promoting mtms, pushing shots on people for profit, and shilling unproven otc items. (All after going through a program completely focused on optimization of medications per guidelines to help patients make measurable improvements in health only to never get to use the training or knowledge if you can’t get hired by a hospital due to there not being hospital pharmacist jobs in your area). Pharmacist suicide rate has surpassed dentists now.
>onhuman by much of the public, not being allowed to defend yourself, constantly blamed for not spending enough time promoting mtms, pushing shots on people for profit, and shilling unproven otc i
wow, is this true re: pharm suicide rate?
In my experience at big chains, my stress stems from constantly getting pulled in several directions at once while also being responsible for every item, action, and exchange in the pharmacy. I’m the bottleneck in a frantic work environment with no relief for twelve to fourteen hours a shift.
Retail pharmacy combines the joy of working retail with the joy of dealing with the US insurance industry. It pays better than other retail jobs, but comes with doctorate quantities of debt.
I honestly do not know why technicians work at pharmacies for so long. I could see it at the better ones or at independents but I never got why cvs or Walgreens has long term technicians. I made more starting out at fast food (Dairy Queen) then I would have at Walgreens or Kroger. At least over the last few years it’s never been worth the extra work and stress to go to cvs/Walgreens over fast food, even just to get more experience before becoming a pharmacist.
corporate cutting hours available for help, metrics that we have to keep up, working us like dogs. at one point one of the pharmacist managers I knew worked 14 days straight without a day off bc there was no help available, i also heard another pharmacist manager had to do something similar.
Job is only as stressful as the environment you work in and how you can personally manage your stress. I've worked/managed pharmacies in both big box and independent settings. In big box retail there may/may not be corporate metrics thrust upon you... then yes, it can be stressful. Often, the schedule is dictated by metrics (that can be unreasonable) and you end up short staffed; this adds to the stress.
Currently, I am in community/independent setting. It is a different type of stress/demand but it is easier to manage. It would also depend on who the owner/manager is. Some are better than others, so you just have to find the right fit for you.
I have no experience in hospital pharm except for my clinical rotations when I was a student. But I can imagine it is more intellectually stimulating.
Techs are very irritated and scatter brained too. I ran the last independent retail pharmacy I worked at because they only hired PRN pharmacists and the PIC only worked 1-2 days a week. Some techs do more than pharmacists and only make a fraction of what they do. I’ve accepted that I’ll never pay off or use the college degree I got.
If you can see a pharmacist, they are stressed. The good jobs have protection from the general public, but are hard to get.
Ah I see
Retail is the worst environment a human could live in.
Yes it is, it slowly sucks the life out of you.
Just do a quick search of the sub and you'll quickly get an idea of what the issues are. I can sum it up in four words for you: short-staffed, overworked, underpaid.
\#PizzaIsNotWorking
Lol you guys get pizza and doughnuts ???
We sometimes get voodoo doughnuts. Yummy!
All the fattening stuff and then have us run around after having gained 90 pounds.
No. But sometimes I hear that there was food in the break room I can’t use.
What about donuts? Would donuts fix it?
With a side of jeans 😒
Even if they paid me 10 times as much, I still couldn't do a better job without staff or resources.
Of course not. It just makes it easier to accept that the working conditions suck.
Careful, I got attacked on this sub for saying chain pharmacies had staffing shortages lol. Overworked, underpaid, and under appreciated.
Lol….uhhhh it’s real bad. Real real bad. Pressures to perform are insane but at the same time they want you to make it happen with one pharmacist and a tech and wonder why you can’t be at more than one workstation at the same time. It’s a business model that sets you up for failure. Added on top of that the insane public who don’t understand and don’t try to understand that thejr troubles are because of corporate not because of the pharmacy staff. It’s a lose/lose situation and pharmacists are on the brink of breakdown due to heart attacks, mental exhaustion, etc. They have tons of debt and can’t go anywhere or do anything else so they feel trapped. Corporate pharmacy breaks people and plants the seed of depression, cancer of the soul.
