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| Looking at my career from a rear view mirror |
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by The Pharmacy Chick - May 31, 2011
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Provided by The Pharmacy Chick
One of the responsibilities I feel I must have as a pharmacist is that of Preceptor. I’m not blessed with patience to deal with the 1st year interns but I do pretty well with 2nd year and beyond. I have interns around most summers when I can. Next month marks my 24TH year as a pharmacist, over half of my life. Can I admit that I am glad that it’s 24 and not 4? My have things changed in the last 24 years…. with massive changes just in the last 5 years. I wouldn’t want to be starting out right now. I am sorry, young pharmacists and interns…but I wouldn’t change places with you right now. I suppose you don’t know any better, but I do, having lived thru the corporatization of all things pharmacy.
24 years ago, I started out in what pharmacy predominately was: Independently owned and operated pharmacies. Joe’s Pharmacy, Killebrew Drug, Thompson drug, whatever you called it, there was probably a Joe, a Killebrew and Thompson somewhere in the building. He was surely a pharmacist. I fell in love with independent pharmacy because it represented the kind of pharmacy I went to as a kid. The pharmacy stood at the back, a few steps up manned with a staff of people who looked important and busy doing stuff I couldn’t really see. Eventually I became one of them.
Then it was sold and I became an employee of a huge chain. People I had never met or seen before became my boss and administered policies. Even though, it was still rather small…. 2 guys (pharmacists) and a secretary across town “managed” this acquisition. Eventually we became friends and as long as we weren’t pissing off people, I guess they were happy.
Both were previous owners of independent pharmacies and they had the heart of an independent. But they were older and in a few years retired. They must have carried some weight because when they retired with in a year of each other (and the secretary moved to another state) the company seized the change to populate the office with men of their own design…. corporate minded yes-men. And the decline of the profession was in place.
Slowed only by the national shortage of pharmacists, we still had it relatively good. Strong wages, and a “write your own ticket” availability of jobs made it difficult to staff pharmacies so even heavy handed corporations didn’t shove too much down our throats…but the noose was tightening.
Schools pumped out students as fast as they could but it never seemed to be enough to keep up with store openings and retirements…until the economy tanked. Retirements slowed. People inclined to move out of the business or go part time decided to hang on to their job. Students became a glut. No longer were internships snapped up by the dozen. Now they are a coveted position and they compete for the “offer” of future employment.
I have lived thru it all. Thru feast and famine. From cash payers to PBM, from fully staffed to skeleton crews, from autonomy to being filmed and timed all day long. I am 24 years into it, and 21 of them have been in some kind of management position.
I am tired. Tired of thinking about and being responsible for schedules, inventory, meetings, reports, returns, customer complaints, administering policy, etc. My man Friday told me that in 2013 he is retiring. In 2013 I will be 50 years old and will have been a pharmacist 26 years. Unless there is some huge change in my life, I am going to hand over the manager’s spatula (the really nice oak one I wrote about) to a suitable person and take over Friday’s job. His/her picture will go up on the wall and I will do everything I can to help and support that new person and groom my customers to respect him/her in that new job.
That, my friends, is the light at the end of my tunnel.
The Pharmacy Chick is a retail pharmacist in the Western United States, gutting it out in fairly busy store. She ticks off each day as one more day closer to retirement, after 22 years in the biz. She remember typewriters, rolls of labels, want books, and everybody paid cash. Now all she wants to remember is what all her passwords are!
The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
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