If you are a pharmacy student, you need to be doing what Emily talks about in this video. We will give you a hint… it involves networking!
Name: Emily Hanners
Position: P1 Pharmacy Student at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Interview Summary
Matt [00:00:57] Welcome everyone, Matt Paterini here with The Nontraditional Pharmacist, part of The Pharmacy Podcast Network. We are on TNP Student Series, another episode with a fabulous fantastic student Emily Hanners from the University of Chicago at Illinois. She’s a P1. That’s right, she is a first year pharmacy student so this is going to be great. What we try to do here at the TNP Students Series is help students decide on the correct career path for them. That could be community practice, that could be residency training, that could be any number of different things, but we want to make sure pharmacy students get on the proper career path for them. So without further ado welcome Emily thank you so much for joining us today.
Emily [00:01:46] Thanks I’m glad to be here.
Matt [00:01:48] Awesome to have you and we’ll start with our first question, get right into it. Curious, and we were talking before we even started the episode and you mentioned something pretty interesting so I’m curious to hear what your primary interests are in pharmacy and why.
Emily [00:02:05] So before starting pharmacy school my only experience was in retail pharmacy. I was a technician for Rite Aid for years and I teeter tottered back and forth on medical school or pharmacy school and I decided that pharmacy school was more with what my passions lied with, I really liked the molecular sciences side of things instead of the whole, overall physiology side of medicine. But since getting into pharmacy school, I know I’m only through my first year but I have a really strong interest in compounding. And that’s what I see my future in. I really haven’t had enough clinical experience to really make a judgment call there. We had one week of rotations last semester where I was in the medical ICU. It wasn’t my favorite but I really enjoy compounding labs.
Matt [00:02:56] That’s so interesting. It’s great to hear, you know we hear from different students and different pharmacists for that matter the wide ranging interests in pharmacy and you’re so early in your education that it’s such a great time to be having these thoughts, asking yourselves these questions for what type of career it is that you want to pursue. And I’d be curious as for our next question to get your take on pharmacy education. So kind of the traditional setting of pharmacy education in pharmacy school. What do you think is potentially missing from traditional pharmacy training in helping narrow down a career path?
Emily [00:03:35] I think that pharmacy school does a great job of incorporating rotations and pretty much every field of pharmacy that you can go into, or at least offering rotations in them. But I do think for the people they do want to go into retail or community pharmacies, even hospital has to deal with insurances. I think that there needs to be a lot more insurance education because I know speaking on my own experiences in retail pharmacy, you deal with insurance problems every day and you’re not trained for these things in pharmacy school and you have no idea how to fix them. It’s really just a bunch of trial and error until you get it right and then you know how to do it. But I think that it would be worthwhile to take a class on this stuff, or at least have it offered as an elective or something.
Matt [00:04:25] That’s a great point there. And there’s a few areas like that in the field of pharmacy and pharmacy education that there could be better, maybe more in-depth maybe more practical training and education on. What’s your approach? I love what you’re doing with going out and seeing independent compounding pharmacies, taking that upon yourself. That is so important. Having that initiative and doing that now, rather than later, to rule out yes or no, Is this a career option for me? So aside from some of those things what are you doing to plan for your career after graduation?
Emily [00:05:01] Yes so because I mention that beforehand, I justed want to reiterate. So today I just decided that I wanted to take my CV and go to the compounding pharmacy. The only compounding pharmacy that I know of in my area and I just simply walked in and I asked to see the pharmacist and I explained that you know I’m just a P1 but I’m really interested in compounding and I want to learn more about it. I don’t know anything about it besides compounding lab and I wanted to see really what it’s like in the real world. And so they took my CV and I had an onsite interview that time so I think networking and just putting yourself out there will take you farther than you could ever imagine. And besides networking and just being confident and being able to talk to people and communicate, I think that keeping up with your grades. I do have an e-board position, I was P1 Liaison to the Community Drug Education Committee (CDEC). So we go to inner city schools in Chicago and we’ll do brief information sessions like nutrition or STD awareness or opioid crisis, etc. So just getting some volunteer work on my resume and then I also have my intern position at Rite Aid and then this summer I was accepted to go to APhA’s Substance Abuse Disorder conference. So I think that will be another really big learning experience for me and also another thing to add to my resume to help plan for after graduation and also see if substance abuse is something that I am interested in going into a career.