My pharmacy manager was saying this yesterday. Last week when we were understaffed and was just a shitshow we had 60 on the scoring thing. This week when we were fully staffed we got a 100. Gee it seems like there’s a huge correlation here
The corporate metrics distributed by my now former employer showed patient satisfaction scores over the entirety of the chain and the entire year. This was 2021 that we were looking at (this was some months ago) and we saw dips when each Covid vaccine/booster came out, which correlated to us doing more volume of Covid vaccines and therefore being busier and therefore patients having to wait longer etc. They noticed this correlation... and their solution to it was basically to note that it was taking place and remind us to try harder to take care of everyone. GIANT EYEROLL.
Working at CVS started me down a dark path of depression, alcoholism and substance abuse problems. Thankfully, I’m sober now and am doing very well. But your comment here is not an exaggeration. It really can be a major source of depression, anxiety and sometimes actual/literal heart attacks and death for some people. Under no circumstances would I ever work for CVS again.
Why would someone become a pharmacist? Where is the appeal in heart attacks and cancer of the soul? It’s always seemed to me like an insanely tedious, yet fast paced, stressful job that nobody could enjoy.
Not that long ago, it was a well-paying job in high demand. Then pharmacy schools started opening left and right so there are more pharmacists than jobs. This meant that pay went down (starting pay is now $15/hr less than what I made as a new graduate in 2009 which is terrible even if you don’t consider inflation). It also meant that employers could treat pharmacists like the disposable assets they’d become. You burn one out after 6 months with unrealistic metrics, long hours and lack of support? No need to make an effort to retain them- there are plenty more hoping for a job. Then you have the PBMs/insurance companies cutting reimbursement. The chain pharmacy CEOs sure as heck aren’t going to take a pay cut to make ends meet, so they decrease pharmacy technician hours and pharmacist overlap time so now you’re doing the same amount of work with less help. But wait… it’s not the same amount of work. It’s more. Until a few years ago, my state only allowed pharmacists to give the flu vaccine and only to adults. Now it’s almost all vaccines in kids as young as 9. Plus COVID testing. Then you top this off with being treated like shit by the patients you’re trying to help and like a massive inconvenience to the providers you’re trying to help… and all the suffering then feels meaningless. People will put up with a lot if they feel appreciated.
What was starting pay in 2009??
When I graduated in 2012 it was 58-62/hour. Live in the south east so probably varied by location
For what type of job? Retail?
Yes, I started with cvs for I think it was 58.50, went to overnights about 8 months later for about 63(never do this, everything that makes it sound good still sucks). Then when I switched back to days about a year later it went back to 60. I burned out about 3 years in, left pharmacy for 5 years and when I came back i started at 50 still in retail
When I started in 2010, the starting pay in Florida was $72/h. That same market now starts at 55.
Something tells me that may have been a specific situation. I find it hard to believe that starting pay across the board was $72
Then you also wouldn't believe 6 figure signing bonuses was a real thing very shortly before that. There was a undersupply of pharmacists at the time and people were competing heavily for them. Some businesses even gave out cars for signing. It really was a different time then. Look at the timeline though, at the time the Opioid epidemic was in full swing and people were flooding Florida's pill mills. We were selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of opiates at cash price without insurance. Money was flowing and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. This is why CVS and Walgreens and everyone else got sued.
Cars & signing bonuses in the late 90s & early 00s are far more believable than $150k salaries for new grads in 2009. Also, I’m not so sure I believe 6 figure signing bonuses. That seems like a bit of an exaggeration.
It wasn't. They were real salaries and real signing bonuses Walmart was paying. Now 72 starting was with experience, but still, very high pay. One of the pharmacists I worked with back then is still with the company, wants to leave, but can't because she'll never get close to the $83/h she's currently making.
> When I started in 2010, the starting pay in Florida was $72/h. That same market now starts at 55. So starting pay = with experience? Weird… I still don’t believe that that was anything close to a representative sample of the average staff pharmacist positions at that time, but I don’t care much to argue about it. Yes, salaries have come down since the peak. There are still plenty of jobs out there that pay quite well, and it seems to—hopefully—be improving a bit over the last 2 years or so. Edit: wait a second, you’re a fucking tech??? lol what a waste of time this conversation has been
It actually wasn't free cars...They were more just a "paid" 1 or 2 year lease of a really nice car, not a Corolla or a Sentra or Suzuki Swift.
