Pharmacy Salary

It's subject to negotiation in community pharmacy, and it's also based on location. It's not abnormal for newly qualified in the North to earn £65,000/year in their first year of qualification. £45,000/year might be the norm in the south, but it's only a mere benchmark in the North East. I earned more than that as a newly qualified relief pharmacist.

In my opinion I think it would be considered abnormal for a pharmacist to earn £65k a year, regardless of experience.
Realistically pharmacists make half that, maybe a tad more.

Although being a pharmacist isn't as lucrative as it used to be, an MPharm is still a good science degree that can open up alternative doors for you.

As someone with 25 yrs experience, I would not recommend 16 hr days in community pharmacy. If you are under 25, maybe. But for anyone else, the pressure today, not only on your legs, but your mental health should be considered. The above poster has been qualified about a year in the UK. And is reluctant to disclose their country of origin or age or experience. Take that how you wish!

The poster who talks about 65k a yr, etc, is obsessed with money unfortunately. Some people may prefer to have one of those things called 'a life' than devote themselves to a supermarket who will replace you with someone cheaper at the drop of a hat.

Who on earth these days would want to do 55 hrs in a pharmacy, most pharmacists can barely manage 4 x 9 or 10 hr days making 36-40 hrs. I think these days, even being asked to do 5 x 9hr day making 45 hrs is too much. There is simply too much going on and too much workload. It will be interesting to see if the above poster is still doing 55 hr weeks in 5 yrs time. I very much doubt it. They could have had an MI, depression, a breakdown, burnout, or simply left the so-called 'profession' for a job in senior company management.
Go and talk to some local pharmacists and see what they think of a 55 hr week.
I would be interested in your replies!

A pharmacist who gets paid £22.5-£24/hour and works 55 hours/week would earn circa £66,000-£69,000/year. It's all about location and the willingness to put in the long hours on your feet. I work 16 hour days.

Not really sure what to do from here tbh. But starting out as £35k would you be able to progress further as the years go by? Are the salaries online accurate? Is the salary that you get from Pharmacy worth the hard work (5 years of uni + plus working hours + how patients and colleagues treat you). Finally, what would you recommend Pharmacy or Optometry?

A pharmacist who gets paid £22.5-£24/hour and works 55 hours/week would earn circa £66,000-£69,000/year. It's all about location and the willingness to put in the long hours on your feet. I work 16 hour days.

Not really sure what to do from here tbh. But starting out as £35k would you be able to progress further as the years go by? Are the salaries online accurate? Is the salary that you get from Pharmacy worth the hard work (5 years of uni + plus working hours + how patients and colleagues treat you). Finally, what would you recommend Pharmacy or Optometry?

I agree that some places will pay £22.50 - £24.00 / hr, generally the locum rate ranges quite a lot - I've seen a range between £14/hr to £30/hr (the higher end during emergencies, snow, national holidays, etc), however in general the average you can expect to get is £19-£21/hr I would say.
Location and circumstance play a large part in the rate you get offered, and experience does not really play a part in this so a newly qualified may very well get a higher rate.

I agree that pharmacists that are willing to travel and are flexible can go out of their way to find higher rates, however these tend to be at very busy pharmacies that other pharmacists tend to stay away from for whatever reason.

However I think its difficult to find plenty of work that pays these higher rates to fill your diary with - normally its just the one off.

If you are a pharmacist and are managing to hit even £50,000 a year you are a combination of lucky, flexible and willing to work long hours at the expense of a lot of other things in your life. It is not the standard one can expect from a life in pharmacy.

Working such long hours - 16 hour shifts - may be unsafe for some pharmacists that aren't able to handle it and its not something I would personally recommend. Pharmacists tend to get struck off for lapses in concentration that result in patient harm. Should anything go to court or FtP, the fact that you made a mistake due to working long hours will work against you and won't be in your favour.

It should be pointed out that official statistics collected by the government say the median average salary for a pharmacist is £42k per year (ASHE). Surveys such as by chemist and druggist and just talking to a lot of community pharmacists and common sense suggest the figure for community is lower than this. I've met pharmacists that earn way more than this, but they are unusual. Those on more than this in community were either on a good little earner in an independent or on the insane legacy salaries before a large chain bought another chain and had no idea how to run pharmacy and ran up stonking loses! Those stores have now closed.

I would have thought you'd start on about £27k or £28k, not £35k. Your pay will climb up to mid to high £30ks in not that many years, but beyond that it's questionable whether it'll go up. As the years go by the general population will earn closer earnings to what you do as a pharmacist and with your experience your pay just won't budge.

As a relief you can in theory earn more than other locum rates, however bear in mind you'll get shuffled around the hellhole stores. In these 'ere parts that involves for example covering a 20,000 item a month pharmacy and another one on 14,000 items with very serious staffing problems.

Finally you don't realise how ridiculous pharmacy is until you leave. I've been out of the sector quite a few months now and it feels great.

I wouldn't recommend doing 16 hour days either. It's too common, but it's not worth it for your health/happiness.

You won't earn higher than 35-39k? That's rediculous. Is this community? Because I thought Clinical/Hospital Pharmacists start at much more and earn much higher as the years go on.

