I was pondering over how I would say this. How I would start this entry and slowly make my way through my thoughts until I got my point across.But you know what? I didn't find a better way than to just say it, so I will.
We, the pharmacists of this world, are the only ones capable of providing you all with medicine!! Literally!
You may trust your physician more than us, heck, your physician may mock us all the hell he wants, but at the end of the day he prescribes to you the medication that WE - graduates of schools of pharmacy - discovered, researched, developed, slaved over, clinically trialled, produced, quality controlled, and sold. And that's just a tiny part of it!! There is so much more that goes behind all this, that pharmacists do, but for some reason it's all conveniently forgotten. With all do respect to all the physicians, they wouldn't know the difference between Naphthenes and Naphthalene if their lives depended on it. And I'm not saying that they should!! They know much more in several other fields related to their work as physicians, and things that don't concern us as pharmacists. Not to mention that they work hand in hand with us in bringing about the introduction of a new drug as they are right there when the drug is still in clinical trials. (I'm diverting from the topic, let me get back to my point.)
My point is, when the pharmacist who is the one that creates all the medicine in this world, and the one who provided cures for so many diseases today, and the same one who God willingly may have the cure for late stage cancer one day, is degraded to become a human robot routinely working in a job where he is under appreciated, under paid, and under challenged, well .. doesn't that sort of KILL any creativity or any hope of creating anything that may be worth any use to this world?!
Again, with all do respect to all the pharmacists who work in pharmacies in Egypt -including myself- (and I say Egypt because in developed countries like the U.S and Germany, pharmacists have a real job which doesn't revolve around helping you choose a lip gloss that goes with the color of the nail polish you just chose. They have a real job that is critical and requires specific study and cannot be delegated to anyone else but a pharmacist. ), lets get real. You could be doing this job with 5% of what you studied in college. There are only basics that you need to know to work in a pharmacy, and the biggest proof of that is all the physicians, dentists, lawyers, etc who wear a lab coat and carry entire shifts alone in a pharmacy.
I know, if I don't like it I should just leave.
And you know what? I will!
But it saddens me greatly to see all this potential go to waste.
Hidden under piles and piles of frustration, dis-gratitude, and giving in to "the bitter reality".
A bitter reality that has made an entire society view us as salesmen, and make jokes about it on our expense.
And the saddest part is, I can't blame them. Because I've seen how all of them are true.
