MillennialRx Controversy Explained: Fake Pharmacist or Real Professional?
never worked a day in my life in community pharmacy. Maybe it’s been a while since I’ve done a formal introduction because I guess people don’t think I’m a real pharmacist. So, let’s talk about it.
And I’m not going to lie, actually, I’m kind of offended that someone would think that I just went to pharmacy school and never worked a day in my life in community pharmacy because I know I don’t work community pharmacy anymore, but when I was first starting on social media almost 5 years ago, I was doing almost every day.
allow me to reintroduce myself. So, hi, my name is Dr. Ethan Milo and I am a pharmacist and I am licensed in Rhode Island and Texas. My pharmacy career actually started when I was 17 years old working as a cashier upfront, not in the pharmacy, but upfront for Walgreens. And when it was summertime and I wasn’t in high school, I was working full-time like 40 hours a week.
I became very familiar with the ins and outs of Walgreens. And I learned that the struggles that we have in the pharmacy, they have them up front as well. Like, I promise you, people are just as mean to the front store employees as they are to pharmacy employees. So, while I was working at Walgreens, I still wasn’t accepted to any pharmacy school yet.
But then I applied to pharmacy school and I was accepted to go to the University of Rhode Island. So, when I started pharmacy school, I became a pharmacy technician. And because I was in a 0 to6 program, it wasn’t until my third year that I then became a pharmacy student, like pharmacy intern.
And then I worked all throughout pharmacy school. And then I decided to do a residency with Walgreens still and the University of Houston. But this was my first pivot because I then went into Walgreens specialty, which is a little bit different than retail. My background actually is in solid organ transplant, which is not anything I do anymore, but that was where I did my residency in.
After my residency, I stayed on with the specialty district. So, I worked in different specialy sites doing like fertility, cancer, um, multiple sclerosis. Then I moved back home to Rhode Island where I was the pharmacy manager of our only specialy site in Rhode Island. There I did heepsi and HIV at the specialy clinic.
But I will say it was far from a specialy clinic. It was a retail pharmacy like that was labeled a specialy pharmacy. And so though we had like you know five to six texts on at a time, specialy pharmacy is very different than retail because when it comes to certain specialty medications, you actually have to do a ton of like documentation which you don’t do in the retail pharmacy setting and you have to be like following up and doing all this before a medication is sold to a patient.
So imagine like a mid-tier retail store plus doing all these additional tasks. We also blister packed. That was something I never saw Walgreens do before. Let’s just say there was a lot going on. Oh, and also at this time technicians were not able to vaccinate. So I was doing all the vaccines too. And then because I had such a wonderful bos.
The Truth About MillennialRx: Fake Pharmacist Claims vs Reality
I decided that you know what, I don’t want to do this anymore and I need to do something else as a pharmacist, which was really sad because I’ll be honest, I loved working in community pharmacy, but you know.
when you have co-workers that are not the best to work with, you need to change your job. Then I moved over into managed care, which I worked for Mellan Health. pretty much the best way I could put it, it’s like being a call center pharmacist for a PBM. So, I did that for two years and luckily that was like when COVID hit and so I was able to work from home and I’ll be honest, I love the job, love my co-workers, it did not really pay that well.
It was like about $100,000 which if for pharmacists that is very low and when you’re only getting like a 2 3% raise, it was definitely, you know, not worth it. So then I actually made my pivot into ambulatory care. I worked for what’s called Coastal Medical, which I think it’s now owned by like Brown Health. there. I was a clinical diabetes pharmacist where I would prescribe, titrate, everything diabetes for patients because what we had was a collaborative practice agreement.
And so under a doctor, pretty much I acted as if I was like the patient’s endocrinologist because the patient would see the doctor, they would say, “You have diabetes.” And they’d give it to the pharmacist because a lot of the times it would be a lot for these primary care physicians to be doing. And while a majority of the primary care physicians were pretty versed in diabetes.
some of them honestly should not be prescribing anything for diabetes. But honestly, out of all the jobs I’ve had, that has probably been one of my favorite because I loved being able to use my pharmacist license to the map because if you haven’t caught on by me doing social media, I like to talk. And so, I would allow my patients to have as much time as they needed to go through their medications, answer their questions, and that is something I absolutely love to do.
And yes, sometimes would I be staying late talking to these patients? Yeah, because honestly, I didn’t go into healthcare for the money. I went in it because I wanted to help people. Also, my grandfather, who’s no longer here, was actually diagnosed with type two diabetes and died of pancreatic cancer.
So for me it was kind of like a full circle moment to be able to help people as if they were my grandfather because I definitely think if he had a pharmacist in a corner his diabetes would have been a lot better controlled. And then one.
Fake Pharmacist Exposed? The Truth About MillennialRx and My Pharmacy Career
day on my birthday I saw a job opening for a pharmacist at L’Oreal and I was like you know maybe it’s a sign from God I should just apply. Like I did not think I was going to get it at all because um I’ve never worked in industry and I never did a fellowship. And so I applied for it and I worked there for 2 years and I absolutely loved it.
because of social media, I started getting interested into skincare. And so that was like the perfect position for me. And honestly, it was so nice to work for a company that valued a pharmacist’s opinion and they also want to do so much to give back to pharmacists as well because honestly, we’re always forgotten.
But unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. And I decided that, you know, I really, really feel passionate and I love talking to you all on social media and educating people because I want to be able to break down such complicated things because honestly, not everyone has time to go to a pharmacy and talk to a pharmacist or go to a doctor’s office and talk to their doctor.
So, I wanted to use my platform to be able to give you information that you are then able to talk to your pharmacist or doctor when you see them. And so, this past year, I took a risk and I’m now doing content creation full-time. Am I scared to death? 1,000%. But it’s been amazing to be able to work with brands that I talk about all the time and to be able to make this a career without having you guys buy anything.
Then as a bonus, because of my background working in the skincare industry, I am now an adjunct professor at the University of Rhode Island teaching a full three credit course about overthe-c counter skincare.
So, I hope by doing that it’s going to show other skincare companies like L’Oreal that they need to have a pharmacist within their company because let’s be honest, pharmacists are making over 400 million topical recommendations.
And we are such a huge driver when it comes to sales. Because for my own community pharmacy experience, I know that when I recommend something, nine times out of 10, the patient is going to pick up that same exact product that I recommend because as a reminder, we do not make money off of any product a patient is picking up. We are truly actually trying to help our patients out.
