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Pharmacy [off topic convo]
Read the top 'sticky' on poor pharmacist career prospects and do something else, anything! just not this.
It may be 3 yrs old but the guy who wrote it (not me!) explains in great detail what is wrong and going wrong, etc.
I will give you a humorous summary below ( because if we didn't laugh in the pharmacy we would be sitting up the corner crying and chewing on diazepam, p.s. don't do that it's illegal! the diazepam, not the crying, although I'm sure the GPhC will issue a SOP or Standard on that soon, after a far-reaching and wide consultation period of course!) but please read that thread! Of course should you have a break-down in the dispensary because you can't get any HRT patches for love nor money nor car-boot sale and there is a lady at the counter shouting about the moustache she's growing, you could use that for an article on CPD, for example Communication, sobbing with her, or Leadership, showing her to the Gillette and Veet products! (but I merely jest! although HRT really is on a delay, so if you see a 50something woman looking like she is about to turn into the Incredible Hulk at the customer service desk in T*sco, then run the other way!)
Don't worry about grades, all the Unis apart from maybe Bath and Nottingham will be in Clearing. They are recruiting, not selecting like a Medical school does. You would get in somewhere with CCC. BTW, when or if (72% pass rate this summer) you pass the pre-reg exam, employers don't give two hoots where you did your degree, how many A*s you got, your 10 GCSE 8s and 9s, they care about one thing, the least amount of money they can get away with paying you for the maximum amount of hours. Honest!
Community Pharmacy is dying. (which employs around two third of pharmacy graduates).
It hit the iceberg in 2005 with the so-called new clinical based pharmacy contract and is taking on water fast and another tilt with Category M generic meds pricing in 2007/08.
We're not quite at the stage of 'Little Leo' being in the water yet, but any sane pharmacist under about age 35/40 is heading for a lifeboat with Kate Winslet!
Anyone over 55 is part-time, semi-retired, dead, a chain-smoking alcoholic (joke!) or very very unlikely to be working 5 days a week in a community pharmacy unless they are a) mad, b)took on a huge mortgage back in the day or c) enjoy the daily interaction with and helping the general public with their problems and ailments! (hahahahah!)
Just found out today a small chain local to my area is selling ALL of its shops! And another local medium chain put 2 up for sale a couple of weeks ago.
Boots and Lloyds are also closing/selling/off-loading via dodgy Swiss/Delaware bank accounts (allegedly) 200 each thereabouts.
Go to your local High street and go and ask to talk to the pharmacist, ask them if they would recommend a career in pharmacy?
Boots, Lloyds, Tesco, Well, Superdrug, Rowlands, Daylewis, Asda, Morrisons are most of the large chains.
Don't forget to try some independents too, that's like "Mr Bloggs" chemist. Usually one man/woman one shop.
Let us know their replies please. Use ***** for the expletives!
Hospital is very competitive to get a pre-reg. I had an excellent student who got a first from a Russell Group Uni and still had to settle for a community pre-reg.
If you want hospital be prepared to move! Do research, where are all the basic grade jobs? NE? SW? small towns out in the sticks? then apply for pre-reg there.
GP surgery, they will probably want a diploma so that's 2 yrs more studying part-time (about 8-10hrs a week for mine).
Then ontop of that the IP course, and if you can add in the Advanced Clinical/Care then you could be going places. Also keep in mind many of my generation X, late40s etc are rushing into these jobs, I think basically so they don't need a knee replacement at 65 from 40 yrs of standing up for 9 hours a day! So in 6 yrs time, I think most GPs will have a Practice Pharmacist so you will be waiting for my lot to jack it in!
Big cities are saturated, school of pharmacy cities and towns are saturated. If you want to stay in one place or area or are of the mind of " I'll never leave Wales" or "I've lived in London all my life so I'm not going to live somewhere like 'Emmerdale' I'd just die of boredom!" is going to struggle with finding a job or end up on a poor salary or locum rate as if a company knows you are unwilling to move and really want/need the job you have lost some of your 'walk-away' bargaining power and to paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Mrs T. May, 'any deal is better than no deal (and unemployment)' !
Industry. errrrr, Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, lottery win statistics, your Dad runs Acmme Pharmaceuticals, 'casting couch'!?