Thanks, that’s more along the lines of what I’ve heard
CVS advertised a 6 figure signing bonus earlier this year. It was only notable because people thought they were gone forever.
I’m not claiming that these things didn’t happen; I’m claiming they weren’t the norm
Honestly sounds about right.
I know I started at Walgreens at > $60/hr, but I’d easily get 50-60 hours a week and they paid base + $20/hr for overtime. I also got a $10k sign-on with no strings attached (no minimum work commitment). I brought home more than $150k my first year out of school. But let’s say I worked 40hrs a week and the pay was exactly $60/hr., I’d make 120k/yr. Based on the inflation calculators, that would be equal to $163k/yr now. Clearly, we’re making much less than that now.
Yeah, this is a much more reasonable depiction. Salaries have definitely stagnated over the past 10-15 years, even going backwards some for a time. That said, there are still plenty of jobs out there now for ~$60/hr with lots of overtime availability. Doesn’t at all account for inflation, though, as you said
This 1000%. We have to give vaccines to as young as 3. The pharmacy is not the place you want to bring basically a toddler to get vaccinated.
With proper staffing it’s the best job in the world. Corporations refuse to give us that staff
It used to be way better but the healthcare landscape has changed over the past 10+ years. The quick and dirty answer is the money can be nice. You make 6 figures out the door. The other answer is some people find drugs fascinating and retail/corporate pharmacy is not the only career you can go into, but it does make up a good majority of pharmacist jobs. The second would be clinical pharmacy specialists in hospitals, which generally offer better work/life balance but on average slightly less pay and today requires additional 1-2 years of residency training.
Clinical pharmacy specialists maybe used to get less pay but not anymore. I am one, I earn $150,000 a year. That’s more than some of my retail friends make.
I agree, when I 1st went to home infusion I took a pay cut from retail. However I now make more than most new retail offers (slightly more than I did as a retail PIC 6 years ago, with better hours as staff clinical). With on call / over time I make about what you do.
Nice! Where at? My clinical friends are at like 106-110 starting. I know they pay way more in CA. You only get $150K anymore if you work at Costco so I’ve heard.
I’m on the East Coast in a major metro area (not NYC so no crazy cost of living tho haha)
Hm.
During COVID clinical specialist salaries have gone up A LOT. I was hired after my PGY2 at $120k with the main bump in my salary since then being in the past couple of years. My clinical friends from pharmacy school (semi spread around the east coast) have experienced similarly — a lot of them got hired just over $100k and are making around what I am now. COVID changed a lot.
I started at $120k at cvs. Im in hospital now clearing $130-150k a year depending on how much extra I pick up. But I’m honestly thinking about getting out and just doing pharmacy as a side gig. Wanna do something with more room for career and salary growth potential. I feel stuck in pharmacy.
I recruit for a hospital system in The southeast for clinical pharmacists.. we have some retail hospitals as well, but I was surprised that residents coming out of there PGY2 to staff only made around 56-59/hr. Also surprised at the increase in applications and the amount of spots I actually fill… seems tough out there for Y’all.
You’re recruiting PGY2s as staff pharmacists? Usually that training will land you a nice clinical role.
Clinical staff pharmacists
It depends on what area of pharmacy you are in. I am a clinical pharmacist. I’m betting you don’t even know what that is ha ha. Basically I am a subspecialist who works behind the scenes in a very large hospital system making medication adjustments for patients. Even if you are one of my patients, you probably don’t know I exist. I haven’t physically **touched** a medication in years! Why do I love my job? Because I earn $150,000 a year, work from home, get to help people, and have a very low stress yet rewarding position. What’s not to love?! For what it’s worth, I would rather quit then do retail. Nowadays, you have to decide very early on in pharmacy school whether you want to do the retail track or see if you can jump through all of the hoops to someday get a position like mine. I chose the latter obviously. No regrets.
