If you’re reading this and are still at the stage of wanting to get your Epic certification then let me clue you in now… I’ve been certified for a while now and been part of multiple Epic implementations and builds, and probably like you, I thought getting my Epic certification was the major mountain I had to climb.
No… Not quite… Getting certified is really only the very beginning.
Don’t get me wrong, the certification process IS rigorous but now I’m in the throes of everyday life as an Epic analyst and I’m finding that the learning curve isn’t getting any less steep and there truly is always something new to learn. That’s just the nature of building software that humans are going to have to use.
What Does A Typical Day Look Like?
Picture it… If something goes wrong with your computer at work, what do you do? You call the help desk right?
Well guess what…
That’s right… You’ve gone from person-with-a-problem to problem-solver. And you have to be a good problem-solver.
Do I always have the answers to their questions and the right fixes to their tech issues? Absolutely not, but I’ve learned how to investigate and troubleshoot.
As an Epic analyst, you learn how the software is supposed to work so that when it doesn’t work the way it should you can work backwards to figure out what in the process is amiss and where the breakdown is. Then and only then can you begin to find a solution to your end-users’ problem.
But let me keep it absolutely real.
In an ideal world your end-users would be waiting quietly and patiently while you try to to figure out how to fix the problems they’re having. Unfortunately, the world we live in cannot be described as “ideal” and the pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who will be using your Willow software have work to do…
So getting stuck or slowed down by tech problems gets them tense and in turn gets you tense until it’s fixed.
At my hospital, problems are reported by the pharmacy staff either by phone, calling the help desk, email, or a nice fancy electronic ticketing system.
The help desk triages the problem and assigns it a priority level so when I look in my problem queue I’m able to determine which problems are most urgent and need my immediate attention and which ones I can afford to leave on the back burner for a while and get to later.
So a typical day consists of working my way through the reported problems and fixing them. Some can be fixed quickly and some not-quite-as-quickly.
Then just rinse and repeat and do the same thing all over again.
The nice thing though is that just when you get used to solving one kind of problem another comes along that you have to learn how to fix. If you’re the sort that doesn’t like getting into a hum-drum routine then you’ll really like that part of the Epic analyst job.
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Thanks a bunch to everyone who follows this blog and to those who send me questions to answer. Your questions help me address issues that others might be facing with respect to getting into the field of being an Epic pharmacist.
If you haven’t yet had a chance to see the questions I’ve been asked and the answers I gave, you can check them out here.
V says
I will shortly be going through the process of getting certified. I just wanted to reach out and say thanks for starting this blog. I truly appreciate your insight!
Dani says
Thank you very much. I am glad you find the information helpful.
Tracy says
I’m a retail pharmacist and is considering a career as an epic willow pharmacist and was wondering how is the salary compared to retail or hospital staff pharmacist?
Dani says
Hi Tracy,
Thank you for asking!
It all depends on the facility or organization that you choose to work for. Some hospitals may classify their Epic Willow Analysts as inpatient pharmacists if they work on the Willow Inpatient module, whereas others may classify their Epic Willow pharmacists as outpatient if they work on the Epic Willow Ambulatory application (this is the one for outpatient pharmacies).
Still others, and this is the structure of the of the organization I work for and the structure I know most bigger hospital systems use, classify their Epic Willow pharmacists as IT Pharmacists and they will subsequently fall under the IT department, not the Pharmacy Operations department… And in my own experience thus far, the IT department pays pharmacists higher than both the inpatient and outpatient pharmacists under the Pharmacy Operations department.
Does the IT department have more funding…? Does the IT cost center get more money from their parent organizations? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that from my experience, my pay rate and salary schedule i.e. the rate at which I will be getting raises, is higher than it is for the inpatient and outpatient pharmacists.
I hope that helps!
Joram says
Hi Dani,
I’m new to the EPIC. I’m not a pharmacist but I work on the pharmacy workflows as a Business Analyst. How easy do you think it will be for me to get certified in the EPIC Willow module as an application Analyst? Also do you think I have a career path as someone from an IT background if I get certified in EPIC Willow module? I currently work for a hospital.
Dani says
Hi Joram!
Thank you for your question.
The level of difficulty you will face depends on which Epic Willow application you decide to pursue.
A common misconception is thinking that there is just one Epic Willow application (and that’s because, for the longest time, there was only one… Not so anymore…). There are actually a total of three currently – Epic Willow Inpatient, Epic Willow Ambulatory, and Epic Willow Inventory. For now, let’s take Willow Inventory off the table because you cannot pursue certification in that application until you have already been certified in either Willow Inpatient or Willow Ambulatory.
Willow Inpatient is the application used in inpatient/hospital pharmacies while Willow Ambulatory is the application used in outpatient/retail pharmacies. According to the folks at Epic, Willow Inpatient is hardest of ALL the Epic applications to master and get certified in. At least, this is what I have been told. It is rigorous, even for clinical pharmacists. That said, I work with non-pharmacists who have been able to successfully get certified in it (one person had no background in pharmacy at all), so based on that, I think anyone with the willingness to put in the effort required to get certified in this application can make it. Just know that it is H-A-R-D.
Willow Ambulatory on the other hand is a LOT more intuitive, especially for anyone who has worked in an outpatient pharmacy or who understands the workflows of an outpatient/retail pharmacy.
For anyone who isn’t a pharmacist or has a good foundation working as an inpatient pharmacist, I’d recommend going for Willow Ambulatory first as that might be a less steep learning curve. That said, I have also had pharmacists at my organization who were not able to pass the certification exam for this module. Epic gives you three chances to take and pass the exam, if you don’t succeed, the door shuts.
The bottom line is, certification is possible for anyone, you just need to know that it could potentially be a difficult path but it is achievable for pharmacists and non-pharmacists alike.
I hope that helps! 🙂