azwe wrote:
TonyMontana896 wrote:
My brother in law is a pharmacist. Most of what pharmacists do is measure and count out pills. So the standard work of a pharmacist is cut and dry, doesn't require problem solving or creativity. Rather, they follow a set of protocols in filling prescriptions and advising both doctors and clients on dosing and usage. Again, that doesn't leave much room for analysis. However, if aswe has management over the pharmacy as well, then he may make business decisions as well. So that is where an MBA will come into use.
No room for analysis? Doesn't require problem solving or creativity? You clearly have no idea what we do. We get 8 semesters of pharmacology in college, your docs get 1 or 2. It's a lot more than just counting pills. Computers are smart but they can't catch everything. The human element is very real and we catch prescription errors all the time. Even therapeutic errors. You got diagnosed with a skin infection and your doctor wrote for a drug your insurance doesn't cover. Need an alternative? Great. We have to figure out costs, antibiotic spectrum, whether it's gram positive or gram negative, aerobic or anaerobic, ever had a reaction to a certain type of antibiotic, age, tendon disease, etc. Coumadin clinics are usually run by pharmacists and help manage your blood thinner ensuring you're at a lower risk for developing a clot. We dose you based on lots of factors and we have to monitor while making appropriate changes.
You don't see any of this because you aren't behind the counter. The stuff I mentioned doesn't even include what hospital pharmacists do. Now do you guys see why so many pharmacists get offended by those comments? "Doesn't require problem solving or creativity". Say that around a pharmacist, nurse, or doctor and they'll laugh you out the door.
I worked in a pharmacy in high school and was constantly amazed at the range of things the pharmacists did. They often had a much more holistic view of a person's overall healthcare than the individual providers a customer was seeing. And the number one activity I saw them doing was advising people, something that I think will work well in your essays (together with managing people/inventory/accounts).
But do take note of the pill-counting assumptions, as that should be your baseline when thinking about the audience of your essays. A problem-solving vignette, something where you can illustrate the analytical process and high-stakes of what you do, would probably be a good way to introduce your readers to the realities of being a pharmacist. Maybe a story about how you analyzed a customer's records, consulted them, found a doctor or nurse error, and corrected it and what the health implications could have been if you hadn't been so adept.