Multimedia Reporting (Fred-Musser)

It was 5:30 p.m. when Richard Dixon cracked open a Starbucks double shot espresso. “At least I get 20 percent off the retail price,” Dixon said.
Dixon, a CVS pharmacist, had just received his second call in two weeks to work a double shift from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. “These things are miracle workers,” Dixon said, pointing to the Starbucks can. “Two of these and I’ll be wide awake.” Dixon has been regularly logging overtime hours for a year now, trying to combat the pharmacist shortage that plagues America.
When evaluating the pharmacy industry, the Aggregated Demand Index (ADI), which shows the difficulty in filling open jobs, gave five states its highest score of five and 39 other states a score of more than four. The target ADI rating is a two, which indicates a balance between job openings and qualified candidates.

The pharmacist shortage in Kansas according to the ADI is currently at 4.5 and on the rise. In Kansas specifically, the lack of pharmacists is more likely to get worse before it gets better, Kenneth Audus, dean of the school of pharmacy at KU said.
“More than one-third of pharmacists in the state are older than 50, meaning there could potentially be a large drop-off of pharmacists in the next 10 years,” Audus said.
But the question that experts are now asking themselves is why?
“Part of it is hard for me to understand,” Audus said. “For the most part, pharmacists are paid well and well respected by a majority of the population.”
But not all pharmacists would agree with Audus. Some pharmacists say they feel disrespected, especially in the large chain drug stores, Dixon said.
“I mean, yes, I get paid better than probably 90 percent of people, but what made a lot of pharmacists mad was when this shortage started and the chains would offer kids right out of college more money then they were paying us for the same job. That’s a big slap in the face,” Dixon said.
Jimmy Wong, a pharmacist who used to work for CVS pharmacy, the nation’s largest pharmacy chain, cites the company itself as his reason for leaving the profession.
“The guys who run this company just don’t get it. They don’t even have pharmacy degrees and they want to tell me how to fill prescriptions and how long it should take me to do it,” Wong said.

Wong said he liked his job and the interaction with the customers on a personal level, but in the end, he felt the company was trying to steer him toward filling more prescriptions and spending less time with the customers, which led him to resign.
“I don’t think that’s the way a pharmacy should be run. These people in some sense trust me with their lives, which means there should be some personal connection there, not just me handing them a bottle of medication,” Wong said.
The problems Wong cited are what the customer can come to expect from a pharmacist shortage: less service. The target wait time for a prescription at the two largest pharmacy chains, CVS and Walgreen’s, is 15 minutes.
“I can’t remember a time when the wait was that short,” Matt Sidorous, Overland Park junior said. “I normally just end up leaving and coming back because it’s over an hour wait time.”
According to “Pharmacy Today” fifteen minutes is the average time a pharmacist has to fill a prescription. By 2012 that time is expected to drop to three minutes. This is because of an expected increase of 3.7 billion in the number of prescriptions filled annually.
“That number is really scary,” Dixon said. “Patients need to be counseled on their medications. Especially today, when most people take more than one prescription daily.”
The 2012 projection doesn’t take into account the shortage that some believe will get worse before it get better.
Adding to the overall shortage is an education shortage. The number of pharmacy schools and pharmacy graduates has gone up in recent years, but the average degree time is six years and only 60 percent of graduates will go into a retail pharmacy. To put that in better terms, there are approximately 100 students who will graduate from KU’s pharmacy school this year, 60 of which will go into a retail pharmacy. That’s less than 2 percent of Kansas pharmacists and projections by the ADI show that the state will lose roughly 4 percent this coming year.
Another part of the education equation that may be misleading is the fact that 70 percent of pharmacy students in the nation are female. “Females more often than males chose to work part time because of the expectations society has for them,” Audus said. “Pharmacy is a good career in that aspect. You can still make plenty of money but still have time to raise a family.”
Pharmacies are desperately trying to slow down the shortage, which make it a good time to be a pharmacist, financially speaking. Walgreen’s is offering up to $70,000 sign-on bonus for pharmacists who say they will work two years with the company. On top of that, the average salary nationally for pharmacists is $104,300. Still, the shortage remains.
“I think it’s the stress. There are a lot of medications that need to be filled and filled correctly and when you have big companies telling you it has to be done so fast…” Dixon said, pausing, “Fast and correct don’t always go together.”
Dixon looks at the clock, it is 6 p.m. His second shift has started. Because of the shortage, he hasn’t been able to take a vacation in two years.
He has promised his kids a vacation, but as of yet, he has no sign of when he’ll be able to take it.
“I told my kids I’d take them to Disney World,” Dixon said.

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Over the river and through the woods to your local grocery store? It may not sound right but over 53 percent of Americans ordered out at least part of their Thanksgiving meal in 2005 according to the National Restaurant Association. It’s not the way your Grandma did Thanksgiving but today consumers have a cornucopia of options when it comes to ordering out Thanksgiving dinner.

The Thanksgiving dinner business is not a new concept but recently the market has grown rapidly. “I’ve been in food service for over 25 years and have been in some one else’s kitchen on every Thanksgiving,” Norma Farrell of the National Turkey Federation said. “But there is no doubt that people today aren’t as keen on making their own meal as the generation before them.”

