Poor Pharmacist Career Prospects? What do Universities tell you?

10 years is still too many for that job to demotivate you for life. If you actually want to lead a good life, get out of the profession even earlier, It will be the best decision you will take.

You have all the negative experiences and advice/options mentioned by me and everyone else, so not to act on it now would be unwise!

But then again, you're own boss

All I'm going to add is that it took me a year to find a pre-registration position (From winter 2014 to winter 2015), I applied to all the big chains and smaller chains, I also applied to hospital and out of the 4 pharmalife (hospital) applications I made I received 4 interviews (not to brag but this isn't common). Ultimately I didn't get hospital pre-reg however I managed to sort something out in community.

However the discussion point here is that it is supposedly easier to find a pre-reg position than it is for a normal pharmacist position, if it takes that long to obtain a training (pre-reg) post, where essentially you are doing 95% of what a pharmacist can do, imagine how hard it is to find stable work as a pharmacist?

Well thats a bit strange, in the last 4 months our uni has received SO many requests from independent pharmacies still looking for pre reg students for 2016 start.

So if you only applied to chains and not independents then yes you are not guaranteed a pre reg place. I would like to add, if you are ready to work in a small independent pharmacy then there are 100s of pre reg jobs available still.

Congratulations on getting the place in the end! Perhaps the unsuccessful hospital application was an indication of interview technique? I don't know you but perhaps this was the case seeing as you must have impressed on your application? Interview skills can be acquired by going to courses etc if future grads are worried by this. It's all an investment in your future really ... and it's a skill that will serve you well for life once you've mastered it!

As for the comment regarding numerous independent pharmacies advertising with universities.. While this is the case I am sure, if you were to project the salaries they are offering on this thread then it would look a considerably less promising prospect! I imagine they range largely from £14,000-£17,000 and most of them will be in London. Is this feasible for someone moving there in terms of living there? Out of principal should a pre reg applicant accept a salary less than that the GPHC pays the pharmacy to train them?

Interesting stuff but these posts are way too f*cking long can you please condense your replies ffs.

If you get a pre-reg, are you guys basically guaranteed a job? Surely that's a foot in the door.

Guaranteed a job with the company do you mean?. No I don't think you're *guaranteed* a job with them


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Correct, if you read most pre-registration contracts they will say that they cannot guarantee you a job after pre-reg.

My main point isn't the length of time it took to arrange a pre-reg placement but instead how competitive it will be once qualified, you're competing against 30,000+ pharmacists whilst at pre-reg you're competing against 3,000 maybe 4,000 at most.

10 years is still too many for that job to demotivate you for life. If you actually want to lead a good life, get out of the profession even earlier, It will be the best decision you will take.

You have all the negative experiences and advice/options mentioned by me and everyone else, so not to act on it now would be unwise!

But then again, you're own boss

Six years ago, I could not have known that the number of pharmacy schools would explode, that the GPhC would effectively sit on it's hands as graduates are churned out, and the government would move to close down a quarter of pharmacies. Had I have known that, I would not have dedicated 5 years of my life into a sinking ship.

I did not know that, but all of you prospective students do. You are all so lucky to have an advantage over people like me - that you can make an informed choice going in. If you want to pull wool over your eyes and take this thread as naysaying, fine, but I think you'd do well to heed the warning.

I am someone who is leaving the profession for the very reasons stated in the OP - standards in community pharmacy are being driven down by the day. What's more, I'm not the only one: I've met several other pharmacists who have quit and are trying to make a go at something else, be it starting a business, going back to uni, or teacher training. I've met more who are unsatisfied and want to leave. Truth is, a lot of my friends see pharmacy as a short-term career option whilst they save up some money. "I'll do pharmacy for a bit, but I'll move into something else sooner or later" OWTTE is something I've heard all too often.

Does this mean don't do pharmacy? Nope. What it means is don't be the ****ing idiot I was at the ripe old age of 17, applying for something because there was a job at the end and seeing it as being an overpaid shop assistant. The days of pharmacy being an easy way to a secure, well-paying job are over. I repeat: The days of pharmacy being an easy way to a secure, well-paying job are over. It is not the same for you as it was for me.

You might not get a pre-registration place, much less a job as a pharmacist. When I applied, there was an abundance of places to graduates, however, given that the number of schools have doubled in the past decade, I wouldn't be so sure. Honestly, I would go into this knowing you're spending £40,000+ with the risk you won't qualify.

Following on from that, we are heading face-first into oversaturation of the job market. In the past, you simply had to walk into a busy street, lightly mention under your breath you were a qualified pharmacist, and companies would be throwing locum work at your feet. That particular well - along with the overall job market - is fast drying up. I was promised high likelyhood of employment, with locuming as a stable back-up, but for you it may be very different. A lot can change in five years.