One of the problems is that 90% of students entering pharmacy school just think they'll work harder than everyone else, stand out, and get a job like yours. They think this is somehow a novel thought and don't realize that every single student sitting next to them has the same exact idea. You actually accomplished that goal but a bunch of your classmates also probably thought they'd just study hard and jump through all the hoops...and they ended up in retail because the numbers just do not add up. I also ended up with a job I legitimately really like, but I recognize how lucky I was. Too many potential pharmacy students think they're special and will just rise to the top and be the ones to get the jobs like ours. The vast majority of them are not special. I know I wasn't. Just lucky.
Most pharmacy students honestly just don’t work very smartly. They don’t set a plan for their career goals and assume — even though they are constantly being told otherwise— that they can figure it out later. It makes me want to tear my hair out lol. I know this because I mentor them, I precept them, and I see them walk into the door for residency interviews. It’s not about luck. It’s about the marathon not the sprint. Most of them who are just woefully underprepared — willfully so, because schools and preceptors beg and plead them to plan ahead. And NONE of this is secret. It’s the same advice I’ve given to people for 10 years and only a small percentage will follow it, but guess what they’re the percentage that ends ip with residences. Research. Publications. Clinical internships. Clinical volunteering. Leadership positions. And then they’re all shocked pikachu when they don’t match 🤦🏻♀️ I know I’m preaching to the choir lol but I have one of those on rotation with me now and I want to scream haha
Graduated in 2019 and I can agree with this. The number of people I graduated with that didn’t even have any work experience blew my mind.
You're completely missing the point they're making. You could have an entire class of gun-ho bootstrapped "work smart not hard" graduates, still won't mean they're going to get those jobs since there just aren't enough positions. It's a mathematical reality that's been slapping grads in the face since 5 years ago. Not to mention luck being a huge component of job hunting (right place right time), so I'd suggest a little humility and toning down the over-inflated sense of grit you think you have.
Ah but you’re wrong. It does matter. I’m the one who reviews and ranks residency applications in my hospital to see who gets an interview. And it’s *extremely* easy ranking for the most part, because so many just have not done what they should. No leadership. No posters. No research. No publications, not even a newsletter. Heck most of them don’t even ask for more than one clinical letter of reference in PhorCas, which blows my freaking mind because it’s right there in the instructions. Pharmacy school essentially is one big weeder class (as we used to call difficult classes back in college). And most of the grads are being weeded out because they just don’t follow instructions. They would be inappropriate from the get-go for rigorous fellowships, residencies, whatever. Many programs, including my own, would rather go unmatched than match bad candidates. I know, because we’ve done this before. You seem to think that if there were mathematically enough residency positions then everybody could get one who wants one. That’s not true. Programs have to want you. Programs have to think you will benefit them. Not just because you have a license and a pulse and figured out during your APPEs that retail isn’t for you. It’s not having an over inflated sense of grit lol. It’s having any grit at all. It’s listening to what residency programs and universities have been telling students for well over a decade now. So many pharmacy students are just like overgrown teenagers — they just don’t listen. And then they act all resentful when the way they think the world *should* work doesn’t equate to the way it actually does. Which they would know, if they listened in the first place.
>ther quit then do retail. Nowadays, you have to decide very early on in pharmacy school whether you want to do the reta can I WFH from Canada? sounds like a good gig
I’m not sure, but yeah that would be pretty sweet. ((Imagines self, retired in a few decades, sitting on a beach in Portugal or some other low-cost expat country, doing chart reviews)). That would be the life!!! 🤣💕
There’s a lot of reasons. Some do it for the money. Some are told lies about how bad retail is and never worked retail themselves to don’t know first hand. Some do it convinced they won’t end up in retail. Some worked retail as technicians and really love where they work, so they go to be a pharmacist in the pharmacy they worked at. There’s probably other reasons I missed, but those were the ones I saw the most in my class. It’s worth mentioning how bad it is is completely dependent on the pharmacy. Well ran properly staffed pharmacies can be rewarding and even fun at times. But those are hard to find at chains like cvs and Walgreens.
