For students interested in pursuing pharmacy as a professional career, there are many interesting opportunities available aside from simply being a pharmacist. The field of pharmacy offers various positions, including pharmacy technicians, pharmacy school professors or researchers, and hospital or retail pharmacists. One position that may not be as well known is a pharmacy director. Carol Heunisch, the Director of Pharmacy at Rush North Shore Medical Center in Skokie, IL, is one of the few who have achieved this important position.

Heunisch graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a double major in Biology and Biochemistry. Afterwards, she attended the College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. At the time, Heunisch was excited and was motivated to become a pharmacist, but she did not know that managing a pharmacy department was in her future. She began working as a pharmacy technician at Rush Medical Center during her second year in pharmacy school in 1982. After receiving her pharmacy degree, she started working as a full time pharmacist at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights while continuing her work at Rush as a part-time pharmacist. After one year at Northwest Hospital, Heunisch decided to stay as a full-time pharmacist at Rush.

As the years went by, Heunisch became interested in the managerial aspects of pharmacy. This motivated her to return to the College of Pharmacy at UIC in 1991 and enter the Nontraditional Doctor of Pharmacy Program. Meanwhile, she worked as the Intravenous (IV) manager at Rush. Her principal duty was to supervise the pharmacy technicians as they created intravenous mixtures for patients. After obtaining her PharmD degree, Heunisch became one of two pharmacy managers at the hospital in August of 1996. Five years later, she was promoted to Director of Pharmacy.

Becoming the new Director of Pharmacy was an adjustment for Heunisch because she was given a lot of new responsibilities. For example, one important duty was to take part in various hospital committees. One committee she joined was the Patient and Family Education and Investigation Review Board Committee, which holds meetings for directors from each hospital department involved in patient care (i.e. a specific nursing unit department like Telemetry). During these meetings, the directors discuss current news and how to educate patients about new medical or surgical procedures. Another committee Heunisch takes part in is the Pharmacy and Therapeutics (P & T) Committee, which investigates any patient discrepancies (i.e. incorrect medical treatment given by a physician) and determines the right course of action to resolve a dilemma.

However, a typical day involves a lot more than committee meetings. Heunisch generally arrives at the office at 6:30AM and settles in for a long day at work. She organizes any paperwork that needs to be looked at before the end of the day. Going into the pharmacy department, she greets anybody who is there and discusses with the night pharmacist whether there were any patient or hospital-related problems, such as computer trouble or nurse-pharmacist confrontations. When everything is settled there, she concentrates on any paperwork left in her office. From time to time, pharmacists and technicians come to her with problems that they need help resolving. Sometime they are work-related; other times they are personal problems affecting their work. Whatever the case, Heunisch does her best to guide them and help them find the best solution for their situation.

The other half of her day involves meetings with pharmaceutical representatives. Heunisch meets with these representatives to see if any new drugs available belong in the drug formulary of the hospital. She helps plan the hospital budget of the department to reduce the occurrence of overspending on unnecessary drugs. Heunisch also sometimes has to compensate for pharmacist shortages by filling in open shifts in the department schedule. Other duties include paperwork for all drugs used in the hospital and the patients who use them, keeping track of particularly important drugs (i.e. narcotic drugs), holding monthly meetings for her staff, and following up on fourth-year pharmacy students to ensure that they are on track with their school projects. Most importantly, she makes sure that the pharmacy department keeps running smoothly and that everyone is working properly on a daily basis. Her busy days end around 5:30PM.

Despite all the different and challenging tasks Heunisch faces, she loves her job and remains committed to all her responsibilities as a pharmacy director. She shows persistence and exemplifies leadership skills necessary in order to keep an entire pharmacy department running smoothly. These kinds of qualities and multi-tasking skills are useful to have not only as a pharmacy director, but also as any other healthcare provider. Whether someone chooses to become a pharmacist, a professor, or a pharmacy director, Heunisch advises that one should always strive to be a reliable team member. As for those students striving to become a pharmacy director, Heunisch advises them to remain persistent and committed while working to achieve that goal.