Pam Ploetz is with the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics after a 30-year career including many years as associate director. Now enjoying semi-retirement, Ploetz has been extensively involved with a wide range of interns and residents during her pharmacy career and remains extremely active in pharmacy. She is president-elect of the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin, co-chair of the Wisconsin Pain Initiative, and consults for the UWHC Department of Pharmacy.

PNOW: Describe for us a little bit about the kinds of things you did at UW Hospitals and Clinics with the interns and residents with whom you worked.

PP: A lot of programs are based on the ASHP residency standards, so that was one piece of it. People would come in and do "advanced clerkship" pieces - which are advanced experiences with other pharmacists to give them some hands-on direct patient care. The resident or the new employee can explore being the one who's really accountable but still have a backup person there. It's an advanced experiential program. You try to touch on all aspects of practice - the patient care piece, a little bit of administrative piece. With the administrative pieces, because these people were new in practice, you would try to focus on how something directly relates to practice. You would be more interested in the administrative things relative to how do you get drugs on a formulary, what do you look at, those types of things. We had set programs where people would rotate through areas with the idea that they would be able to better hone their skills and use the knowledge they had, and then be able to make a better decision once they completed the program about what kind of career path they wanted to take.

PNOW: One of the outcomes of this is that it helps the pharmacist get a better or broader knowledge base of things that they might be interested in doing after they've had this experience. Is that something you feel is important to offer at any point in one's career?

PP: Yes. Not only is it what they like, but what they don't like. Sometimes knowing what you can't stand is just as important as what you love. Sometimes we don't pay enough attention to the things either we're not good at or don't trip our trigger. It's really important to look at what you don't like because usually there are themes in it.

PNOW: Can you give an example?

PP: I will use myself as an example. I have problems working clinically with pediatric patients. I cannot maintain my objectivity. And that's a problem because you need to. I also don't do well in ICU situations because I like to think about things. Those were not good places to put me -- where you had to respond quickly. I think other people can look at those same kinds of things when considering a career path and make some similar decisions. It helps you focus. I also believe you are what you are. Trying to change who you are is very, very difficult. It's much easier to work with what you have and what you want to be really happy. Try to figure out the best fit for you. That usually means minimizing opportunities to be in places where you're forced to do things you don't like to do. One, you don't do them well; two, you don't like it when you're doing it. When you're looking at a job or a career path, it's easy to be seduced with all the glamour or the money or the hours or a lot of other kinds of things. But deep down you may not like what you're doing. Then you're not happy and it's a downward spiral.

PNOW: What do you recommend to the young pharmacist or to the developing pharmacy manager to help make this connection quickly?

PP: One thing I think is really important for everybody -- regardless of where you are in your career -- is to take specific times during a year and look at who you are, what you are, what you're doing,, are you happy, why aren't you happy, and sort of do a self-assessment. For me, it happens that I do this New Year's and my birthday because they're about six months apart, but it could be at anytime that makes sense to people. The biggest question is: Are you happy or not? I don't think you have to be happy your whole life. But if you're not, you have to be able to look at it and say I think this is a temporary situation and there's nothing that I can do that will affect it right now. That's so important.

PNOW: Why do you think this is particularly relevant to young people?

PP: Life is very short. We're here for about a spit of time, and I think that's how young people look at it now, too. It's a different environment now. Young people have seen family members who worked in a job for a long time suddenly get fired. Longevity in a position is not something they value. So they want to go where somebody's meeting their needs. If they're not getting them met, they're going to move on.

PNOW: In your opinion, what type of organizational structure will the Generation X group thrive?

PP: They tend to, at least according to literature, thrive in very flexible organizations. They always want to go directly to the person who can give them an answer. So the flatter an organization, the better they like it. Because one of the things that is real important to them is family and friends, the same thing is true within an organization - they like to feel close to colleagues and to work in teams. The top two reasons why people don't leave their positions are their relationship with their manager and dedication to their colleagues. So if you're a manager and you have some people leaving, it should put up your antenna that you need to go out and do a lot of damage control or it could lead to a lot of people leaving. I think, technically speaking, young people are more savvy than most people my age. They have absolutely no fear of technical things. They want to explore new things. They want to make a difference.

PNOW: Does the Gen X pharmacist have some attributes that are different than the pharmacists in the previous generation? What are some differences between the two?

PP: This group likes sharing things. Yet they're very self-reliant. They're very quick at problem solving. To me, those are really good things. Other things I happen to like is that they like actions and they watch you. If you talk the talk but you don't walk the walk, you don't last long with them. And I think you have to be very careful about your communication because it has to be direct. You can't fuzz it over. The other thing that's interesting is that they come across sometimes to people as having no respect. I think that this is not really true. It's really more that they're just challenging. They have a challenging nature. Their basic nature is to always ask why and to challenge the status quo.
One of the other things I thought of was in the old hierarchy, you could have policies and procedures and there was a cultural knowledge that went along based on the institution because you had long-term employees. That becomes less and less with this new group and with more rapid change for everybody. As that happens, you also have to change how you communicate information to people and how you expect it to be kept so that it's useful.

PNOW: You don't have to look far to know people who know you and speak highly of you and your commitment to your career. Has your pharmacy career cost you anything personally?

PP: I would not say it cost me anything. I think it's only enhanced my life. There are people, though, that would look at my life and say I made sacrifices. I prefer to think I made choices because they were conscious choices along the way. I was not married until late in life. I have no children of my own. Some people would say those are choices they would not want to make. I understand that for lots of reasons. Those were choices I wanted to make. That enabled me to put a lot of energy into my career and to spend a lot of time doing it. And I truly don't think you can do it all. Right now I'm President Elect of the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin. I think that's because many people are willing to volunteer but have limited time to put in. I think that's just a sign of the times. If you have a young family and you've got two people who are working -- and most of the young pharmacists are women so most of them are a part of a partnership where both people are working -- and have children besides, it's pretty hard to then put 50, 60, 70 routine hours into your career. I put a ton of energy into pharmacy and got lots of fun out of it. It certainly wasn't a one-way street by any means.

PNOW: What can you offer the young pharmacists who are dealing with change and their personal expectations about what change can be?

PP: I would say you can make your position what you want it to be, but you have to work hard at it. That becomes another choice. Sometimes you can change to improve a position; other times it would stress you out more to change your position. I think you need to be up front and talk to the people with whom you're working, your managers, and talk about what it is you think you need that will provide you with opportunities to get what you want out of your job. And I think in most cases it can happen.

PNOW: What advice would you give the young pharmacist who has career aspirations that includes this vision of having it all, and at the same time, the pharmacy managers experiencing this gut-wrenching change we're talking about?

PP: Always step back and take another look, because there's always another side to whatever it is you're looking at. There's another story there. There's a clue. If you can't figure something out right at the moment, you should just wait a while and pay real acute attention to what's going on around you because you're probably missing some clues.