I’m a band 6 rotational pharmacist in a hospital and I absolutely love my job!

I’ve seen a lot of negativity on this forum recently so I thought I’d spread a bit of positivity!

I did my MPharm at LJMU. I got a pre-registration place at a small(ish) NHS trust and then moved to a huge tertiary care centre for my rotational position.

I have since rotated through cardiology, admissions, surgery and the small community hospital my trust covers.

I also locum at our hospital outpatient’s pharmacy some evenings and weekends (5-9pm or 10am to 8pm) for over £20 an hour, I can’t disclose my exact hourly pay, but it’s more than £20 an hour.

I honestly love both aspects of my registration. My 8:30-5 job is spent with patients, doctors, nurses and consultants. And my locum job is just as fulfilling and I still communicate with patients and doctors.

My band 6 is currently £28,050 but I’m hoping to become a band 7 within 6 months which would see my pay increase to £37,000. This would put me more in line with my community colleagues and I’d still probably locum as I love to keep my hand in community pharmacy!

Any questions I am happy to answer, but I really just wanted to throw a stamp of positivity on the forum

I’ve seen a lot of negativity on this forum recently so I thought I’d spread a bit of positivity!

I did my MPharm at LJMU. I got a pre-registration place at a small(ish) NHS trust and then moved to a huge tertiary care centre for my rotational position.

I have since rotated through cardiology, admissions, surgery and the small community hospital my trust covers.

I also locum at our hospital outpatient’s pharmacy some evenings and weekends (5-9pm or 10am to 8pm) for over £20 an hour, I can’t disclose my exact hourly pay, but it’s more than £20 an hour.

I honestly love both aspects of my registration. My 8:30-5 job is spent with patients, doctors, nurses and consultants. And my locum job is just as fulfilling and I still communicate with patients and doctors.

My band 6 is currently £28,050 but I’m hoping to become a band 7 within 6 months which would see my pay increase to £37,000. This would put me more in line with my community colleagues and I’d still probably locum as I love to keep my hand in community pharmacy!

Any questions I am happy to answer, but I really just wanted to throw a stamp of positivity on the forum

I’ve seen a lot of negativity on this forum recently so I thought I’d spread a bit of positivity!

I did my MPharm at LJMU. I got a pre-registration place at a small(ish) NHS trust and then moved to a huge tertiary care centre for my rotational position.

I have since rotated through cardiology, admissions, surgery and the small community hospital my trust covers.

I also locum at our hospital outpatient’s pharmacy some evenings and weekends (5-9pm or 10am to 8pm) for over £20 an hour, I can’t disclose my exact hourly pay, but it’s more than £20 an hour.

I honestly love both aspects of my registration. My 8:30-5 job is spent with patients, doctors, nurses and consultants. And my locum job is just as fulfilling and I still communicate with patients and doctors.

My band 6 is currently £28,050 but I’m hoping to become a band 7 within 6 months which would see my pay increase to £37,000. This would put me more in line with my community colleagues and I’d still probably locum as I love to keep my hand in community pharmacy!

Any questions I am happy to answer, but I really just wanted to throw a stamp of positivity on the forum

heyyy this is so nice to hear How did you get your job as a hospital pharmacist and your pre reg in hospital ? Any tips for a first year pharmacy student ? x

All the negativity towards pharmacy is oriented towards community, not hospital. The major downside is that for a lot of people wanting to enter the hospital route post-pre-reg, a lot of hospitals are refusing to screen job applications for Band 6 roles to individuals who did their pre-reg in community as "they lack experience" (everyone sits the same pre-reg exam irregardless of the route you take to registration) and only 1 hospital in the south east / east england / near london offers a briding position for non-hospital pre-reg grads (Milton Keynes) to gain relevant experience (its essentially Band 5 but with band 6 pay / leads straight onto Band 6 position)

what would you say the pros and cons are of hospital vs GP work & why you would chose hospital? Im more interested in hospital for the learning opportunities re: different conditions / specialities BUT GP position I find has better working hours and you build a better rapport with patients / more involved in local community.

People need to be more willing to move, once you have your foot in the door it’s so easy. We have an actual shortage of hospital pharmacists in the northeast! We have band 6 positions out for advert that have 5 applications for. I moved away from my family home and boyfriend just to work in hospital.

