Being a pharmacist is a vocation

When you are looking for a person to be part of your team…

And in the first conversation, this person tells you clearly that his/her goal is to work in a European agency.

So far so good, it is good to have ambitions and long-term goals. But when this opening is accompanied by a speech that shows enthusiasm ONLY for areas and tasks completely different from those that are the daily tasks in a pharmacy… Oops! There’s something that has escaped you…

“I just want to remind you that you just walked into a neighborhood pharmacy and that our talk is about a place HERE, not in NASA or in another international agency.”

I try to rephrase it: “I’m looking for a fantastic person, motivated to work in a pharmacy, not with papers, but with people.

This is not a negotiable condition – in order to work in a community pharmacy you have to like people.”

It is necessary to know how to listen, to process information and to answer by joining together technical-scientific knowledge with the creation of an interpersonal relationship of a fleeting but essential character!”

I repeat: of course you may have other ambitions, but you have to recognize that our work is of great importance and requires a commitment on a personal level that cannot be ignored, as if it were a stone on a much larger and more important path.

“It’s basically a step, and it needs to be climbed with care, or you can stumble down.”

I finish by writing that creativity and improvisation are also part of everyday life in a pharmacy. There is capacity for growth, both scientific and personal. But you have to be willing to enter it with body and soul.

The pharmacist 😉