Jess Fairbanks is a second-year PharmD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy.
When I started pharmacy school in fall 2021, I knew I wanted to eventually pursue research. During my undergraduate years, I had conducted developmental biology research focusing on the genetic effects of bisphenol-S—a plastic found in many household items—on zebrafish ovarian tissue. I always pictured myself in a research lab in pharmacy school doing “hard science,” perhaps discovering the next miracle drug. To my surprise, during my second semester I found myself drawn to research in the social sciences when I took a class called Social and Behavioral Aspects of Pharmacy.
In this class, we discussed the pharmacy workforce, the dynamics of the pharmacy structure, and burnout. My professor mentioned how understudied pharmacy occupational fatigue and burnout truly is. As someone who has worked under not-so-great leadership and has experienced burnout firsthand in my previous work as a pharmacy technician, this topic resonated deeply with me. After sharing my interest in learning more, my professor directed me to Taylor Watterson, a PhD student at that time whose thesis work was all about pharmacist fatigue. (Taylor has since earned her PhD.) Taylor’s work prompted me to start asking my own questions regarding pharmacists’ well-being as well as the possibility of graduate school after pharmacy school.
But before I could start any sort of pursuit of my questions, my life was halted by the unexpected passing of my mom.
Determined to achieve my goals
While my mom’s health had been unstable for several years, I was still caught off guard by her sudden death. My life came to a complete standstill as I began to navigate the unpredictable grief process. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do it alone, as my partner Brian and my close friends immediately came to my side to support me. All the connections I had cultivated with my classmates and faculty helped me through the rest of the semester. Looking back now, without all those relationships, I would have probably dropped out of pharmacy school and given up my goals.
Although my heart was aching, I was determined to finish the semester strong. Amid my grief, I applied to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Social and Administrative Sciences (SAS) Summer Exchange Program, a program for student pharmacists intended to encourage interest in research and SAS-related graduate education. After learning about this opportunity from one of my professors, I saw it would help me gain valuable pharmacy research experience, make new connections, and see if SAS-type research was really for me.
It wasn’t until over a month later that I learned not only was I accepted into the program, but I was also selected as 1 of 3 student pharmacists to receive a scholarship from the American Foundation of Pharmaceutical Education. As a nontraditional student pharmacist who has struggled with impostor syndrome and recent hardship, I felt receiving such an honor validated my capabilities and that I deserved to be in the field of pharmacy just as much as my peers.
To my extreme delight, the pharmacy mentor I was paired with for my summer research exchange focused his studies on the pharmacy workforce and resilience. Along with my mentor, I made connections with respected and well-known pharmacists from other universities and APhA, learning of their passions and unique paths in pharmacy. Using the Pharmacist Well-Being Index, my project focused on identifying the categories of stressors for student pharmacists and residents. They ranged from workload to personal factors to their learning environment, but the majority had an underlying theme of a lack of support from their schools or residency programs.
Reading through more than 200 pages of comments from pharmacists, technicians, student pharmacists, and residents from across the country made me see the need for a fundamental shift beyond just teaching resilience to the individual. I began to wonder how we could start making improvements at the organizational level or even teach leadership skills to empower individuals to make changes where they are.
Carrying my mom’s spirit
Although my summer research exchange only lasted 8 weeks, it has had a lasting impact on the purpose of my pharmacy education. I entered pharmacy school wanting to pursue a residency in order to find my clinical setting and secure a pharmacy professor position. While I still want to go into academia, I now want to shift my focus to either pursing a research fellowship or graduate school where I can continue to research pharmacy well-being and, by extension, patient safety.
My mom was very proud of me for getting into pharmacy school and never backing down from any challenge. She herself was a person who would stand up for what was right and would speak her mind freely. Even though she’s not physically here anymore, I carry her fiery spirit with me. My loss of her serves as a reminder to live each day to the fullest and live with no regrets, and I hope to convey this with how I approach my patients, my research, and my livelihood.