The role of a pharmacist involves distribution and allotment of the medicines as prescribed by the physicians, educate the buyers on the right dosage along with the use of a specific drug and make them aware of the side effects if any. The work can be at times mundane; however, the job offers these professionals with extensive rewards. If you have the right degree and qualification you can excel in this field. The career is a promising one that proffers above average growth. However, it has certain cons which if deal with tactfully can never be the stumbling block.
Let us see the benefits and drawbacks associated with the job.
Benefits of being in the profession
- Pay Scale: Pharmacist earns a decent pay to lead a quality life. In big locations or areas where there is less competition, they can earn more than their average wage. Nationally or internationally, they are doing well everywhere.
- Secure and Stable career: This career is growing over time with more and more people opting for a pharmaceutical degree and heading for the pharmacist job. This career is aligned to the health-care industry. Since the healthcare sector is growing at a faster rate so does the opportunities in pharmacy. Thus, it offers security that the professionals yearn for.
- Accustomed to care for patients: These experts play a vital role in providing efficient and excellent care for the patients. They make use of their knowledge and skills to offer consultation to the doctors as well regarding the nature of the drugs. The dexterous individual also has the know-how of the basic medication to help patients getting better. Hence, these experts nurture relationships with the customers eventually.
- Helps in innovating: Advancement in technology and medicine has sharpened the area of pharmacy helping them to understand the use of new drugs. They are a valuable source of information with exorbitant knowledge about medicines and it is properties that can be used in the improvement of drugs and in its engineering. Generation of electronic prescriptions and automation of medicine disburse are the technological developments in this job. These specialists work efficiently while distributing the pills manually.
Drawbacks associated with this profession
- Protracted working hours: Most of the pharmacies are open till late evening or 24 hours a day that is the primary drawback of the job. Most of the pharmacists claim that they have a tiring routine working till wee hours of the night even on weekends. They have long shift hours stretching from 10hours to 13 hours per day. This leads to irregular lifestyle, disrupted work-life balance and no time for cultivating areas of interest.
- Tiring paper-work: Their role majorly involves the administrative work apart from dispensing medicines to the customers which comprise of the major load. The boring work involves keeping a tab of the quantity of medicine, scanning health insurance plans, processing transactions and ensuring required signatures are done by the clients. Though automation of the processes is in place yet it is a tough job especially in a fast-paced pharmacy where you need to do everything on time. Time management is crucial in such cases.
- Stressful job: The different elements of this job make the professionals exhausted if not managed properly. Giving of the right medicines as per the prescription is the reason of stress itself where you need to maintain the accuracy. You need to ensure not only the right medicine but also the right dose to avoid any legal issues and lawsuits. Typically a day of a pharmacist is hectic and involves standing long hours on their feet, dealing with customers and vendors along with answering their queries. They have to spend a lot of time over the phone with vendors and also pay attention to customer complaints.
- Understaffed and unskilled workers: This is the major source of stress for the pharmacies as they either have fewer employees in comparison to the work they do or the workforce is not equipped with the right skills. On the job due to the issue of understaffing the available workers have to be on their toes throughout the day that hardly gives them the time to breathe. This is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with to make the workplace more productive.
Therefore, every job area will have some benefits that you will cherish and drawbacks that tend to make you feel low and demotivated. To be an adept and productive asset to the industry, you need to evolve with the changing business scenario trying to manage the snags to keep your career growing.
