PharmD Grad Transitions to Manager Role
Drive to Serve Others Leads Alumna Back to Core of Her Beliefs
Dr. Rizza Alcaria spent the first decade of her career serving in corporate retail pharmacy before joining a fellow alum to manage one of his independent local pharmacies – and in doing so has returned to Vallejo to serve others.
Alcaria, PharmD Class of 2014, said her experiences as a student at Touro – extracurricular activities such as being involved in clinics, helping with blood screenings, glucose testing, and immunizations – led her to service as a community-level pharmacist.
She has always been attracted to what independent pharmacies offer: a more human-based approach that was instilled in her during her time at Touro. That approach, she said, “really connected with my values in terms of just serving the community.”
Pharmacy Practice Evolves at Community Level
Alcaria serves as the Pharmacy Manager at Central Pharmacy in Vallejo. She said she’s seen the business of pharmacy shifting with the advent of artificial intelligence and other technologies, as well as the patient base shifting to mail-order pharmacies and massive corporate enterprises – and away from a community base.
“But I’ve always seen the trend of those patients going to try that out and coming back to the community pharmacy and I think it’s because of that connection with a pharmacist and the community here, having that interaction and knowing my patients on a first-name basis,” Alcaria said. “I think that human connection is a lot that’s missing and so I feel like, yeah, even though pharmacy is going out in technology and expanding out that way, I feel like that core of community pharmacy is still going to be here, and it’s still going to be thriving.”
That’s happening during a time of transition for community pharmacists, who are now able to provide more services than their counterparts from previous generations were allowed to provide. Pharmacists today provide vaccines, for example, which placed them on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alcaria and the owner of Central Pharmacy, Dr. Richie Dueñas, College of Pharmacy PharmD Class of 2009, are in the process of reaching out to the community to offer various health screenings as a means of connecting, to say, “Hey, we’re here,” she said. “If you need a pharmacist that you want to get in contact with, that you can know on a first-name basis, we’re here.”
The initiative extends to offering medication reconciliation services: Talking to patients about their medications, how they’re taking them, if they’re experiencing any side effects, any interventions that the pharmacist can make with doctors to improve patient outcomes.
Alcaria said medication reconciliation “is a really big thing that we’re trying to push out in the community, to know that we not only dispense medications but we do more than that.”
Alums Stand Out as Pharmacy Manager Candidates
Dueñas is a licensed pharmacist and CEO of three independent pharmacies. He said Alcaria and another program alumna, Dr. Erica Gray, Dual PharmD-MPH Class of 2023, stood out as he searched for candidates to manage two of his locations.
“During the hiring process, the differences were striking in the quality of candidates that they were,” Dueñas said. “I think what stood out to me was kind of a type of grit and empathy that I wasn’t seeing with other pharmacists. And that aligned with what was going on with us.”