About Me

We are the student pharmacists, pharmacists, and staff selected to participate in the yearly International Dominica Pharmacy Rotation offered. We hope you enjoy reading and sharing our adventures. If you are interested in learning more - contact us at abronsdominicarotation@gmail.com

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Reflecting on our careers paths; where we are and where we’re going

The question appears simple enough - why are you in pharmacy? For some, the answer is quite clear. “My parents are in pharmacy” or “I have family in pharmacy”. Sometimes by chance of a high school job that turned into a passion or a counselor that guided your direction. For some people though, as is true for myself, we meandered into pharmacy; our eyes upon the broader goal of helping people and making a difference. And even then there are some that choose pharmacy out of pure pragmatism. It demonstrates one of the fastest tracks to a doctorate of any profession, it is routinely listed among the nation’s most trusted and lucrative professions, and although less and less so, five years ago the profession was also in tremendous demand. There is no absence of reason to embark on a career in pharmacy and when asking a group of student pharmacists why they’ve chosen pharmacy, you’re likely to get a myriad of responses.

What is uniquely true about pharmacy, however, is that of the nearly endless paths that may bring us here there are an equal number of paths that bring us onward. Contrary to a well-ingrained community misconception, only a fraction of pharmacy students will end up behind a counter at Walgreens.  From retail, hospital, clinical, administrative, sales, compounding, research, consulting and academics there is a veritable deluge of opportunities that often threatens to drown new graduates in indecision. And even within these categories hide a host of specializations that may further serve to tailor your work into exactly what you’d like to do. Ideally, student pharmacists would be well versed in the opportunities ahead of them, but even within our circles lies an unspoken and yet powerful ultimatum; retail or residency. It is a common and yet unfortunate truth that many new pharmacists are well along a chosen career path before they realize just how many opportunities they have. The college does an acceptable job of opening student eyes to the entire breadth of pharmacy but the unspoken ultimatum tends to cloud their vision, even then. The best thing is for practicing pharmacists, veterans in their chosen paths to mentor students on their options; warning against pitfalls and exposing them on opportunities previously unknown.

No comments:

Post a Comment