Why I Chose Pharmacy

With several voices speaking to me all at once, I try to focus on the task at hand. I am the only experienced pharmacy personnel volunteering at the Flying Samaritans Mexico clinic. I delegate counting tasks to student volunteers while I am checking off fills to ensure quality.
Simultaneously, I am counseling patients on medication use and adherence. Lastly, a doctor is asking me which nausea drugs we have in stock. This environment of organized chaos became my Eureka moment. The moment where I could tie all my experiences from my academic background to working full-time as a pharmacy technician. Now I can confidently say I want to pursue a career in pharmacy. !
One of the elements that drove me to pharmacy is my academic background at UC
Riverside. Science
After completing that course, each time I filled a medication at work, it provoked me to think about its mechanisms of action. For example, Tylenol has a diverse effect on the central nervous system. It inhibits the prostaglandins to increase pain threshold, and interferes with the hypothalamus to reduce fever. This perspective taught me medications can have multiple purposes. Ultimately, this experience initiated my curiosity in the clinical research side of pharmacy. !
After college, I started working 40 hours a week at a community pharmacy. While the job can become strenuous at times, there are moments that make it worthwhile. Often there are confused patients, who are afraid of facing their given situation. For example, a patient was struggling to figure out her health insurance plan. Primarily being a healthy individual, she had not used her insurance for some time. I collected the appropriate information and made a few phone calls to gather the correct insurance data. The pharmacy was able to bill the insurance and dispense her antibiotic covering the charges. It was rewarding to see the relief on her face when she found out everything was going to be okay. With help from the pharmacy team, it