As a Bath 2010 MPharm graduate who worked as a community Pharmacist, then as a Clinical Pharmacist before now working for a local CCG, I ended up at an unnamed Pharmacy school whilst it was doing one of it's tours to prospective students.
The information that was being presented to students was completely inaccurate regarding the current state of the job market, especially for newly qualified Pharmacists.
When I started as a fresher in 2006, the new Pharmacy NHS contract had just been introduced which shifted money away from dispensing and towards 'services', the idea being that Pharmacists would swoop in and take a huge amount of workload off the NHS. This was sold heavily to me as a student, and at the time I believed that Community Pharmacy (which is where most graduates end up, if you're reading this the odds are you will be working in a Boots rather than a hospital, and very, very unlikely to be 'industry'
would become an increasingly clinical environment.
That hasn't happened, and I've seen the growing realisation amongst the profession over the last 5 years that the future is not bright for Pharmacy as a whole. This culminated recently with this pretty stark bit of news -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35418556http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/views-from-the-nhs-frontline/2016/feb/01/pharmacists-meant-face-nhs-now-jobs-at-riskThe Government intends to close 25% of Community Pharmacies by 2020 (i.e. just when you'll be graduating). For a raft of reasons I wont get into unless anyone here asks, it's widely agreed that the vision of Pharmacy providing 'services' is now pretty much dead. Remote dispensing via robotics is almost certain to become the norm in the next two years (again, this is the governments stated plan for Pharmacy) and so the reality is likely to be 25% of Community Pharmacists unemployed by 2020, and quite probably a change in the law surrounding the 'Responsible Pharmacist' legislation to mean that in the 75% of remaining locations, a Pharmacist will no longer need to be present.
To cut to the point, I was interested to hear about the Pharmacy school member of staff would answer questions regarding the future of the profession. It's so uniformly bleak, with anyone who is able to fleeing the profession, and without a hint of the unity and determination shown by the BMA and junior doctors - that I felt sorry for this person who would have to try and address what I assumed would be some pretty tough questions about why anyone would invest £40,000 in a Pharmacy degree, only to graduate in 2020 and find themselves competing with people with a huge volume of experienced Pharmacists desperate for work.
I was shocked to say the least to hear her answer some fairly bland questions about the role of Pharmacists in the future with the same bland, vague promises of a 'clinical future' that I had heard 10 years ago, and which were now very much dispelled. I was even more staggered to hear some of the prospective students talking about how 'You'd start on £45k' (you wont, you'd start on £33k IF you got an offer after pre-reg at all. This is down from £40k 5 years ago when I graduated, which in turn was down from £44k when I signed up. Don't forget that with inflation salaries are supposed to INCREASE. Adjusted for inflation starting salaries for a graduate who has just finished pre-reg training have dropped 25%, thus was simply due to over supply from graduates alone, at a time when the number of Pharmacies opening was increasing rapidly. It will drop MUCH harder over the next 5 years)
Are you potential, future Pharmacists aware of the future of the profession you're investing so heavily into? Do you read websites like the Chemist and Druggist, where there are forums of current, practising Pharmacists, or is the only information any A-Level student has what they receive from a University prospectus? I don't want to alarm or upset anyone, if anything the unfortunate ones are people like me who started their careers at exactly the wrong time. Just as the profession was going over the precipice, just in time for us to start having financial obligations which make retraining much more difficult.
I can believe that someone might want to go into Pharmacy today despite having their eyes open to their likely career prospects. However you don't need to spend too long with most Pharmacy applicants until you get to the 'How much money do you earn?' question, and rightly so. It was something I was concerned with, I wanted the middle class lifestyle for my children that my parents offered me, and I imagine that was the desire of almost all of my peers. Pharmacist is unlikely to be a middle class profession by 2020 - everyone who is applying is at least aware of this projected future, right?