The Field of Pharmacy, What a Pharmacist Can Do and How They Do it

For my first official post, I decided I would focus on telling y’all about my future career! I am less than a year away from graduating with my Pharm.D. and I love to raise awareness and advocate for my future profession.

Did you know?

• Pharmacists graduate with a Pharm.D. degree which is awarded after completing a 4 year doctoral program. In most cases, students will complete 3 years of classroom work like “traditional” school. The last year is made up of multiple rotations to gain real world experience and to help you decide what your future career may look like. I attend Shenandoah University School of Pharmacy where we have 8 five week rotations and 1 five week off block.

• There are many career roles pharmacists can choose from. While the majority of pharmacy graduates will pursue a career in retail pharmacy, like CVS, Walgreens, and grocery store chains, there are multiple other options one can pursue. Pharmacists can work as an important part of a patient care team in hospitals in departments like the ICU and Emergency Room, at a physician office to help manage the medications of patients with complicated disease states such as diabetes and heart failure, at the United States Government, and pharmacists can even work at NASA! A simple Google search can lead you to multiple options on how you can use a pharmacy degree outside of the traditional role in the retail setting.

• Pharmacists can pursue postgraduate education just like other medical professionals. Pharmacy residencies and fellowships are highly sought after and competitive opportunities. If you decide to use a pharmacy degree outside of the traditional role, you will likely need to get more specialized training to be successful at your job.

Pharmacy school is a rigorous and tough program to go through and after graduation, the work doesn’t stop there. It will be my job as a pharmacist to be a medication expert for my patients. It is important to keep up to date on new drugs, new indications for existing drugs, and all of the side effects and interactions for both existing and new drugs. There are an average of 50-60 new drugs approved each year! That means as a pharmacist it is essential to keep up with all the current recommendations and literature published each year.

Pharmacy is a field I love SO much! I cannot wait until May 2022 when I become Dr. Miranda Pharm.D. but until then, I will continue to study hard, learn all I can, and advocate for patients and my profession.

Have any specific questions about the basics? Feel free to leave me a comment!