It has been brought to my attention that my initial post about all pharmacists being doctors was inaccurate. I apologize for that. However, it is still true that current requirements to pass the licensing exam you must have your PharmD/PhD. 

The original program requirements was a 5 year BS Pharmacy until 2003. If you graduated with a BS Pharmacy prior to this date, you could still be a licensed pharmacist and BS Pharmacy was the norm until 1997. Many practicing pharmacists do not have a PharmD but a BS instead. 

Now, in 2015, a 6 year PharmD or PhD program is required to pass the licensing exam to become a certified pharmacist.  

You are also required to take what is called the PCAT regardless of previous education level. It's a general education exam required prior to being accepted into pharmacy school. 

For example, I have 4 years of higher education under my academic belt and have taken general education exams in the past to enter college in the first place and to become a teacher and I am still required to pass this exam.

All of my previous exams were Kindergarten math tests compared to the PCAT exam (I'll make a post specific to the PCAT at a later date). 

I had written this post once before a couple of weeks ago but the site ate it (*shakes fist*) so here is the redo. Again, I apologize for any misinformation that I presented before. You can find reference links about the pharmacist requirements below. Some I utilized for this post and others are general information if you are curious. 







Reference links:
http://edtheory.blogspot.com/2011/12/pharmacists-education-bspharm-to-pharmd.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Pharmacy

http://japha.org/article.aspx?articleid=433120

http://www.ucop.edu/uc-health/_files/pharmacy-an-era-of-growth-and-change.pdf

http://www.aacp.org/resources/student/pharmacyforyou/admissions/pages/default.aspx

"All you do is count pills." Say the people who don't work in a pharmacy. 

My husband has even commented something to the effect of, "You just count pills all day." 

Boss: accurate. "We're falling behind. In addition to processing those prescriptions, I need you to call this doctor. And that patient. And the insurance. Don't forget to check the order in. Why isn't it all done?" 

Yes, this is actually what I do. He should probably be standing though. 

About working in the pharmacy. 

Working in a pharmacy is a love/hate relationship. It's complicated, really. Some days my job is so rewarding and other days I leave wanting to quit. This is how I feel about my writing. It's something I have to do and I love every minute of it, but I hate every second. 

This is how I know I love my job; Despite how difficult it can be, the fact that I still can say "I love my job" means I love it. In fact, working as a pharmacy technician is why I decided to go to pharmacy school. Despite all the difficulties you come across working in a pharmacy, I love being able to say, "I work in the pharmacy". 

"But Sammy, you complain a lot and say you also hate your job!" This is true. I can sometimes be found grumbling under my breath about difficult patients or how I don't understand how doctors get through medical school when they can't even write a proper script. 

Thus, I am going to talk about all the reasons I both love and hate my job.

Let's start with the positive. 

1. I love getting new prescriptions for medication I've never heard of before. It means I get to learn something new. I've been doing this job long enough that it doesn't happen very often anymore, but I secretly get excited when it does. 

2. I love it when we're busy. I have this problem where I get bored very easily. However, my job keeps me focused yet busy; I don't just do one thing. For example, I get prescriptions for different medications and while the processing is generally the same, it's a different patient, a different medication, and different doctor, a different sig. 

3. I horde work. No, really. When I asked my boss what my biggest flaw is, he said that I don't share work. It's true, I don't. I have control issues that extend to the pharmacy and I get a certain thrill out of doing so much. It makes me feel accomplished and I maybe secretly like my problem pile as they are enigmas to figure out. 

4. I constantly ask, "What is this med for?" And my boss gives me clinical answers as to what the med is typically used for. This kind of ties into number one. I just really love learning new things. 

5. I love teaching other people. I love being the go-to when one of my co-workers needs help or doesn't understand something. I love being the one that can fix mistakes. 

6. I have learned so much math and about metric conversions just from working in the pharmacy! I have learned ounces to milliliters and doing cross multiplication to get the correct dosing for a patient's med (usually an oral suspension for a child). I've always hated math, and when I was first made to learn cross multiplication for this purpose I shied away from it because math has always been intimidating to me. Now, I like it and am glad I can do it. 

