The Dose by Dr. Thea Blystone 🔈

When pharmacy stops feeling like yours, it looks like you only have two doors: endure it, or leave it entirely. Another certification that doesn’t fix the feeling — or throwing out everything you built.

In this episode, I make the case for a third door most of us were never shown — and I get honest about the eight kinds of pharmacy I worked before I stopped trying to survive inside the box and started blowing holes in it.

In this episode:

* Why “endure it” and “exit altogether” are both the wrong door

* The area-rug fringe — and why stepping toward the unknown isn’t stepping off a ledge

* “For what? I already have a doctorate.” — the question that changed everything

* 300,000 pharmacists, 250 patients each, and the Medicare patients waiting for us right now

This one’s for anyone — in pharmacy or not — who’s ever felt stuck between staying miserable and starting over. You’ve never failed you. Don’t start doubting the floor now.

New episodes of The Dose every Monday 🎧 → https://theablystone.substack.com/subscribe?params=%5Bobject%20Object%5D

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

You’ve heard how I started. You’ve heard why I started. But I’ve never told you about the eight years in between — the part that almost didn’t work. The part that, honestly, is still hard.

That’s what this episode is.

I recorded it with my hair up, gross after a physical therapy session for my hip, still very much in the thick of it — still reaching out to providers, still enrolling patients, still hiring, still answering every email and text myself. Not because I have it all figured out. Because I don’t. I’m halfway up the mountain, same as you.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe about that middle: the slow part is the normal part. We scroll everyone else’s highlight reels and decide our own pace means we’re failing. It doesn’t. When it gets hard and you think I can’t make it — you’re not wrong that it’s hard. You’re just wrong about what the hardness means. It’s not a sign you weren’t built for this. It’s a sign you’re growing.

I almost gave up at 24 months. One-more-time’d my way through it. And I can tell you from five feet past that point: the middle is messy, it’s lonely, and it’s worth it — and you don’t have to climb it alone.

This one’s a little rawer than usual. I’m leaving it exactly as it came out. 🎧 Listen to The Messy Middle

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we address the growing crisis of “broken” pharmacists—those feeling the crushing weight of student debt, the fatigue of volume-based metrics, and the deep regret of a profession that no longer aligns with the care they were trained to provide.I talk about the recent personal experience of being silenced in professional forums and issues a defiant call to action: Do not put your hand down. While the system—built on insurance rejects and billing stars—may be broken, you are not. We explore how to move beyond the “box of pharmacy” to rediscover your value as a doctorate-level professional in a world that needs your expertise more than ever.Stop groaning in the shadows and start raising your hand for a brighter, more valued future in pharmacy

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

Two weeks after we launched a Google Form — no website, no ad spend, no marketing team — over 190 pharmacists from across the country raised their hand and said: I want in. 70% of them weren’t even ASCP members. That tells you everything about the hunger. The Innovative Pharmacist Alliance is where pharmacists who refuse to settle are gathering. The future of pharmacy is as bright as the pharmacist representing it.

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

I run two businesses. And they exist for the same reason — an oath I took in a white coat that I refuse to let die. Tendco Health is what most people don’t see. PIVOT is what you see. But I will never not have both — because you can’t teach what you don’t do. Proven practice over theory. That’s not a tagline. It’s my promise.

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

Every pharmacist who calls me wants to talk about money first. How much can I make? What are the billing codes? What’s the revenue per patient? And I always say the same thing — we’re not starting there. We’re starting with why. Layer 1 is money. Layer 2 is freedom. Layer 3 is time. But layers 5, 6, 7 — that’s where it gets real. When you hit the layer that makes you cry, that’s your fuel.

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

People ask me how I do it all. The honest answer is — I don’t do it all. I just do what matters, in the right order, at the right time. My workday is 10 to 3. I drive Cooper to hockey and Sofee to softball. I’m the bus-driver mom and I’m owning it. I built a six-figure consulting practice around my kids’ schedule — not because I’m special, but because the model allows it.

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

In 2016, I found the thing. And then I spent 24 months doing absolutely nothing about it. I discovered care management — CCM, RPM, programs that let pharmacists do what we actually know how to do. And the moment I found it, I knew. This is it. But knowing and doing are two very different things. Fear, imposter syndrome, no proof it was possible, no mentor to show me. What finally broke me out wasn’t confidence — it was desperation. And that first conversation changed everything.

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

My husband said something recently that stopped me in my tracks. He said pharmacy sounds like a spinning compass. And I thought — that’s exactly what it is. 8 different pharmacy jobs. Every one started with hope, ended with “this isn’t it either.” The common denominator wasn’t the setting — it was the model. 17 national pharmacy organizations and I still couldn’t find a home. The compass doesn’t stop spinning because you find the right job. It stops because you find the right structure.

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe

I knew I wanted to be a pharmacist when I was in 10th grade. What I thought that meant and what it actually turned out to be are two very different things. From shadowing a community pharmacist in Franklin to surviving pharmacy school at LECOM, from taking the oath to realizing I was spending 1% of every day doing actual patient care — this is where it started. And why the promise of pharmacy and the reality of pharmacy are two very different things.

Get full access to Prescribed Change at theablystone.substack.com/subscribe