I am a pharmacist with 30 years experience in pharmacy.
I have worked both hospital, retail, ambulatory, non-sterile and sterile compounding. I have worked on as many as 4 different computer systems at one time. I worked as a floater pharmacist for many years going to a new place with a different system and having to run the pharmacy for a day to a week at times.
Would I be able to be hired and trained as an EPIC or IT pharmacist at this later stage of my career? I was not planning on retiring anytime soon and would love to get into this area.
Hi Laura,
A resounding “No! it is NOT too late for you!”. In fact, many of the Epic Willow pharmacists and consultants are seasoned pharmacists NOT new grads.
With your wealth of clinical experience and understanding the workflow and processes of how inpatient pharmacies run, you’re already ahead of the curve. having used multiple EHR systems in the past only shows that you’re versatile and you will likely be able to envisions the details of the spec build with Epic better than most.
Unfortunately, I am not a hiring manager but I have been involved in the interviews for people that have been hired onto our Epic team and I will always pick someone with real-world experience over a greener candidate for this type of role because really does help a lot when it comes down to the day-to-day work the Epic pharmacist does.
Best of luck to you! I hope a hiring manager out there is smart enough to see the value you will bring to their team.
Thank you,
I’ve recently been looking for info about this topic for a
long time and yours is the best I’ve discovered so far.
But, what about the conclusion? Are you certain concerning
the supply?
Hi Danielle,
Unequivocally “Yes!”.
The demand is still there as not every hospital has switched to Epic and more are switching every day. Case in point, I just got a comment on a post right here in the blog today from a pharmacist who is in the process of interviewing for an Epic Willow position and is slated to take the Sphinx test today.
You can check out his comment and my response to him from earlier today right here: http://thepharmacistlife.com/requirements-for-epic-certification-the-epic-sphinx-test/