Pharmacy Personal Statement Example 4

My decision to pursue pharmacy as a career started with my first job. I got hired at a retail store shortly after my 18th birthday, and one month later was hired as a cashier in the pharmacy. This start in pharmacy was completely unplanned, but overly welcome to me at 18 with no plans for the future. Due to strange circumstances I was pushed strait into a technician training program that was finally completed 5 years later, also due to strange circumstances.

For the 11 years I have been working in some capacity in the pharmacy field, I have enjoyed almost ever single day of it and have never dreaded going to work the next day. There was no doubt in my mind that I would spend the rest of my working days in a pharmacy or some field that makes pharmacy better.

For the first 5 years of my pharmacy technician career I was happy with the limited role in pharmacy that being a technician provides; however, that changed as I matured into an adult. In this time I volunteered for the Benton County Juvenile Detention Center as a peer counselor determining proper punishments for youths with minor offenses. This leadership role gave me the confidence for my next major decision in life.

I knew in my early 20's that I needed an actual career; something more fulfilling than the role of a technician. I realized that I just needed the education to expand my knowledge in the field of pharmacy to achieve my career goals. It was then in early 2005 that I started getting ready for my first year into college to start the prerequisite requirements for pharmacy school.

Being that I had been out of high school for almost 7 years at this point I had to re learn math all over again to begin the science requirements. This and a full-time job made my prerequisite experience a very long and grueling journey. This has shown me perseverance and dedication to a goal; as well as patience and organization.

I have now almost totally completed my required prerequisites and many other courses that I taken along the way. This journey has taken me through three different local colleges across Washington Sate. This transitioning from school to school has given me the skills of getting along with strangers and making fast friends and associates. I have been through these various schools as my job path has led me from retail pharmacy to institutional pharmacy, and now to clinical pharmacy. I felt that this was an excellent way to help in my future decisions regarding what kind of pharmacy to practice, and jumped at the opportunity that each move has provided me.

Retail pharmacy is something I regard as a necessary evil in the pharmacy field. The pharmacist's decisions are based on mediation between the desires of the doctor and the insurance company. Then this information has to be passed along to the patient in a manner that they can understand. Though this is and sounds like the fiery pits of pharmacy it is likely where I will spend a major part of my career; I think it is extremely important that the patients are well taken care of by someone who understand the system and has the compassion needed to interpret it accordingly as I do.

The lack of competition among pharmacies in institutional pharmacy gave me a special perspective on patient care. My role as the accounts receivable person in a small, privately owned pharmacy setting gave me a greater respect for social workers; there is an extreme amount of work that goes into getting medication paid for by the right source. Overall I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge of the internal workings of Medicare and Medicaid and their tremendous role in almost all pharmacies.

In my current role in pharmacy at a clinic pharmacy in an AIDS/HIV and other infectious disease clinic, I have found new and better ways of communicating with medical staff to get the best results for patients. This clinical setting is an ultimate experience in patient communication as we have a tough crowd to please.

Throughout the years I feel I have had one of the best platforms for preparation for a career as a pharmacist. With the intermingled experience in various pharmacy settings, volunteer work in youth corrections, travel through 3 major continents, and various college settings with local, national, and international student bodies I have a base to be confident, comfortable, and absolute in my decision to become a pharmacist.