Dr. Melissa Turner, PharmD's Linkedin Analytics

I worked as a staff pharmacist in a retail setting for almost 8 years. Then in December 2020, I listened to a podcast that changed my life and set my life in a new direction. I hated going to work and wanted to leave the profession of pharmacy. I felt like I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't working hard enough as a pharmacist. I was miserable. Then I listened to a podcast about pharmacist burnout and realized I wasn't alone. I wasn't the only pharmacist who was in a job that they wanted to escape. After listening to the podcast, I decided it was up to me to make a change. My job was never going to get better. At the beginning of 2021, I signed up with The Happy PharmD coaching program, was introduced to Dr. Jamie Wilkey and joined the PGx Consulting Confidence Academy. On May 14, 2021, I walked out of CVS and never went back. I created Tarheel PGx Consulting to help people know what medications they should and should not take based on their DNA. I don't want anyone to waste their time or money taking a medication that won't work or could be harmful for them to take. During my time growing and learning about PGx, I realized there was a large gap that isn't being addressed. Pharmacists are the ideal profession to advocate for PGx but how can we do that when most of us have never heard of it? (I didn't have PGx as a course when I was in pharmacy school and had never heard of "pharmacogenomics" until February 2021). Even those who are recent PharmD graduates have very different experiences and exposure to PGx in school. There's no set standards for how PGx is taught. That's what I want to do: improve how we teach pharmacists about PGx so that we CAN be advocates and so that we can help our patients have a personalized medication treatment plan.