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I am about to graduate with a Biochemistry degree from a "top" liberal arts college this May and am trying to decide what I should do in the long-term afterward. I have always been interested in healthcare, and particularly with my background, drugs and their effects on humans. I am going to be shadowing both some hospital (clinical) and retail pharmacists this summer but then will have to decide if I want to apply for 2016 matriculation and take the entrance exam soon after. I have been reading that there is somewhat of a disaster in the field and that far too many new schools have opened up and existing programs have expanded and that the job market has and will continue to tighten. On the other hand, I have family members in the industry that claim that while there is a problem, the people who work hard and go to good programs still have good job prospects. I would much prefer to work in clinical pharmacy because it would be challenging work and not the drudgery that I have retail described as, but I would assume that everyone does and so the competition will be stiffer. For some background, I am 22 years old and I will graduate with 18,000 in federal subsidized loans. They have an interest rate of 4% but which will have their interest paid for while I am continuing my education (including graduate studies) and about the same amount in stocks that my family bought for me when I was born. I have no other debt. I am hoping to then go to a good state school, potentially deferring enrollment to gain residency to reduce the price, and minimize debt overall. Basically the question boils down to whether or not 4 years of school, plus a year or two of residency, and about 80k in tuition alone is worth it to be a pharmacist. If there are still good jobs when I finish then I think it will be worth it and that I will enjoy it, but am worried that I will graduate with a meaningless piece of paper. I am hopeful that I can beat the odds because I will be avoiding recent schools that are obviously diploma mills. The reason I am hesitant to just get a job for the next few years is that I have been doing Inorganic Chemistry research at my school for almost 2 years and I know I am not particularly interested in bench-top work and would really prefer to work with people. There is also a bit of time-crunch because my mother has failing health and at some point I will have to be her primary financial support along with my twin, and so finishing a professional degree earlier would be preferable. I would also be interested in hearing from new pharmacists or people in school about their experiences and concerns about the industry. OrangeOrbit fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 19, 2015 21:28
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I'm a biochemist, my girlfriend is a pharmacist. She has incredible job prospects because, as you correctly heard, it comes entirely down to how hard you want to work. She wants to work clinical at a VA and had 5-6 interviews with 2 possibly 3 job offers out of those. And that's only applying to VA's in a particular region of the east coast. The massive signing bonuses of yore are no longer available. The most you could expect to get when you sign on is MAYBE 10k, in which case run like the wind because they're going to have you work some messed up hours to compensate. Gf's starting at location A is about 114k, location B is 130k. Salary is largely dictated by region you work in (living expenses etc) and amount of work/weird hours they want you to work (you WILL work weekends your first few years most likely). Yes places are pumping out bad pharmacists, but like most professions employers are able to see distinguished schools and hire accordingly. I don't think pharmacy is in as bad a place as law, nor will it ever be. If you do well you should have no problems getting a job right out of school. Residencies are also required at this point if you want to do clinical so steel yourself for that. Speaking from my biochemistry side, I got a job out of school doing analytical research. If you aren't concerned about making massive stacks of cash it owns pretty hard sometimes, but from the sounds of it you're primarily money focused so go with what drives you I guess. OrangeOrbit posted:I will graduate with between a 3.50-3.55 and can expect to test well on the PCAT since my identical twin brother (we have always tested about the same) scored ridiculously highly on the MCAT.  okay bud
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Apr 23, 2015 21:30
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Thanks. Looking back, I realize that that was a fairly douchey thing to say and didn't really add much to my question. What kind of hours is your GF working? Even if the hours are odd, are they still around 40-50 hours a week? And while I know that she doesn't have much experience working yet, does she think that she will enjoy the job? I have largely heard from older pharmacists in hospitals that they love their jobs, but haven't had the opportunity to talk to many younger ones yet.
OrangeOrbit fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 12:46
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Short answer, you're probably not going to work in clinical pharmacy until you're nearly thirty or decide to move to the rural United States. Long effort post coming after I get off work done I can't really do it on my phone.
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Apr 24, 2015 12:56
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Let me ask you a question (I don't really know much about pharmacists and I'm assuming you're talking about the person in charge at the pharmacy at Costco and poo poo like that not a clinical pharmacist): Why can't a robot do the job of a pharmacist just as easily if not better than humans? Do pharmacists have MDs or is it a different degree? If it's a different degree, do you really 4 years of school and another year or two of residency is worth it just to be a pharmacist?
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Apr 29, 2015 21:14
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Moridin920 posted:Why can't a robot do the job of a pharmacist just as easily if not better than humans? They already do for the most part. In many pharmacies there is a machine actually counting the Scheduled drugs.