7. I like my boss and I like my co-workers. I've never had a job where I get along so well with my boss. We work really well together, he's happy to teach me new things and believes in my abilities. My co-workers, mostly, are great. We work well together for the most part and get along even outside of the pharmacy. my co-workers are like an extension of my family. I spend more time with them than I do my husband and children, and because we all get along (again, mostly. Families have spats), it doesn't feel quite so awful to be away from my family all day.

8. It's preparing me for when I finish school with my PharmD. I already have more experience than most interns in their first years, and while I'm not an expert by any stretch, it is helping me become one. It will ease my school transition, at least a little bit, and I'm pretty sure I already have an intern job when I do finally transfer and become an intern. 

9. I stand all day. A lot of people would count this as a negative, but if I were given a choice between standing and sitting, I'd sit. I don't like exercise. At all. It's boring. Exercise is the bane of my existence, But my job forces me to move. I am all over the pharmacy for 8+ hours a day and it helps me not to become too sedentary and it helps prevent weight gain.

10. Last but not least, I feel like I am helping people. There are days that helping people is the last thing on my mind. I am so busy and have so many people demanding things of me that I'm too mentally absent and more on auto-pilot. And yes, there are people that could probably use a lifestyle change over medication. Generally speaking, however, we help keep people as well as possible and feel better both emotionally and physically. 

Okay, so there it is. The ten things I love most about my job. Let's move onto the painful part; the list of reasons I say I hate my job. 

1. The constant waiting. It's drop off after drop off after drop off all day long. Always waiting and people being grumpy if the pharmacist is taking lunch and won't be back for thirty minutes. WE'RE A MEDICAL FACILITY NOT A MCDONALD'S. Pharmacists need food too. More so than anyone, actually. They are standing there for, at least in my store, 13 hour work days. They need fuel to keep going.

2. I hate it when we're busy. Yes, the same thing I just said I love about my job is also what I hate about it. See, there is a fine line between being kept busy and being busy. I love my job when there is always something to do. I do not like feeling overwhelmed and like I am falling behind. I do not like being so busy we can't keep up with the volume and customers get angry with us. I also feel like, while we're not making mistakes, we're also not providing optimal care for our patients. 

3. Transfers. ALL. DAY. LONG. People, we have at least 20 transfers a DAY. While that doesn't seem like a lot, keep in mind many of these people have multiple prescriptions to transfer. We have to call the pharmacy, get their information, give them ours, hand write the prescription information and process them all from scratch. Often times the patient isn't in our system so we have to put them in as new patients, then often the doctors are not in our system so we have to do a registry search and input the doctor's information. We have to put in the pharmacy information and if they aren't in there, we have to add them (sometimes even calling them back to get their DEA number or using our private phones to google their addresses). Add all of this to all the prescriptions we normally have and it can be overwhelming and why we ask for patients to come back the next day. I promise, your request is not odd; we hear all day long that X patient forgot X medication at home. Oh, add that, as well. We get a lot of vacation supplies and lost prescriptions which usually require us to call the insurances for overrides. Please be patient with us. We want to help you, really. We just have hundreds, literally, of other people wanting our help as well. 

4. There's not enough time to learn new things. We are constantly so busy that I don't get to ask many questions because what I want to know has nothing to do with my job function in general. It's all extra stuff I just want to know, so I actually rarely get the opportunity to ask many questions. 

5. I hate being the 'go to' tech. I have a lot of stuff to do in a day and training or constantly being pulled away from my work slows things down. Sometimes my boss asks too much of me and I can't possibly keep up. 

6. My boss and co-workers drive me crazy sometimes. My boss has ridiculous expectations of me and much more than he expects of the other techs (This isn't my paranoia-- even one of the interns said he is hard on me in particular for some reason). We have a tech that refuses to do all but one thing, another tech that I constantly have to go behind, and one who is slow and always wants to do everything but what actually needs to be done. It's quite frustrating. 

7. The 'entitled' patient. The patient that hands you an RX and then asks how long it will take. I often over estimate times. I would rather call for a patient in ten minutes when I told them fifteen than to tell a patient fifteen and have it be twenty. So when I tell a patient that it will be fifteen minutes, it will either be fifteen or less. Most patients are okay with this. Some even say, "Wow, that fast?" before having a seat or running an errand. It's the patient that says, "Fifteen? How long does it take to count two pills?" well, let's see. First, I have to scan the hard copy, then I have to enter all of the information and process it through insurance, count it out and hand it to the pharmacist to check. Seems simple, no? Sure, assuming two things: First, that no other patients were in the store waiting first. Second, assuming nothing goes wrong. Which brings me to...

