“You are more than just a pill counter” - Alex Barker, PharmDARE
Trapped in your pharmacy job? Feeling burned out, like you can’t handle another day of work? Fearfully imagining working at your job for another twenty years. Worried about a lack of career options in pharmacy? Feeling absolutely powerless to do anything about it? Fed up with the stress your career is causing you? IF SO, THIS BOOK IS YOUR PRESCRIPTION the step by step method to creating an Indispensable career.Quickly transition into a new, fulfilling job and out of your miserable old one.Chart a path full of opportunities by unleashing your secret strengths.
Become the Indispensable pharmacist the best companies fight over. Indispensable is your guide to creating confidence in a career path full of exciting opportunities. One with less anxiety, stress, and burnout from your work. It is the secret to a fulfilling and Indispensable career where you don't need to work so hard to find your next job. In this book, I share my story how I created my Indispensable career from the shambles of a broken one, and how other pharmacists, even those with no prior experience can do the same.
First, I am an old pharmacist and I wasn’t sure I would benefit from advice from a “young whippersnapper”. Can you teach an old pharmacist new tricks? Some of the chapters call out what’s wrong with pharmacy today and while I did not agree with all of them, it certainly is true that pharmacy has changed a great deal in my time. And not all for the better. I can see how a young pharmacist may get burned out. There were no such things as PharmDs or residencies when I started. Not to mention the added stress of the tremendous school debt which I did not have to endure.
Alex Barker has gone from a self-described burned-out clinical pharmacy specialist to the founder of “The Happy PharmD” which helps pharmacists create fulfilling careers and lives. In the book, he gives numerous examples of pharmacists he has helped along the way and I found these examples especially interesting. His one goal seems to be directing the pharmacist to happiness on the job and away from the job. Or maybe away from the job all together. Some of the pharmacists he has helped discover new job avenues which may not even be related to pharmacy. For Alex, it is all about coaching to develop new strengths and good habits to reach your goal. Sound advice.
So, was the book helpful to an old pharmacist? Absolutely. As a manager, not only did it help me better understand my younger pharmacists, but it also helped to put my career arc in perspective and plan for that early retirement. I would recommend all pharmacists read “Indispensable”.
This book was the meeting ground between self-help and pharmacy, and I thought that Alex wrote the book in an honest and relatable way. I found either Alex’s or his clients’ experiences to be reflective of how many pharmacists may be feeling in the current environment, and Alex writes the book much how I imagine his live-coaching sessions go with encouragement of practical steps for self-reflection. This is a book that I think is great to have on the shelf and would be applicable to revisit every couple of years to check-in with if/how/where you are finding fulfillment in your pharmacy career.
Quote: “Passion isn’t this part of you that was always there. Those are gifts, natural talents, strengths, or whatever you’d like to call them. You may find you enjoy practicing your strength, but passion comes after you’ve discovered your unique ability and a desire to grow it.”
If you are a pharmacist that has come to the end of the pharmacy rainbow and thought ENOUGH! Grab this gem of a book! You won’t be able to put it down from the beginning to the very last page. Well done.