Pity the poor pharmacist

It never occurred to me that being a pharmacist might be stressful until I read an article about people who retire early. One was a pharmacist from Tennessee who retired at 38! He was making $150,000 a year but was miserable at his job. What he hated was the skyrocketing costs of drugs, dealing with sick people battling health insurance, the over-prescription of opioids, and the addiction crisis. He was constantly dealing with angry, financially stretched customers who often lashed out at him. “There were days when I had 12- or 14-hour shifts where I didn’t use the restroom, where I didn’t eat, because so much work was piled up on me,” he says.

I did a little research and discovered that being a pharmacist can be horribly stressful. One survey found that almost 70% of pharmacists experienced stress and work overload. A researcher at the Harvard Business School estimates that burnout in the workplace costs $125 billion a year in healthcare costs, and results in 120,000 deaths a year. Heavens!

In looking at online forums for people considering pharmacy as a profession, the causes of stress become clear. Here are some comments from pharmacists or ex-pharmacists:

• The big chains “own your ass…they are evil, they treat you like a robot or slave. The retail side of pharmacy will absolutely rape you to get a bottom line; i.e. overwork, understaff, cheat, etc.”
• “I've worked plenty of days where the pharmacist is crying in the back on their breaks.” (This from a pharmacy tech. They’re poorly paid assistants who help fill prescriptions.)
• “We must silently protect doctors and nurses from harming patients. The fact is and remains that the pharmacists are liable for the errors created by physicians, nurses, and pharmacy technicians.”
• “I have seen a steady decline in our profession. Now we are forced to give immunizations, (in between filling scripts) and it’s not going to get better. The corporate guys just watch the bottom line. Customers treat us like clerks."
• “Trust me, don't be a pharmacist, it sucks.”

Goodness! I hope it’s not so bad at our little family-owned pharmacy in town.

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