8. Badly written prescriptions. This can mean many things: The doctor neglected to put a date, the prescriber forgot to sign it (that means this is not a legal prescription), the patient usually gets name brand but the doctor neglected to write DAW1 (Maine state law-- DAW has to be on there to dispense brand name unless it is preferred by the insurance), there is no sig (directions) or dispense quantity, the sig doesn't make sense...seriously, the list goes on. So when your prescription is delayed past the initial given time, it's probably because a script has to be clarified and we can't reach the doctor right away.

9. Which brings us to...*drum roll* insurance issues. This is the second reason your prescription is most likely delayed. We have no control over your co-pay. We do not control when insurance requires a prior authorization (or a PA). We hate this as much as you do. Really. I promise. We're the middle man in both cases and often, the frustration on the part of the patient is taken out on us. We understand your frustration. But not only do we not control this, sometimes it's for your safety as a patient. A lot of times doctors will switch the medication to something the insurance prefers. Lorazepam, or benzos in general, for example, present a fall hazard in the elderly. In this case, your PA is for your health and protection verifying that your doctor is aware of these risks. It's a process of checks and balances. We check your doctor, sometimes your doctor checks us, and your insurance checks both of us. 

10. I feel like I am perpetuating a problem. A lot of health issues can be controlled by a lifestyle change like diet and exercise. A lot of patients develop permanent issues because of poor diet and little to no exercise. High blood pressure, for example, can sometimes be controlled by eliminating sodium. Unfortunately, a lot of general pain can be from being over weight. My job is not to judge or assume, however. I mostly question prescriptions when it's a duplicate med or there is an error and nothing more. I don't know each individual patient's history; that's the MD's job. My job is to catch the prescription errors and prevent them to the best of my ability. I only have access to medication history. Sometimes we work with doctors for alternative therapies and specialist referrals, but that's not the norm. There are just too many patients in and out of the pharmacy. It's not that we don't care, because we do. We just cannot question every prescription an MD gives us and I don't think patients would want that either. Although, it astounds me how little patients know about their meds. "The little white round ones." "The one for high blood pressure." It's almost scary. 


So there you have it. A list of what I love about my job and a list of what I dislike about my job. 

TL;DR version? Most of what I love about my job are also the aspects I like least in different ways. I love my job and co-workers, I hate entitled patients and I'm afraid of people that know nothing about their meds.

Oh wait, No I'm not. 

My first blog post is about the fact that yes, pharmacists ARE doctors. How? simple. Pharmacists are people that have, what is basically, a PhD in pharmacology. A pharmacist is a DOCTOR OF PHARMACY. They have spent their school career majoring in pharmaceutical therapy .

What does this mean? Pharmacists have a degree in what medications work and how, what are the contraindications and what medication is best suited for you based on medication history, serious medical issues and your medication history. 

How does this differ from an MD? well, an MD is actually NOT required to understand pharmacology beyond a basic knowledge. An MD is trained mostly in anatomy and physiology. An MD is there to diagnose you. A pharmacist is trained to understand anatomy and physiology, but their expertise lies in medication which means that often, a pharmacist understands more about meds than your doctor or nurse practitioner, and often, the pharmacist is the reason you don't DIE. 

That's not to scare you, the patient. It's the truth. As a pharmacy technician in Maine, I am loathe to say that I spend a large portion of my day chasing down doctors to fix their badly written prescriptions. 

I am not exaggerating: I really wish it was hyperbole. Unfortunately, it's not. I am constantly clarifying prescriptions and yes, I have had a prescription for lethal potassium. I have received a prescription for an insulin a patient was NOT on. 

The pharmacy catches things most MDs miss because, again, their job is to assess your physical or psychological issue. A pharmacist is trained to assess what medications are the best for you and, in some cases, work the same way but are cheaper.

The next time you head into the pharmacy and become grumpy with the staff, keep in mind that there may be a small error on the prescription that, unfortunately, the pharmacy cannot accept and must clarify, despite knowing, or thinking, what the answer is. Remember our only intent is patient safety. Perhaps the corporation we work for is concerned with money, but us? the pharmacists and technicians? We are working to not only keep you healthy, but make sure your prescriptions are correct and will not negatively impact your health.