Another Binary to get Rid of in Pharmacy

I need to call a time out on pharmacy right now. This has been bugging me for a while, but now is the time to call it out.

In addition to all the other drama right now during the pandemic for all of healthcare and pharmacy, it feels like we have a binary now in the profession of pharmacy practice too when describing our roles — that of:
1. “Traditional” pharmacy and 2. “Nontraditional” pharmacy. Furthermore, it feels like there’s all the value in gaining a “nontraditional pharmacy” role right now vs. a “traditional” role.

First off, we’ve typically as a profession thought of everything as black and white — right or wrong, or there’s a best answer to everything. Actually, that’s not how real life works. There’s a range of possibilities.

Second, can we stop normalizing this binary, please? Pharmacy career development is a LOT more complicated than this dual-bucket. And what does ‘traditional’ vs. ‘nontraditional’ mean anyway?

• Is it setting?
• Is it time spent during the day?
• Is it working remotely?
• Is it working from anywhere?
• Is it the type of work?
• Is it who you work for or with?
• Is it caring for one patient, or many, or none at all, directly?

All of pharmacy and most jobs within healthcare have some “traditional” and “nontraditional” elements anyway!

Pharmacy and drugs in 2020 consumed about 13% of the total $4.1 trillion US dollar healthcare spend — that’s $533 billion dollars inside a very large slice of US healthcare pie. There’s 90,000 drugs (— OTC, SKUs, prescription drugs, biologicals, gene, and cellular therapies, even medical devices) on the market at any one time. And of that, 20,000 prescription drugs and NDCs, and thousands of specialty drugs. There is so much to do and so many ways for pharmacists to work within the profession that we need to get beyond this simple binary now because it’s oversimplifying a very complex profession.

Furthermore, I’m going to pick on pharmacy academia for a moment, because most pharmacy schools touted in the past the BEST way to enter the profession was:
pharmacy school -> IPPE/APPEs -> residency PGY 1 & 2 -> “clinical” hospital pharmacy role -> teach/precept.*

Friends — I didn’t do any of that in that order…in my own professional pathway. There’s so many other ways to enter and thrive through the profession than just one way.

Instead of looking at this binary, I always recommend to people I’m career coaching is to start within themselves. Figuring out before you shop for any job, before you even touch up your resume or your LinkedIn profile, answering tough questions about yourself first, like:

• Who are you?
• What do you value?
• What are your strengths?
• What do you love about the profession?
• What do you love in general?
• What would you do if you won the lottery tomorrow?
• When was the last day you didn’t notice the time going by, and what were you doing that day? What gets you in your zone?
• What does the world need?
• What are you good at? (Note, this is not equal to your strengths and what you love to do, always)
• Network with others and learn about what makes THEM love THEIR jobs too.

Until you do this hard work on yourself, you can tack on any binary oversimplification you like to job descriptions, but they’re not going to make you happy being in a “nontraditional” or “traditional” role as a grand sweeping hard stop to Shangri-la. Also — people change!

Any successful role depends upon YOU first. Then, the job description itself (the days in and out of the job)— who your manager might be, and what the company may stand for which weighs more on your career development far more than being in one type of gig vs. another.

Don’t fall into the trap of this binary. It’s not that simple. There are many roles that may work for you, so don’t let others define for you what that might be. Start with yourself, who you are, what makes you tick, and then you can go out and find a role that’s fit for you; or, harder still, you may need to create it from scratch.

In the meantime, tune out the gross oversimplification of the profession’s labels…it’s not helping anyone, including you. I’m going to stop using these labels moving forward (yes, I’m guilty of it); you should too.

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*I’m not solely picking on pharmacy schools here either. When I attended law school, the career development office had a ‘best way’ to create a career too — summer intern -> graduation -> law firm. I never intended any of that when I attended law school, and I still haven’t done that to this day, (other than that graduation bit). When I went to my obligatory appointment and shared that with them, they looked at me like I had 3 heads. Schools and professors tell you a ‘best’ route because it may be the only route they know. Don’t fall into this trap, either!