Money. It is a well-known dirty little secret that Pharmacist salaries are plummeting like lemmings off a cliff. People don't seem to be taking the OP seriously when he suggests getting a management role in Aldi, like it's a joke or something, but he actually makes a valid point. In Pharmacy, the concept of a 37.5 hour week is flying out the window. When you work as a pharmacist, you take full responsibility for the safe and effective running of the pharmacy - if something goes wrong, that means the buck starts and ends with you. Along with pharmacists becoming increasingly disposable by the minute, meaning big companies have less incentive to not overwork their staff, this means there is huge pressure to work overtime to make sure everything gets done - plus, you are expected to work through your lunch break, if the store requires it. When you adjust your pay to account for this, you aren't making that much more than a shop manager, yet you're the one taking on the huge personal and professional responsibility. Seriously, if something goes wrong, you are the person that the GPhC looks at (as far as I'm aware, fatal dispensing errors can still lead to the pharmacist being criminally prosecuted).

That said, I have also met people who are satisfied in pharmacy and truly suited to the job, future pitfalls and all - but that's the key distinction I think, the fact they are a pharmacist because they love the work, not because they love the starting salary. Before getting in, research what working in Pharmacy is like and then think long and hard about whether it's for you, especially in light of what you're being told here. The point isn't to stop people applying, it's to stop people applying without thinking it through properly first, making an uninformed choice because there was nobody to warn you. Like I - and many others - have done.

...also, can we can it with the 'you shouldn't be annoyed at shitty job prospects because aaaaallll graduates are in that boat' talk? Maintaining the work standard of healthcare professionals is something we should all be invested in, because poor working conditions have a knock-on effect on our health. At the end of the day, it's not really the pharmacists who will pay for these pharmacy cuts, it's the patients. A drop in pay means the brightest and most-able Pharmacists will simply retrain as something worth their time. A pharmacist who is overworked by having to check 5 walk-in prescriptions, meet weekly targets for MURs, deal with customers, and perform various other services on demand is a pharmacist who is more likely to make a mistake. When funding is cut to large chains, these companies will respond by simply cutting staffing hours - and Mrs Smith has had her delivery of tablets late for the third week in a row, simply because her local pharmacy has fallen behind and doesn't have the manpower to catch up. Oversaturation of the job market by opening schools indiscriminately - whilst refusing to offer the same protections granted to doctors and dentists - is a problem, because it will lead to standards being driven down, which feeds into everything that's been mentioned here.

Have you ever worked in hospital or in a more clinical environment? Will the downhill of pharmacy in community have an impact on hospital pharmacy? Can pharmacists just ease into a hospital or clinical pharmacist role?

Have you ever worked in hospital or in a more clinical environment? Will the downhill of pharmacy in community have an impact on hospital pharmacy? Can pharmacists just ease into a hospital or clinical pharmacist role?

Not a hospital pharmacist, no, but I do know people who went in that direction.

This is a generalization - and certainly not a hard and fast rule - but it's usually the high acheivers with a sincere love of the subject who find themselves working in hospitals, whereas it's those with the 'it's just a job' mindset drift towards community. Which, if you think about it, makes sense; in hospitals, pharmacists are actually utilized as professionals with clinical expertise. You're given the opportunity to specialize, learning more about one area in depth and applying that knowledge to practice. You need to be willing and motivated in order to succeed, and it can take years to really establish yourself, whereas with community you can get away more with treading water (I'll add that I've met some highly capable and dedicated community pharmacists - who seize every chance to learn with both hands - so it's not true of all of us, only a select few).

Yes, I think that the loss of funding to community will have a knock-on effect to hospitals, in so far as job demand will rise. If you're in pharmacy for the money, and the money alone, it makes no sense whatsoever to go into hospital when there are (better paying) community jobs to be had. However, if the number of avaliable jobs dries up, whilst the pay for those that remain falls, hospital work is going to look more and more lucrative, leading to even higher demand for already coveted hospital positions.

The good news is that I don't think the government is too bothered about cutting down 'in-house' pharmacy roles, it's more reducing how much the NHS spends privately contracting pharmacy services out - which offers less value for money. I could be wrong, and remember I am not an expert on government spending, but I haven't seen much to suggest that these budget cuts will be targeted at hospitals. I don't know what the future holds (if I did, we wouldn't be having this discussion ), but I don't see hospital pharmacy being wiped out any time soon.

Honestly? My posts aren't meant to deter those who are going into pharmacy for the right reasons, and if at the point of applying (or studying) you are sincerely considering hospital pharmacy, you probably are in that category - my posts are primarily aimed at people like me, who saw a well-paying job at the end and nothing else. I think it will be a lot harder to get into hospital roles than in previous years, and the days of being essentially guaranteed a job are over, but if you work hard, make sure you get as many placements as possible, and realize that succeeding in HP is a marathon, not a sprint, you'll be okay.

I think it's important to reiterate that it still is possible to succeed in pharmacy, even with impeding cuts, and that there are plenty of hard-working, caring and dedicated people out there fighting the good fight - both in hospital and community. However, you need to be 100% on board with the idea of being a pharmacist, and willing to put the legwork in, because it is an immense amount of work to qualify (I am not joking) - and yeah, in the past when that lead to a well-paying, secure job, you could argue it as being worth it, but now however? Now it could wind up being all for nothing. So think long and hard about it; don't be me.