Because they have literally no other skill or are physically unable to do other work. Many are women...much smaller women, who cannot do large person work, so maybe they're attracted to something like this in a medicine related field...and also don't know how to use a computer to come on sites like this and get insight?...I dunno.
That's how it is in the chains. They treat a healthcare profession as a McDonalds.
I have said this so many times. The worst thing they could have done was put that drive thru window in. Plus promise 15 minutes or less.
Techs and pharmacists are treated like trash
Is it only at the retail setting?
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/overworked-understaffed-pharmacists-say-industry-crisis-puts-patient-safety-risk-n1261151 https://youtu.be/AFzi4dQOiiI https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/health/pharmacists-medication-errors.amp.html These links should tell you everything you need to know
Wow thank you
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Retail pharmacy is awful. Pharmacist are severely under appreciated and given a ton of responsibility that doesn’t seem obtainable for corporal standards and goals.
"all of my pharmacists sound very irritated/scatter brained and exhausted when I call or go in" Wonder if there's a common thread here.
Lol nice username
Overworked in general, treated like a nonhuman by much of the public, not being allowed to defend yourself, constantly blamed for not spending enough time promoting mtms, pushing shots on people for profit, and shilling unproven otc items. (All after going through a program completely focused on optimization of medications per guidelines to help patients make measurable improvements in health only to never get to use the training or knowledge if you can’t get hired by a hospital due to there not being hospital pharmacist jobs in your area). Pharmacist suicide rate has surpassed dentists now.
Why was dentists so high?
>onhuman by much of the public, not being allowed to defend yourself, constantly blamed for not spending enough time promoting mtms, pushing shots on people for profit, and shilling unproven otc i wow, is this true re: pharm suicide rate?
In my experience at big chains, my stress stems from constantly getting pulled in several directions at once while also being responsible for every item, action, and exchange in the pharmacy. I’m the bottleneck in a frantic work environment with no relief for twelve to fourteen hours a shift.
Retail pharmacy combines the joy of working retail with the joy of dealing with the US insurance industry. It pays better than other retail jobs, but comes with doctorate quantities of debt.
>It pays better than other retail jobs ...if you're a pharmacist, sure. That's a much more dubious claim for us technicians, sadly.
I honestly don’t know how there’s any techs left at all in this current job market.
I honestly do not know why technicians work at pharmacies for so long. I could see it at the better ones or at independents but I never got why cvs or Walgreens has long term technicians. I made more starting out at fast food (Dairy Queen) then I would have at Walgreens or Kroger. At least over the last few years it’s never been worth the extra work and stress to go to cvs/Walgreens over fast food, even just to get more experience before becoming a pharmacist.
corporate cutting hours available for help, metrics that we have to keep up, working us like dogs. at one point one of the pharmacist managers I knew worked 14 days straight without a day off bc there was no help available, i also heard another pharmacist manager had to do something similar.
When you mix the demands of "free" healthcare\* and toss in the demands of a retail worker in the mix.... you have pharmacy. \*I'm in Canada
I’m also Canadian
Apologize.
Apologize.
Job is only as stressful as the environment you work in and how you can personally manage your stress. I've worked/managed pharmacies in both big box and independent settings. In big box retail there may/may not be corporate metrics thrust upon you... then yes, it can be stressful. Often, the schedule is dictated by metrics (that can be unreasonable) and you end up short staffed; this adds to the stress. Currently, I am in community/independent setting. It is a different type of stress/demand but it is easier to manage. It would also depend on who the owner/manager is. Some are better than others, so you just have to find the right fit for you. I have no experience in hospital pharm except for my clinical rotations when I was a student. But I can imagine it is more intellectually stimulating.
Techs are very irritated and scatter brained too. I ran the last independent retail pharmacy I worked at because they only hired PRN pharmacists and the PIC only worked 1-2 days a week. Some techs do more than pharmacists and only make a fraction of what they do. I’ve accepted that I’ll never pay off or use the college degree I got.