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Sidrah Alam won the Best Up-And-Coming Pharmacist Award from the 2021 Best of the Best Pharmacy Awards.
Pharmacy runs in my family—my mom is a pharmacy technician and my grandfather owned a pharmacy for many years. Yet, growing up, pharmacy never seemed appealing to me. I thought pharmacists just stood behind a counter and put pills in a bottle. Instead, I wanted to be a physician. As a kid, I had one of those little doctor kits, and I would pretend to fix everyone in my family using my fake stethoscope. In my mind, the only way to be a doctor was to be a physician.
When I decided to go to pharmacy school
I was pre-med at Virginia Commonwealth University when my grandfather passed away and I decided to take a semester off. He had been diagnosed with colon cancer, and seeing the impact his oncology pharmacists had on his care inspired me. I wanted to save some money while taking time off—and still do something in the sciences—so my mom suggested I look into pharmacy positions.
I got a job as a pharmacy technician at the Wegmans grocery store in my hometown. Working for a community chain showed me that pharmacists have such an important impact. Their role is similar to medical doctors in that there’s so much patient care involved, and they can really give back to their community. That solidified my decision to make a slight career change. I decided to go to pharmacy school instead of medical school.
I’ve worked as a pharmacy tech/intern throughout pharmacy school. During the school year, I work Saturdays and Sundays, and then during breaks and summers, I’m full time. It can be a little bit challenging to balance it all, but it motivates me. During the first year of pharmacy school, a lot of the topics that you learn in school are reinforced at work. For instance, I already knew the brand/generic names for a lot of drugs and was aware of certain drug interactions from my work at Wegmans.
For someone who never wanted to do pharmacy, I’ve loved pharmacy school and everything I’ve learned about pharmacy. There are so many different fields that you can work in as a pharmacist. As a technician, you see just one part of pharmacy—whether you’re a technician at a retail store or a hospital. Pharmacy school is all of it.
RELATED: What does a pharmacy technician do?
How to know if pharmacy school is right for you
If you’re a tech and wondering, “Should I go to pharmacy school?”, I would suggest you be open-minded and flexible. Reach out to different pharmacists—not just necessarily in the place you’re working—to ask them about their experiences. You’ll hear different stories from different people about the path they took to get to their career.
Some people think that going from pharmacy tech to pharmacist is simple, like an extra couple training modules or something. But it is another four years of education. And it’s not just a time commitment—it’s a huge financial commitment. But I think it’s worth it because pharmacists are going to start playing a larger role in patient care. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that. Technicians already have a foot in that door—and a leg up when it comes to pharmacy school. You’d be surprised at how many of my fellow pharmacy students had never stepped foot in a pharmacy before starting their Pharm.D.
I’m scheduled to graduate pharmacy school in May 2022 and am currently applying to residencies. It’s similar to what physicians go through with a residency at a hospital. You’re training to be a clinical pharmacist—it’s additional years of training after graduation. It’s a competitive application process, so that’s the goal right now.
Working as a technician at a retail store has shown me, again, that pharmacists have a direct impact. Patients come in every day asking questions about their prescription medications and what over-the-counter drugs are best for their symptoms. So I’ll be practicing at a similar level to what I was looking for when I wanted to be a doctor in the first place—without all the surgeries and blood.
If you’re a technician considering applying to pharmacy school, what’s stopping you? Take the leap. I did and have never regretted it.