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May 1, 2015 21:45
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Moridin920 posted:Let me ask you a question (I don't really know much about pharmacists and I'm assuming you're talking about the person in charge at the pharmacy at Costco and poo poo like that not a clinical pharmacist): It's mainly because pharmacists have other responsibilities such as interacting with customers/medical staff and providing some medical advice. For your other questions, they don't have a MD but it has pretty demanding requirements such as 8 years of school, practical hands-on training and also certification requirements: http://www.learnhowtobecome.org/pharmacist/ Basically there's a good reason why the starting salary is 6 figures since it's quite the time investment.
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May 2, 2015 18:51
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Moridin920 posted:Let me ask you a question (I don't really know much about pharmacists and I'm assuming you're talking about the person in charge at the pharmacy at Costco and poo poo like that not a clinical pharmacist): I'm a clinical pharmacist, so I can't speak entirely for the retail guys, but the actual act of putting pills in a bottle is only one small part of the profession. There are a lot of things happening behind the scene that a customer or patient would never be aware of, and this requires the judgement and knowledge of a well-trained professional.
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May 8, 2015 15:15
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I think the question of whether or not to go to pharmacy school is a difficult one to answer, because no one really knows where the profession will be in 5-8 years, or how dramatically the large number of graduates from new schools will impact the job market. There are very few degrees where you're guaranteed to come out of school with a job that pays 6 figures, and pharmacy has been one of the only ones I can think of for the past decade (and still is today.) There are many who question whether this will continue to be the case as the shortage is resolved and a potential surplus of pharmacists begins to grow, and there are also many current pharmacists who are unhappy with the demands of the profession (mostly retail pharmacy) - I think those are the two perspectives that tend to support the "stay far away!" arguments that you'll hear so much. But as it stands today, there are very few alternative degrees which provide such a strong opportunity to secure a well-paying job. Most people tend to point to computer science, engineering, physician's assistant programs, or medical/dental school as the primary alternatives, and if you are enthusiastic about one of those paths, then you may get more certainty or satisfaction from going that route. If not, pharmacy is still a fairly rigorous STEM degree that opens a lot of highly-paid doors to graduates. As a best case scenario for the field, lots of academics talk about health care provider status and medication therapy management sweeping through the profession and making a pharmacist's role much more clinical and almost unrecognizable from the pill-counting role that a lot of people currently think of for a pharmacist. This would require a lot more time from pharmacists and would create a lot more well-paid positions, in addition to shifting responsibilities to be much more patient-care focused and potentially rewarding for those in practice. For my own part, I think this is unrealistic since the economics of health care do not really support a strong need for a dedicated medication therapy role for the vast population of patients. There are high-need patient populations that benefit tremendously from this sort of attention (diabetes, transplant, oncology, anticoagulation, etc.) and this is exactly the role that many clinical pharmacists fill today. I would expect demand for those clinical roles to continue to expand in the coming years, but that is far from the promise of every pharmacist providing clinical care and services to their patients. No one really knows what will happen in the future, so I'm just making my best guess like everyone else, but I think if you're getting into pharmacy to be on the leading edge of the transformation of the profession, or if you're hand waving away the tightening job market because any day now the demand for pharmacists will increase by 20%, then you're counting on a very unrealistic outlook. As a counter, in a worst case scenario, pharmacist positions stay just as they are today, but an ever-increasing number of graduates from an ever-increasing number of pharmacy schools quickly fill them, and efforts by employers to lower costs and increase efficiency (see: robotics) will further decrease the number of positions available. Many pharmacists will graduate without a job, and a surplus of willing-to-work pharmacists will bring salaries down for those that do have positions. The job market is already tightening, and there's no reason to think that this won't continue. Students continue to enroll in pharmacy programs just to chase a big pay check, and schools continue to expand their programs to take advantage of more tuition-paying students. In time this will all even out, but it will take years for it to happen, and those jumping into programs now will be the worst off for it. In my opinion the reality is somewhere between these two. I don't think we'll see a total overhaul of pharmacy that creates a tremendous number of new jobs and brings another pay-raising shortage to the profession. But I don't think it will be a dire wasteland where there are no jobs to be found and PharmDs are pouring coffee at Starbucks. More likely we'll see the job market get tighter and tighter as more and more grads come out, and the best jobs will be limited to the best graduates - as with most every other job market. We will no longer enjoy 100% job placement rates and students who do poorly at exceedingly mediocre schools will have a hard time finding a position. But pharmacists have a tremendously valuable knowledge base for nearly any area of health care. There is a huge number of roles that cannot legally be filled by anyone but a licensed pharmacist, and there is an even larger number of roles where pharmacists are very well suited because of their extensive knowledge of health care and human physiology, which makes them very capable health care generalists. If you are enthusiastic about the field and really want to be a pharmacist, then don't let dire predictions or other people's misery scare you away - there will continue to be good, very well-paying jobs for good people*. If you're just trying to pick a sure-thing degree that will net you six-figures as long as you can scrape by a school's minimum requirements, then there are likely much safer options to pursue. *Note: If you are enthusiastic about the profession of pharmacy and are sure that it's what you want to pursue, there are still two very important pitfalls to avoid: 1. Don't go to a garbage school. As the job market tightens in the future, you'll do yourself a favor by having a degree from somewhere that is not seen as a bottom of the barrel degree mill. I would avoid any school that tends to fall below 90% on this list: http://www.nabp.net/system/rich/rich_files/rich_files/000/000/813/original/naplexschoolwebsitedata2014.pdf 2. Minimize your debt. This is true for any college degree, but don't fall into the trap of "whatever school costs is worth it, because I'll be making bank when I graduate." Keep your loans as low as possible and if you'll need to take on $300,000 of debt to graduate, then the risk/benefit for a pharmacy degree starts to look much less positive.
