Egyptian interning at local pharmacy

By Staff | May 13, 2015

Fady Yassa

A young man who is from Cairo, Egypt, is enjoying an internship learning to be a pharmacist at The Medicine Shoppe in Lehigh Acres. He works Wednesdays and Thursdays.

He’s Fady Yassa, 25, who says has always had a passion for chemistry and it was his favorite subject in high school.

“I also like helping people with their daily lives so I decided to go to pharmacy school. I studied at the German University in Cairo for five years where I graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy and biotechnology,” Yassa said.

He said he worked for a few months back in Egypt in a community pharmacy and in a pharmaceutical company what most of the Egyptian pharmacists end up doing.

“They should start by working as medical representatives for a certain medication where they try to persuade prescribers and pharmacies to see that medication.

MEL TOADVINE Fady Yassa, left, and Pharmacist Abed Aryan are shown preparing to fill a prescription at The Medicine Shoppe where Yassa is an internist.

“In my opinion, it is just a sales person’s job so I did not like it at all because it was simply not what I wanted to do when I decided to enroll in pharmacy school. A little after that I started studying for the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Equivalency Exam from the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy,” he said.

That is a first step for licensure as a registered pharmacist in any state in the U.S.

Yassa said he came to Florida in April 2013 and took his exam and “thankfully passed at the first try.”

Then upon the completion of that exam and the necessary requirement, he applied for the Pharmacist Inter License from the Dept. of Health.

As a foreign pharmacy graduate and a recent immigrant, Yassa said it was hard for him to find an internship for several reasons. First being is that he did not have any experience working in the U. S. which is not a good thing for any employee to have, he said.

“Second, big pharmacy chains do not wish to hire foreign pharmacy graduates because they require a lot of internship hours with higher pay grade than pharmacy technicians. This does not satisfy the chain pharmacies’ budgets as quoted by several pharmacy supervisors who had interviewed him, he said.

The State of Florida requires a total of 2,080 internship hours for foreign pharmacy graduates before they can sit and take the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination and Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination which are the last things to be a licensed pharmacist.

Yassa said he loves it in Lehigh Acres and has found the people friendly. He was able to meet with Abed Aryan, a registered pharmacist and owner of the Medicine Shoppe pharmacy in Lehigh. The pharmacy is located in the Lehigh Towne Centre on the corner of Alabama and Homestead roads. It has a drive-thru for pick up and leaving prescriptions.

“I explained to him my situation and he decided to help. I started in July of 2014 learning from the bottom the rules of the game beginning with point of sales skills, customer service, all the way up to the full duties of a pharmacist.”

Yassa said that along with The Medicine Shoppe’s team of skilled pharmacy technicians that they taught him everything that he knows now.

“Being a pharmacist is not an easy task. It requires a lot of knowledge concerning drugs as well as top notch communication skills with patients which ensues their adherence to their medications and better health outcomes.

“Little by little, I started building my knowledge and experience and after talking with another pharmacist who suggested to me to try the hospital setting. I applied to volunteer at the inpatient pharmacy at the Cape Coral hospital where they serve hospitalized patients,” he said.

But Yassa said it was a whole different world from retail or a community pharmacy setting, but it expanded his knowledge in a big way.

The young man now works the counter and helps in the filling of prescriptions with Abed Aryan, Medicine Shoppe’s owner for around 15 years. He has considerable knowledge of the different medications and what they can do to help, if asked by a customer.

“He is learning very fast and he is very professional. He understands the system very well. He is a good asset to the professionalism of being a pharmacist and I could possibly offer him a job after his internship is finished,” Medicine Shoppe owner Aryan said.

The internist says his mother and father still live in Germany and they are planning a visit to the U.S. and to Florida this summer. Fady is an only child.

He has come to like Florida and said he is planning on staying in Florida.

“After living here for two years, I must say I really enjoy it. Currently, I am working on my hours and studying so that I can take the licensure exam to pursue my goal of becoming a registered pharmacist in the State of Florida and hopefully maybe Lehigh Acres.”

The Medicine Shoppe is open five days a week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The pharmacy can prepare prescriptions in a short time if a customer can wait, instead of standing in line like some of the larger pharmacies in Lehigh.

Fady Yassa says he is eager to meet Medicine Shoppe’s customers and future ones, too.

If you want to meet him, be sure to bring your prescriptions and have your physician send them to The Medicine Shoppe. Remember, the young internist is only there on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Those who know him say he is a professional all the way and a great young man to get to know.

: MEL TOADVINE Fady Yassa, left, and Pharmacist Abed Aryan are shown preparing to fill a prescription at The Medicine Shoppe where Yassa is an internist.