All right well that answers your question. For your information my last boss before I left was on £37-38k a year and had 15 years experience and got paid this even though they couldn't fill managers jobs (they wanted to pay the person £35k)...

Yes, it's community. But 75% of pharmacists work in community.

They are all 'clinical' pharmacists lol. Hospital pharmacists start on what they call low salaries, but it's the NHS with a massive pension and paybands which do slowly bump up so yes they earn more eventually. Top end private hospital pharmacists earn a king's ransom, but they are very rare.

If you think pay in community is ridiculous you need to ask yourself why that might be. Could it be big chains squeezing down pay? Could it be a flawed NHS funding model? Could it be too many EU pharmacists (this isn't my view but very common to hear)? Are there too many pharmacy schools etc? Is it because pharmacy is largely non-unionised?

You made some good points. However, it should be noted that doctors when on call do work 18-24 hour days. The pharmacists I know who work 16 hour days do so by working 4 days spread across the week, this means they get at least 3 days off per week to maintain a work life balance. There are a lot of reasons why dispensing errors might occur, the major recurring theme is understaffing and/or working long hours without adequate breaks. Personally, I would rather work 3-4 long days per week and get 3-4 days off, than work a standard 8.30am-6.00pm mondays to fridays every week. I worked the standard 8.30am-6.00pm for months as a relief pharmacist and absolutely hated the fact that I had no life and/or no days off to have a life.

We shouldn't be limiting ourselves to the arbitrary salary benchmark of £45,000-£50,000/year. It's fairly common in my neck of the woods for pharmacists to earn £65,000/year. My tutor is on £75,000/year. There is no reason why pharmacists shouldn't aim to negotiate salaries of £100,000/year.

I agree that working long hours happens in medicine as well to a a bigger extent and there are a lot of different other reasons for mistakes happening in pharmacy.

Just thought it would be interesting to do the maths here - I plugged some numbers into a spreadsheet to see what a yearly income would be depending on how many 16 hour shifts a pharmacist does a week and the hourly rate.
Assuming that a year is 52 weeks and no holidays are taken and work is available all year round with no gaps.

Could you explain to me why you think pharmacists should aim to negotiate salaries of £100,000 a year? Thanks

So what you're telling me is that I will study for 4.5-5 years at a uni, come out with student debt, do one more year of training, that I could potentially fail at, to only to find out that I will only get 35-39k salary max with bad working hours? Wow.

I'm saying that's what you're likely to earn, not that it will be your max. If you get stuck in community, which is fairly likely then that could happen.

You get 3 attempts to pass the pre-reg exam.

It depends on your perspective. The average graduate earns £34k a year. Pharmacy is higher than this. If you think it's bad then I urge you to talk to more pharmacists and staff in person and get experience. Personally I think it's even more of a waste of time for pharmacy staff, especially community technicians who then get paid around the minimum wage.

Let's assume a pharmacist is on £25/hour working 64 hour week. Let's also assume that this pharmacist is on an initial 2 year contract with a sign on bonus of £8000 paid upfront. a retention bonus of £8000 paid at the end of the 2 year period. This is £16,000 earned over the life of the 2 year contract excluding the salary you highlighted. If we factor in the quarterly bonus paid for meeting certain services target, it's an extra £200-£250 quarterly. Let's also assume that this pharmacist does the odd saturday 3 hour locum shift for £35/hour with full mileage paid. In total, this exceeds £100,000/year.

The highest earning community pharmacist I have met in the NE was my tutor, he is £75,000/year to work 55-60 hours/week. However, his hourly rate isn't £25/hour. It's more than that. The branch he manages does circa 15,000/month. I wouldn't accept that role for less than £100,000/year to work 4 long days.

Thanks for that - I have to say in my opinion that is quite a lot of unrealistic assumptions.

1. A high end rate of £25/hr all the time - this rate I would say is only offered in emergencies, bad weather, etc and certainly not available all the time, especially not 64 hours a week all year round

2. Working 64 hours a week, every week in a year - that is a lot of work and is very, very difficult to do and I doubt anyone would handle not burning out - yes there are 3 days free a week but still I think its fair to say most of not nearly all people would say this is far too intense

3. Sign on bonus - such a thing would apply to salaried pharmacists and not locums, in which case there is no hourly rate really - but a salaried pharmacist would tend to earn less than a locum. Also I have never heard of a sign on bonus for pharmacists in the UK - I have heard of this in the states, but not in the UK

4. Retention bonus - again same point as 3.

5. Quarterly bonus - assuming such a scheme is in place for salaried pharmacists, you would have to actually reach the target which may be difficult and I don't know if its common now for such schemes to be offered in the first place. Again this wouldn't apply to locums if my understanding is correct

6. Odd saturday shifts - in addition to the 64 hours a week you're already doing? Again this seems extremely intense and further reduces time off to relax

7. £35/hr for said saturday shifts - I doubt you'll find a rate as high as this anywhere except in exceptional circumstances and certainly not something you'd find every saturday.

8. Full mileage paid - I accept that this is still around, however a lot of chains don't offer this anymore