A Letter to the 2019 PharmD Graduate

A Letter to the 2019 PharmD Graduate

The following are the remarks that Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, Co-Founder & CEO of Your Financial Pharmacist, provided at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy Graduation Convocation on May 17, 2019.

The goal of providing these remarks to the YFP Community is to spark a conversation around (1) the characteristics needed for today’s graduate to be successful, (2) where the future of the profession pharmacy is headed, and (3) how establishing a solid financial foundation intersects with ones’ career path and ability to have choice and take risks.

Thank you to the faculty, staff and students for the humbling honor to address this outstanding group of graduates and their loved ones that we are celebrating here today.

Just 11 years ago I was sitting in your seat, getting ready to walk across the stage, receive my doctoral hood and begin my residency training.

As I reflect back on the past 11 years, I could NEVER have predicted the twists and turns my career would take in that short time period.

You see, I had in mind that I would never do anything besides ambulatory care, and I’ve spent the past 11 years discovering a passion for teaching, entrepreneurship and providing pharmacists and student pharmacists with the tools and resources necessary to alleviate the financial burden that is suffocating so many of them…

I also had in mind that I would never go back to school ever again and, while that has been true, I have come to realize that my PharmD was just the beginning of my education and learning…

I’m guessing the same will be true for many of you here today, which begs the question….What constant is there that will be valuable and make you indispensable regardless of the path your career takes?

That constant, or thread, in my opinion, is the same one that has transcended your college’s prestigious 175+ year history across education, research and practice and that is a mindset of innovation, or more specifically, an entrepreneurial mindset.

There are 3 main points that I will address in our brief time together today:

#1 – We are facing challenging times as a profession

#2 – These challenging times present tremendous opportunity for you, today’s graduate

#3 – A certain skill set will be needed for today’s graduate to thrive in this environment

#1 – There is no way to dance around the reality that we, as a profession, are facing challenging times.

A recent Change.org petition (#ChangePharmacy) has been signed by 20,000 individuals claiming that “With severe staff cuts, significant unpaid off-the-clock work, insurmountable performance metrics, reduction in wages – the modern pharmacist is not a provider, but an exhausted employee fastened to the cog of corporate profiteering.”

Combine this with cuts in reimbursement, a rise in other health professions that have prescribing and billing privileges, advancing automation, and Amazon knocking on the door to own the medication distribution process…

Based on these threats, among other factors, you, WE, have a choice to make. We can either:

• Pretend the challenges don’t exist
• Get bogged down in the negativity and do nothing to be a part of the solution
• OR…embrace the challenges and see that in any challenge there is GREAT opportunity

While we often talk about disruption in pharmacy as forces that are external to our profession, I contend that we need to welcome, and furthermore, be a part of the disruption that is inevitable and presents us with an opportunity to reinvent ourselves for the next century and beyond.

We can choose to be the yellow taxi cab operator that holds on to the belief that the taxi medallion once worth a fortune will magically regain its value or that laws and regulations will provide protection despite more innovative options available to like Uber and Lyft…

We can choose to be the Blockbuster in a Netflix world where streaming services are growing exponentially and movie watchers have abandoned their local video store in favor of more variety at a lower cost…

You get the point.

We can choose to hang on to a model that has served us so well for so long or we can embrace the idea that the future of pharmacy is bright, but not necessarily bright in the way we have always thought about the role of the pharmacist…

#2 – These challenging times present tremendous opportunity and this is why the future can be bright for you, today’s graduate.

As we embrace these challenging times, we need innovators and those with an entrepreneurial mindset that can visualize opportunity beyond what is present today and develop a plan to make that a reality.

You see, any great movement, idea or business starts by identifying a problem to be solved that demands a solution and that people care about.

The good news for us – there is no shortage of problems to be solved in our healthcare system. We have…

• A system that needs better quality care at a lower cost.
• A system that still has an alarming number of medication errors despite rapid advances in technology and the training of our workforce.
• A system where medications often aren’t filled or, when filled, aren’t taken as prescribed.
• A system in which we know patients’ health would value from more time with their pharmacist, regardless of setting, but often reimbursement mechanisms that don’t recognize this value…
• AND a system that has a shortage of primary care providers across the country and, more specifically, in underserved and health care provider shortage areas.

All of these are problems that need to be solved and need pharmacists that have an entrepreneurial mindset to solve them.

I’m specifically saying ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ and not ‘entrepreneur’. The term ‘entrepreneur’ often brings to mind the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of the world, or one that hits closer to home for us, the pharmacist and co-founder of Pill Pack, TJ Packer, that sold his company to Amazon for a reported $1 billion at the age of 32. These are great stories, but they are one in a million types of stories and it quickly becomes overwhelming, and frankly discouraging, to imagine a similar path forward for yourself.

So it’s about having an entrepreneurial mindset which EVERY graduate here today will need to embrace going forward. Entrepreneurship is a mindset of solving problems and taking initiatives to create solutions, whether you are working in community pharmacy, pursuing residency training, working in research and development, training to be an academic or have aspirations to start your own business.

To paraphrase a quote the book The End of Jobs by Taylor Pearson, “Asking am I an entrepreneur is not helpful BUT asking how can I become more entrepreneurial is!”

#3 – A certain skill set will be needed for today’s graduate to thrive in this environment

So, what is needed of today’s graduate to be successful in our rapidly changing and evolving profession?

First, adaptability and the willingness to be comfortable being uncomfortable; to embrace the unknown. Healthcare and the profession are going to change so rapidly in your career that we need pharmacists that will embrace, and on some level, welcome the chaos.

Second, be curious. Curiosity and asking questions such as ‘why is this done this way’ will result in identifying the problems that need to be solved. Walt Disney once said: “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

Third, take risks, welcome failure and keep moving forward.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the financial component and its’ impact on your ability to take risk. The reality is that having a solid financial foundation and putting yourself in a good financial position will give you the opportunity to take risks with confidence.

Fourth, get involved in your professional organizations at a local, state and national level. Be a part of defining the change rather than watching it happen to you.

Fifth, your education has just started. The PharmD is the beginning of a path of life-long learning and self-development. We are blessed to live in a world that you can have access to learning anything that you want. We have it easier than any other generation that has come before us to develop ourselves. Take advantage of living in 2019. Yes, credentials and additional training are important, but only to a point. In the book End of Jobs, the author argues that we, in 2019, are in the age of entrepreneurship, moving on from the age where degrees and credentials ruled the land. Entrepreneurship is a skill set, a mindset, not a degree. Developing this mindset is essential to your future success.

Let me close by paraphrasing one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, who had the following to say in his blog post Do you remember the frenzy?:

There was an outcry when they banned cigarettes from bars in New York. The restaurant owners were certain that disaster was imminent.

And when seat belts were required in cars…

And when the building codes required fire exits and accessibility ramps…

And when doctors were required to wash their hands before and after delivering a baby…

I think Seth would agree that change and adaptability for any institution is always hard, but inevitable, and necessary.

So, in the frenzy of change and disruption that is here before us today in healthcare and more specifically the profession we love, you, WE, have a choice to make.

We can either:

• Pretend the challenges don’t exist
• Get bogged down in the negativity and do nothing to be a part of the solution
• OR…embrace the challenges and see that in any challenge there is GREAT opportunity

You, the Maryland School of Pharmacy Class of 2019, have an opportunity, through having an entrepreneurial spirit, a pharmapreneurial spirit, to lead our profession into the future and make better the lives of the patients we serve.

Current Student Loan Refinance Offers

Advertising Disclosure

[wptb id="15454" not found ]

Recent Posts

[pt_view id=”f651872qnv”]