An Interview With Paula Styer, Licensed Pharmacy Technician (LPhT)

1. What Is Your Name and Job Title?

   Well, my name is Paula Styler and I am a pharmacy technician. I have been a pharmacy technician since 2008.
   

2. When Did You Become Interested in Pharmacy?

   I had been working in photography for a very long time, and the studio I worked for closed. I was unemployed for about a year and a half to two years. I was just floating along, working at these dead-end, but interesting, jobs, and my mother said to me, “Paula why don’t you do something in health care”? For the first time in my life, I listened to my mother’s advice and became a pharmacy technician, and that's what I have been doing since that time. It has been since 2008 so it’s been good for me.

   • Follow Up Question: So You Like It Then [working as a pharmacy technician]?

   • Paula: I do, primarily I am a compounder, that is how I started out. I like that the best because it is the most similar to photography in that it’s like working in a dark room, a traditional darkroom with chemicals. I am manipulating something for an end product and that’s what I like about compounding - the end product, and [the process of] coming to it.
     

3. How Were You Introduced to Indispensable Health?

   Through Indeed.com. I had been working at a pharmacy in Flint as a technician for about three years doing chemotherapy compounding. Although I liked the job a lot, and the company is very good, the job was in Flint and I live in Detroit. I was looking at Indeed.com and I saw an ad for a hospital pharmacy technician and I thought, “what the heck, I’ll just apply for it”, and Tom called me back and the rest is history.

   • Tom Alig is Indispensable Health’s Vice President of Pharmacy Staffing and Analytics
     

4. Tom Describes You As A Pharmacy Technician That Can Wear Many Hats, What Do You Think He Means By That?

   I do a lot of things, I can work in administration, I can work in compounding, I can work with dispensing drugs, I can do a little bit of everything. If you sent me a [new] task I will learn how to do it, do it, and get it done.
   

5. How Have Your Roles, as a Pharmacy Technician, Changed During The Course Of The COVID-19 Pandemic?

   That’s an excellent question. I had been at a stable, managed account at a medical center since I had joined the company [Indispensable Health] in 2016. With the [COVID-19] pandemic, the hospital did not need two full-time pharmacy technicians, which they do [normally] have. Between the other pharmacy technician and me, we decided I would be the one to go around to other areas where a pharmacy technician is needed and my colleague would be the one to stay at the client's location. So my role has completely changed in that I went from one stable location to many [different types of] locations.

   • Follow Up Question: Where All Did You Go?

   • Paula: I am still going to different places. We are not back to full staff at the surgical hospital. I am still going between four hospitals [to fill needs in other settings where a pharmacy technician is needed].

   • Follow Up Question: What Are The Pros and Cons of This [working at different types of pharmacies]?

   • Paula: The pros are that I have learned so much by going to different hospitals - different types of hospitals - that I have never experienced before. Especially in an emergency hospital, where I am doing all of their stat compounding while I am there. I am compounding things I have never compounded before in my life. Sometimes [the compounds] are intricate, sometimes they’re easy, but they’re still new to me. I also enjoy meeting new people. I am meeting so many personalities, whether as pharmacy technicians or pharmacists and even nurses too.
     

6. What is Something That is Often Overlooked, Yet Vital To Your Position as a Pharmacy Technician?

   Sometimes it’s mundane things. There are things that just have to get done. Things you don’t think about like, taking a day to go through every drug in the facility to make sure it is still in date, making sure nothing is expired, making sure everything is in the correct packaging, in the correct slot, in the correct place. That is so important to everyone's therapy that nothing falls through the cracks.
   

7. What Are Things You Enjoy Outside Of Work? (Hobbies, Pets, Groups, etc.)

   I love reading. When I began college I was going to go into English literature. It morphed into communications, but I still have a love of reading and a love of words. Another is photography, fine art photography. I used to do wedding photography, I don’t really do that anymore. I don’t want to say cats are a hobby but do neighborhood rescue and placement.

   • Follow Up Question: Do You Foster Then?

   • Paula: Mostly, I foster fail, which means I keep them. Once in a while, I do adopt them out. Usually, when I have kittens I adopt them out, adults are harder so they end up staying here with me.

We look forward to featuring more of the truly Indispensable employees we have working throughout our company. Thanks again to Paula for taking time on her day off to answer some questions for our first Indispensable Health Employee Spotlight.

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