Matt [00:06:44] Those are all awesome awesome awesome activities. The one obviously that I think and I think we can say from personal experience that is the most impactful is that personal networking, whether it’s calling people, reaching out via social media, e-mail, whatever it may be or through student organizations too. That’s also a fantastic avenue to make connections and build those relationships. But the networking piece is so so critical not only for your own learning, but making the personal connections in certain industries. That’s fantastic. How do you see your pharmacy career, let’s shift a little bit because we’ve talked about the pharmacy career and it’s all about the career, but how do you see the career itself affecting and helping you achieve what you want in your personal life. So this is a little bit more on your personal goals and how pharmacy is going to help achieve that?
Emily [00:07:40] So as I mentioned before I was really teetering back and forth on medical school versus pharmacy school and I think the curriculum for both and the job for both would have been great for me. It really wasn’t a decision between the two with that in mind, it was more so the family life that either one could have given me. And I think that pharmacy is a great career for those who aren’t willing to give up having a family at home and also you know at the same time having job security, having a great salary, and also for me I think that pharmacy presents you with a challenge every day. And that mental fulfillment is something I know I’m going to need in life after going to school for my whole life basically. I’m not going to be okay with having a job that doesn’t mentally stimulate me. So just knowing myself I know that I needed to choose something that was going to be hard and I had to work at every day.
Matt [00:08:40] So it sounds like good decision, and some of the things that you think about. are not necessarily pharmacy specific. It’s kind of personal reflection, what do you want from your personal life, maybe it’s a family, maybe it’s some free time, vacation time. All of that is so important as you evaluate certain career paths, it’s not just about the title or the position or even honestly the work that’s being done in that position. Of course that’s a piece of the component of everything. But it’s not the whole package so that’s great that you’re having those internal reflections now rather than later. Where do you see the profession of pharmacy moving in the future? I know as P1, big question, where do you see the profession of pharmacy heading in the next few years?
Emily [00:09:25] This was my favorite question. So right now I’m in a class it’s pharmacy U.S. healthcare. We’re learning a lot about the history of pharmacy and how pharmacists and MD’s used to be a really collaborative team and now we’re drifting away because pharmacists are gaining so much more autonomy and we’re able to do things that we were able to in the past. And I think that it’s causing a big ridge and a ripple in healthcare. But I also think that in the next few years I think that all of us health professionals are going to realize that a collaborative team is the best approach to healthcare and that is the best way to take care of a patient. We all have our specialties. I think that an M.D. can bring a lot to the table but I think that a pharmacist can bring a lot to the table as well. And I think with increased knowledge to the public that pharmacy is now a doctorate degree and we’re almost always residency trained, especially if you’re seeing us in a clinical setting. I don’t really think it’s the public’s fault that they don’t know really what we do because our profession changed in 2006. A lot of my family members will ask me, “oh why didn’t you go to be a doctor?” And I’m like, I am going to be a doctor like this has a doctorate degree. We study these medications thoroughly, but we’re not just studying medication, we’re studying disease states, signs and symptoms of them, how to initiate therapy, how to titrate therapy and I just don’t think that everyone knows that. But I think that they will eventually as you start seeing ambulatory care pharmacists more often, as retail pharmacies are changing quite a bit, too. They’re starting to offer clinical resources as well. So I think that we’re going to have more clinical responsibility in our hands which I think is fair and we deserve that because we work very hard and study just as hard as any other health professional. But I don’t think that we’ve ever been given the right to use our knowledge and we should.
Matt [00:11:31] Very very very well said. Emily thank you for the insight as a student, as a P1 student. Appreciate your time. I know you’re very busy. Please everyone watching this episode, share the post, like, comment, reach out to me at The Nontraditional Pharmacist we’ll put you in contact with Emily. Be sure to catch up on our next episode of The Nontraditional Pharmacist Student Series, all about getting Pharmacy Student or helping pharmacy students land in a career path that works and is fulfilling for them until next time. Matt Paterini with nontraditional pharmacist. Thank you so much for listening.