A Meetup with the Walgreens District Manager - Part 3

[Note: Here's the final part. A quick talk about career paths, Q&A, and some closing comments. The responses are of course not word for word. Just paraphrased as best as I could manage.]

Rhonda: I wanted to work with people, so I chose community pharmacy. That's what attracted me as opposed to hospitals. There are hundreds of career paths as a licensed pharmacist. Once you finish, once you pass the board of pharmacy exam, from there the world of pharmacy is open to you. A lot of pharmacy students don't become aware until their third year at how open the world is. There's research, academia, compounding, nuclear, pediatric, and geriatric. You'll never be bored. If you don;t like it you can move on. Some of you will go onto a residency for special training for an additional year. There's ambulatory care, acute care, inpatient. You'll figure that out when you do your rotations. From there you can choose your path.

Any questions?

Q: Do you have any interesting stories?

A: (Stephanie) - You meet a lot of different people, meet a lot of different populations. I did compounding in a mental health clinic. You see a lot of interesting patients and will be able to apply a lot of stuff from class to real life situations. I got to do a lot of vaccinations and immunizations. You learn how to guide your interview differently with different patients. That takes experience and what I got through the rotations. They weren't all one on ones with the patient, sometimes one on one with their nurse or doctor.

Q: I passed the PTCE and am waiting for my license to arrive. Should I wait for the physical license to arrive before applying? Or should I just apply now? [Asked by me if you couldn't tell.]

A: You should apply now, just make sure to mention when you sent in your application. Some managers are planning out a couple months in advance. But for some reason, lately, our pharm techs have had to wait 4 to 5 months for their license. Until you get it, you might work as a cashier or a clerk. Or you might just be answering phones, but you'll still get experience from that.

[Note: 4 to 5 months! That was certainly shocking/disappointing information. However, even with that tip to apply now, I might still wait. More on that in a future post.]

Q: Healthcare reform has been all over the news. What are your opinions on this? [Note: I didn't mark down in my notes when the response changed from Stephanie to Rhonda, so I just made my best guess.]

A: Stephanie - In one of my classes, we're debating the healthcare reform bill and wanting to reduce costs. In the end you'll still have pharmacists. It'll be competitive in terms of profitability, but we have an aging population, and people are living longer. The need for medication will still be there. The role of pharmacists will still be there.

Rhonda - It's also evolving and changing. We're not just dispensing. We do things like MTM and other things that add value to our services as pharmacists. This one seriously impact our career in our lifetime. There won't be an overabundance of pharmacists due to that aging population. There is a hazard, but from what I can see, it goes in a cycle. Sometimes we're totally short. We just finished that cycle. For the last 10 years we were scrambling. Hospitals, Walgreens, everybody. In the last two years we have not been scrambling. But that's not to say that the unemployment rate isn't high. But it comes in cycles and right now you're 4 to 5 years away so there's time for things to change again.

Q: Are people hiring pharm techs?

A: Maybe not hiring as fast or as much as 2 or 2 1/2 years ago. Reimbursement rates from insurance is decreasing rapidly. And the techs are the first to go. It's a little bit tight right now, but certainly not totally impossible. Apply to as many places as you can. All chains and independent pharmacies.

If there aren't any more questions, I'd like to end with a few words.

I'm excited for you guys. I think it's a great profession. I've really enjoyed it these past 20 years. I've never regretted it. It's been really rewarding from one to one interaction, to now, which is less so. It's a great profession. I think you'll really enjoy it. Starting salary has always been way up there. You won't starve as a pharmacist, so that will be good. And it's very flexible. Don't let the cost of pharmacy school deter you.

Something that I see a lot are people being really focused on "I need to stay in California. I need to stay in SF." I see a lot of my techs applying to only two schools. Some apply to more, but it's usually UCSD and UCSF. I know it's costly, but throw in two or three out of state schools. At least you'll have an option and you're not standing there for a year wondering what to do.