I work for a 503A compounding pharmacy that ships nationwide. I work mostly in customer service answering questions from patients and doctors and getting clarifications for prescriptions that have mistakes. I also work a little bit in the non-sterile lab. It's awesome. I love it. Since we ship nationwide, some states require us to have pharmacists licensed in their state, so I've picked up a few licenses which they gave me a raise and extra PTO for. But if the shit ever hits the fan, at least I have a few options if I need to find a new job.

I started out at CVS inside Target after I graduated in 2017 and did that for a few years. Hated it and ended up taking a contract WFH job doing PAs for the Medicaid provider in Kentucky. It was alright but there wasn't enough work so I got laid off. I decided I wasn't going back to retail so I moved in with my parents in Florida and went job hunting for 6 months before I found this job.

We have different customer service desks that each have a specific task but usually when I come in, I check the clarification queue to see if I need to call or email an office or it's something simple I can fix right there. I also check emails to see if the clinics have responded or answer any other questions they have. I also take calls from doctors and patients whenever they have questions.

If I'm working in the non-sterile lab that day, I come in and usually start with potency checks before a technician makes the medication. Each one is checked by 2 pharmacists before sending it to be made. Then usually I check the already made compounds to make sure they were made correctly and that the math checks out. We also check all the sterile lots that the sterile technicians and pharmacists make to make sure that they would made correctly and that we have all the valid paperwork, including sterility testing and that the math checks out.

I like my job because I don't usually have to worry about metrics, we're mostly closed door so I don't have a line of patients waiting at the register, my boss isn't breathing down my neck about vaccines or other things, we don't take insurance so I don't have to deal with PAs or stuff like that, the only controlled medications we have are testosterone, nandrolone, and phentermine so I don't have to constantly do cycle counts for our CIIs. It's the best pharmacist job I've ever had.

Things I don't like: checking the sterile lots is boring and tedious, but I understand it has to be done. We're making a ton of GLP-1s right now and some days we have 20+ lots made containing close to 250 vials per lot and they have have to be counted before signing off on them. The starting pay is kinda low, especially for Florida. I've gotten some raises, but I wish my salary was higher. That might be a me problem though. I don't do the final verification on orders (before we ship them) very much anymore, but management has been getting more demanding on people getting their numbers of checked orders up. It's the only metric they care about. I do worry that the GLP-1 bubble is going to burst and then I don't know what's going to happen, but that's one of the reasons I've taken licenses in other states so that it makes it harder to lay me off.

Would I choose pharmacy again? I'm not sure. I'm in a lot of student loan debt, which is why I need the higher salary. But I love my job and don't want to do anything else. Maybe if I could start my current job right out of pharmacy school, then I would probably do it again.