Ancillary?

When I started thinking about going into pharmacy, I really couldn't tell you what a pharmacists' role in health care truly was. You could have told me that we are the most integral or the least integral, and I would have said ok. Once I started school, however, I felt as if we were the next best thing to physicians. Now that I have been working, I have come to realize that we are similar to mid-level practitioners with regards to scope of practice, and, for my situation, I would say as far as knowledge goes as well.

That being said, I have learned that we are looked at as ancillary in the medical field. Just like lab and dietary, we perform a service that supports healthcare. Our particular service is largely product based. While we are performing knowledge-based services more and more, in the form of consults, we still bear the title "ancillary." I witnessed this first-hand as one of the Officers of our hospital was walking high school students around, and stopped in to tell us that the student was being shown the ancillary departments.

I am fine with this notion, now. I mean, we have clinical duties associated with our services that are fulfilling, and at the end of the day we simply go home. However, as a recent graduate, I willl say that I wasnt always ok with this.

The point of writing this is to let future pharmacists know that what you see is what you get. Don't think that something changes once you get the degree. If you work in a pharmacy or have seen what goes on in one, be aware that everything stays the same, except for the paycheck. Now, is that good or bad? I guess that all depends on your goals!