Lawrence is no exception to the trend of take out Thanksgiving meals. The Hy-Vee Supermarket on 6th street sold the second most pre made Thanksgiving dinners out of the Kansas City market which includes the Missouri and Kansas sides. The store sold over 150 dinners last year and is expecting a steady increase this year Ken Warren, kitchen manager said. The National Restaurant Association is predicting a 5 to 6 percent increase in the purchase of pre-made dinners this holiday season.

Hy-Vee isn’t the only store offering pre made dinners, Dillons also offers several options as well. “Besides people who decided to make their own meals I would say Dillons is our biggest competition on a local basis,” Warren said. The Hy-Vee traditional turkey dinner which costs $55.95 and features a 12lbs turkey and four side dishes feeds up to eight people and the Dillons 12lbs turkey is $39.95 but doesn’t feature any sides.

Experts say the pre made dinner market is just an extension of the convenience trend in American business. “The reason for this trend is that time is more valuable than ever before,” Jeff Lenard, Director of Communications for the national Association of Convenience Stores said. “People are working longer hours, in more traffic, doing more things, and if you simplify their lives they will reward you with their business.”

The largest demographic in the pre made dinner market is young adults ages 25 to 35. The people buying these dinners are a generation raised on the food network idea that every meal can be done in 15 minutes Farrell said. “Each generation the meal preparation time gets cut in half,” Farrell said. “My mom made everything from scratch, I make things using some mixes, and my daughter just picks hers up from the store.”
Another reason for the popularity of pre made meals is that people’s cooking knowledge has decreased over the years. “This younger demographic isn’t as experienced in the kitchen but that still doesn’t change the fact that people still expect certain things on the table come Thanksgiving,” Warren said. “That’s where pre made meals come in a lot of times.”

Ordering a pre made meal will inevitably cut down heavily on the time that a host or hostess has to spend preparing for the holiday. Cooking everything on your own takes at least eight hours and will only save you about $20, Warren said. Pre made dinners only take two hours maximum to heat. “We ordered a dinner three years ago because me and my wife both had to work on the holiday and it was good so we have continued to order one every year since,” Jimmy Wong, Hy-Vee customer said.

At what cost do pre made dinners come to a holiday rich in tradition and based solely on the meal? Not much according to the consumer and the vendor. “It just gives us more time as family and friends and less to worry about,” Wong said. Warren said “Thanksgiving is all about honoring our American lifestyle and tradition which includes us being a capitalist society based on business.”

It might be alarming to some people that Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t made by Grandma but more than 50 percent of money spent on food is spent on eating out Warren said. Some people won’t be alarmed at all though, according to a survey done by the National Restaurant Association one out of five people take credit for their pre made meal as their own.

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University of Kansas researchers say a recent Yale University study, which claims high amounts of testosterone can lead to memory loss, may be misleading. The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, states that elevated concentrations of testosterone can have lethal effects on brain cells. Yale researchers said androgens, found in testosterone and all steroids, can trigger a programmed cell death known as apoptosis.

KU researchers are hesitant to fully accept the results produced by the study and worry that its data might give people a wrong impression.
KU researchers are concerned that the public will take the results of the study out of context.
“The study used massive amounts of testosterone that would be almost impossible to create in the human body,” said Michael Prewitt, health and exercise graduate teaching assistant. “Someone would practically have to eat meals of steroids to get that much testosterone, which is what people won’t realize by reading the study.”
The study used three different strengths of testosterone doses on the brain cells. The lowest dose is approximately 1,000 times the amount of testosterone in an average male and the highest dose is approximately more than 100,000 times.

The study shows that only the large amount of testosterone caused significant cell death. Cell death is natural and happens to about one out of every 10,000 cells daily in average humans according to Erik Floor, professor in neurobiology at KU.
“Programmed cell death happens when something is dysfunctional within the cell like a virus. The cell chews itself up and disposes of itself without the knowledge of other cells,” said Floor. “It’s like a mafia hit, it happens quickly and is low key not disturbing anything,”
Floor said it would take an exponential increase in apoptosis to have a significant effect on memory loss.
KU researchers say problems with the study don’t stop there. The study was done in vitro, meaning it was done outside the body and doesn’t take into account whether this would be possible in reality. Once a steroid enters the body it has a direct effect on the cells around it, then it passes through the liver where it could possibly be diluted said Prewitt. The testosterone would have another obstacle before reaching the brain cells, the blood brain barrier.
“The blood brain barrier is like a very selective bouncer at a bar. It will only let in things that are good for the brain,” said Prewitt. There is no quantitative data from studies that shows testosterone administration to the brain said Prewitt.
Another thing that KU researchers say the study doesn’t discuss is the fact that only 0.5 to 2 percent of testosterone is free within the body.
“About 99 percent of a person’s testosterone is bound to specific places in the body,” said Prewitt. This includes testosterone that is taken via steroids, the percentage that goes free stays fixed at 2 percent of the total testosterone, making it harder to raise the testosterone level to the amount used in the study.
It is unlikely that an in vivo, in body, study will be done because of patient rights. But testing in rats and decreasing the amounts of testosterone to realistic levels would be the next step according to Floor.
“Rats have the same blood brain barrier as humans so testing them would allow us to see if testosterone could actual reach the brain,” said Floor.
KU researchers are quick to point out that without an in vivo study results don’t mean much.

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