I used the pharmalife system, so we applied through “first round” then I didn’t get a hospital place then we went through “second round” which was basically like clearing at ucas! I didn’t get my first choice and I was willing to move and uproot my life to work in hospital - a major advantage as so many people try to stay where they are.

Tips - get tonnes of hospital experience. Over the summer some hospitals get placement students to run audits or dispense! Any pharmacy experience will help you massively too

I’ve seen a lot of negativity on this forum recently so I thought I’d spread a bit of positivity!

I did my MPharm at LJMU. I got a pre-registration place at a small(ish) NHS trust and then moved to a huge tertiary care centre for my rotational position.

I have since rotated through cardiology, admissions, surgery and the small community hospital my trust covers.

I also locum at our hospital outpatient’s pharmacy some evenings and weekends (5-9pm or 10am to 8pm) for over £20 an hour, I can’t disclose my exact hourly pay, but it’s more than £20 an hour.

I honestly love both aspects of my registration. My 8:30-5 job is spent with patients, doctors, nurses and consultants. And my locum job is just as fulfilling and I still communicate with patients and doctors.

My band 6 is currently £28,050 but I’m hoping to become a band 7 within 6 months which would see my pay increase to £37,000. This would put me more in line with my community colleagues and I’d still probably locum as I love to keep my hand in community pharmacy!

Any questions I am happy to answer, but I really just wanted to throw a stamp of positivity on the forum

funny you mention that, I had a cross-sector placement in

ages ago and was told by 1 of the co-ordinators that I was an idiot for not applying to do my pe-reg there (despite it being hundreds of miles away from home) as they go straight to Band 7 from pre-reg (no band 6) and I met all the criteria they consider for band 7 barring sufficient experience in hospital (curious to know why they skip band 6 tbh as band 6 is what you associate with post-pre-reg).

The landscape down south in the east is overpopulation of pharmacists (so much so virtually all my friends have relocated to the west). sadly i cant relocate due to personal circumstances but I generally keep a lookout for clinical roles that are available. regarding work hours for GP pharmacists, it tends to be 8-6 but you do get massive breaks. 1 of the issues I have regarding getting work in clinical enironment is that I cant find anyone to support my applications for PIP courses and clinical diplomas (major advantage of hospital)

Ahhh thank you. Did you get hopsital placements during first year of summer ? Im trying to but they are saying they only take 2nd and 3rd years :/

Firstly, congrats on the band 6 job, it's not easy to end up in a band 6 role.


The problem is that there aren't many of these band 6 jobs going around when compared to the bulk of the sector which is community based. For sure, there are more clinical based roles popping up e.g. GP surgeries etc which personally I think are great, however most graduates will be slotting into high street pharmacies, the rest make up hospital and industry. As @quasa rightly mentioned earlier, the negativity surrounding the profession is focused within community pharmacy.

I'm a newly qualified community-based locum pharmacist (also an MUR pharmacist) and to be honest the pay is fine and I enjoy the freedom of working my own hours at different pharmacies however as for career progression, I feel limited, I really do. When you spend 4+1 years to finally become a professional, you expect some sort of return back. The cuts to the community sector are a big slap in a face; it's getting much more competitive with more pharmacy schools opening and subsequently more graduates. The next realistic option is to do a diploma of some sort however I still feel after that, I will be delving into an unknown in terms of career progression.

To be perfectly honest, I've already had thoughts about completely leaving the profession; the only way I would be doing that is to save up everything to train as a commercial airline pilot, a job that offers geniune career progression to all, not the few.

I know this comes across as a downbeat post, but that's my two cents.

Love this, I'm currently third year student and wanting to do hospital pharmacy. When I did my placement in a hospital a lot of the pharmacists said/seemed like they enjoyed their job so the negativity on the internet doesn't seem to correlate

Most of the negativity is focused on community but that doesn’t mean it’s chocolate and roses in hospitals either. The new prereg recruiting system ranks you alongside other preregs, and recrThuiters don’t get to have a say in who they’re training. That being said I’m not sure if hospital placements would help you secure a hospital prereg as it did previously. Out of a year of 140+ students in my year only 9/10 got places in hospital for prereg.

That figure of less than 10% is trully worrying.
I think in 5 yrs time we will have pharmacist unemployment, there are far too many graduates and not enough jobs. We don't need 3000 grads a yr. I blame the Unis for using pharmacy as a cash cow.