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May 8, 2015 20:17
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Wow, thanks for the super indepth post. It pretty much sums up what I've read for both the best and worst case scenarios and gives me a lot to think about. I am always interested to hear other people's thought, but this was exactly what I was looking for!
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May 9, 2015 18:13
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etalian posted:It's mainly because pharmacists have other responsibilities such as interacting with customers/medical staff and providing some medical advice. Except that's not how compensation works, just ask the law thread. The 6 figure salary is because there was a huge glut of workers at the same time there was a huge surge in demand from baby boomers. This produces a rubber band effect, the field looks great until all of a sudden the jobs vanish and pay plummets because they can hire a fresh grad (of which there will be plenty) for half the cost doing the same thing. This also ties in to a lot of the field being taken over by computers, not only for counting but also for interactions and even things like communication between doctors. Doctors have been fairly good about limiting how many new doctors there can be each year, but there's been no such limitations on new pharm students. OP: A masters in biostats or epidemiology would be a million times less stressful for a shiton more jobs at the same or higher pay. Not only that but you'd actually have a much better chance doing the things you want to do- even if you make it through pharmacy there's a large chance to be stuck in the local CVS rather than working on the clinical side. A PhD in biostat would take the same amount of time and essentially guarantee you could do so almost immediately, or a MS with a couple years under your belt. Best of all any good school will pay for your MS or PhD + a significant stipend. You could also consider joint programs like Comp Bio and bioinformatics- some schools have pretty fun combo programs that combine a lot of your interests. Again- gently caress paying for school when there's tons of options available where they pay you.
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May 9, 2015 18:34
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You did a great job but I would like to mention that the worst case scenario has already occurred in the more desirable parts of the country especially the bay area. My wife is a UCSF pharmacy graduate with residency plus 8 years of clinical/retail work. Her old job was hospital while she worked retail on the weekends. She had quit her old job in the bay area to come with me on a gap year. It took her 6 months to get a new job and still had to take a 25% pay cut. Her very depressing job hunt occured in late 2012 and early 2013. I think the job prospects here are even worse now. In addition to making sure you go to a decent school and minimizing debt, think seriously about where you plan on working.
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May 10, 2015 19:42
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In addition to what some_weird_kid said, location matters a lot. When I graduated from pharmacy school four years ago, there were no job available for new graduates where I wanted to work: Chicago and St. Louis. I ended up moving to a small city in Indiana where the demand still outstripped supply. If you look at states with few pharmacy schools, there will still be a demand for pharmacists, but will you be willing to move there? I was offered $10,000 to move to Mississippi. I passed because I didn't want to live in rural Mississippi and I would be the only Asian probably within 100 miles of the place. Take a look at the link some_weird_kid provided. Pay close attention to the states those pharmacy schools are located in. When I first applied for pharmacy school, there were only two in the entire state of Illinois. Six years later, Illinois had six pharmacy schools and five are located in the Chicagoland area. Those schools graduated 533 pharmacists last year. There is no way the area can support that many new graduates every year and I guarantee the majority of them will be looking for positions out of state. Also, consider your career path. If you are satisfied with retail pharmacy, you will likely not need a residency (with a few exceptions) and you have a much better job placement than pharmacists who wish to pursue clinical routes. If you want to practice clinical pharmacy, nearly every position nowadays requires a residency and if you want to specialize in something like oncology or pediatrics, that is an additional year of residency. As mentioned earlier, you will be looking at four years of education for pharmacy already and another one to two years of residency which pays a fraction of the six figures thrown around (plan on earning $50K at most). I had several classmates who thought about residency, but the student loan debt was too much to take a reduced salary for two years. That doesn't include the Match, which is very similar to what medical students undergo. Last year for first-year residencies alone, there were 3081 positions and 4358 applicants. The odds are stacked against you if you want a residency and the shortage of positions is a consistent problem year after year. Check this link if you want to see previous years: https://www.natmatch.com/ashprmp/aboutstats.html Finally, I'm going to echo the student loan debt. I graduated with a student loan burden of about $110K and that was BELOW average for my graduating class. The average student loan debt of my graduating class was $125K and I personally knew some who had $160K. If you're going to take on a ton of debt with this, like others said, make sure you REALLY think it through.
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May 11, 2015 13:32
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