Why I chose a pharmacy career

Like many young kids who are dreaming about their futures, I wanted to be in healthcare because I wanted to "help people". Now, however misguided this may have been, once I figured out that healthcare was a stable career that also paid well, I was locked in. I say that this was misguided because, with very few exceptions, most jobs help people but this was not something I would consider until later on in life. 

One thing that complicated my journey into healthcare was my aversion to actually wanting to see any blood. I wouldn't say I have a fear of it or anything like that, I'd simply prefer not to deal with it (or any other bodily fluids for that matter) if I can help it. This was the general framework I used to guide my decision-making. 

This seems quite silly today but lest we forget that I was 17 and didn't really have a good understanding of how one should make important life decisions. Besides money and stability and not really wanting to see blood -- I didn't have much else to go off of. 

I believe that one of the most common things that misguides us in our young lives is the confusion between things that we enjoy and things that we just happen to be good at. My talent in math and science had landed me in a magnet program for math and science in high school which naturally pointed to a career in STEM. Did I like these things? Sure. But did I enter the program because I thought it would lay the groundwork for a great college, a great career, and (maybe too great a leap here) a great life? Absolutely. 

I wasn't wrong. I did get into a good college. I attended the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and chose to major in Biology. I do have a great career -- though it took some action to make this happen. And as for my great life? Well, I did marry my high school sweetheart so perhaps my decision to attend this particular program was in fact the life-altering choice that I thought it would be after all. 

But despite my predisposition to a career in healthcare, the day that truly locked in my path as a pharmacist wasn't decided there in the halls of that high school. No, it was a day in college when I wasn't feeling well. Actually, I had a lot of days where I didn't feel well those days. After beginning college, I began getting chronic migraines.

Navigating the healthcare system is hard enough, but as a college student on their own for the first time who is suddenly in immense pain? Nearly impossible. Luckily, my dorm was just a short walking distance from the student health building so I decided to visit after suffering a nasty migraine episode.

I was prescribed sumatriptan and sent to the student health pharmacy to fill it. It was there, in a small counseling booth that a kind pharmacist changed my life. She was patient and reassuring and -- I had no idea that this is what pharmacy was at all! Wow. Between that, and the utter fascination with the fact that this tiny tablet could take away such immense pain, my pharmacy career was born. 

I finished my undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina and went on to get my Doctor of Pharmacy back in my home state of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University. Throughout the program, I worked as a pharmacy intern at CVS and after graduation, I stayed on with the company as a staff pharmacist.

I felt strongly that being a pharmacist would fulfill my ultimate goal of helping people. On top of it, I was good at it. Community pharmacists are positioned so perfectly to develop meaningful, ongoing relationships with patients. But overtime I realized that being good at something didn't mean that I had to do it for the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, while community pharmacists can have an outsized impact on patient well-being, they also have all sorts of pressures on them that are not associated with patient care, but instead are associated with the revenue of the store. Until this is fixed, community pharmacy will certainly suffer. I left community pharmacist in 2015 for this reason.

I am still in pharmacy and still work on pharmacy products, but I no longer work in a clinical capacity. Some days I miss the one-on-one impact with patients, but I don't miss the long hours or working nights and weekends. I don't regret my choice, but I feel compelled now to be a part of the solution for the profession so that others don't begin to regret theirs. There is much work to be done, and we're only getting started.