Then add in the government wants the largest number of items dispensed as cheaply as possible in the fewest number of locations (taken from a recent pharmacy journal!) and has just set the funding for the next 5 yrs, until 2024 at a flat rate total of about £13.2bn. (they forgot that little thing called inflation!) so by then you will in effect have had another 10% cut (assuming 2% inflation per yr.) on top of the cut we had a couple of years ago of somewhere between 6 to 12% depending how you calculate it (reference needed please from another old saddo pharmacist plz.!!) Hence. Not looking good.
Pharmacy though, only has itself to blame, free collection of scripts, free delivery of prescriptions, free making up of blister packed daily medicine trays, free blood pressure monitoring, free blood glucose testing, etc etc. You'll be lucky if you can get a GP to sign your passport form for less than £25 quid! (hint: if you want a GP to read something write it on a cheque!)
So eventually, and it's taken years, the government thinks, "well... if they can afford to do all that for free plus provide a van and diesel and a driver, that we don't give any money for, then by golly, we must be over-paying them!! " Hence, harsh, savage cuts! And it will be reflected in your pay packet most certainly. Please note, I speak for community pharmacy, there is a thread from a NQP in hospital who loves her job!? Sadly, there are many more threads like this.
On the plus side.....it's an interesting degree, just over saturated, pay is decreasing rapidly in real terms (not difficult to find pharmacists who have virtually had no raise in wages in a decade, despite being expected to go on courses in your own time, like learn how to shove a flu-jab in an arm for 6 hrs on a Sunday! so you can add more work and stress into your already stressful, over-worked, short-staffed nightmare of a day. Repeat x 5d, x45wks, x50yrs. !)
So you can look forward to 20 Benson a day or be trendy with those CBD drops!, a bottle of wine a night, no lunch hour ever ever again, hence after a few yrs of scoffing on the move, GORD/stomach ulcer, Here, have some Lansoprazole says your GP! No daylight November to February if you work in a centre or a warehouse hub with no windows (take those vitamin D tabs, kids!) obesity as you're too shattered to exercise, high blood pressure from the stress, so that's dispensing your own script for ramipril, the depression, so add citalopram to your script, probably high cholesterol, GPs need those QOF points! so add atorvastatin, so soon you're on as much as the punters! And that's before you get to 45/50! Then there's still another 25 yrs to go! So then we can add in tamsulosin for the men and tolterodine for the ladies, from years, of " I'll just go for a wee in a minute.... still holding on an hour later!" Then your knees start to go so you'll need some strong co-codamol that will bung you up so buy some senna, and naproxen if that ulcer has healed, but here's some omeprazole to protect what's left of your stomach! Have I forgotten anything? Can't remember, my medicines carrier bag is downstairs!!
PS. It's only going to get worse. Look up FMD and the scanning of every single of the thousands of boxes that you use every day/wk/mth/year! EU Directive we are unlikely to dodge (come on Boris, Sort it out for Gawd's sake!!) set up by people who have never set foot in a pharmacy, that you don't know, didn't vote for, and cannot remove from office! (But that's a whole other story! Perhaps after a few days of that as the new slave/dogsbody..... I mean pre-reg, you won't be such a happy youthful remainer?!?!)
Anyway......while all this is going on, I strongly suggest you read Pharmacy Forum and Pharmacy Magazine and Chemist and Druggist, all available on-line with a free sign-up, it may give you food for thought and /or increase your citalopram/Kalms/CBD oil dose, and keep you up to date on what pharmacists can do next 'to ease the pressure on GPs/the NHS/general practice'. (please note you will never see an article on how to ease the pressure on pharmacists and their poor 'I could earn more at Lidl' under-paid staff usually on minimum wage!) You will also see lots of articles on how pharmacists in community are " well-placed" to ............. do just about anything you could think of! All for free of course!
Now, some people may say I'm being negative, I've had verbal abuse off students who have been brain-washed by the lecturers who have fed the Kool-aid out ....." bright new clinical future" It's like the play 'Waiting for Godot' Spoiler alert ..........!
(Never turns up!, don't read it though, the ending will give you ideas!), been hearing that since Mrs Thatcher was on the steps of Number 10 holding up 3 fingers! (1987 for you kids!) Nuffield Report 1986. ) but I say I'm just doing a Roy Walker and 'saying what I see, if you see it, say it! (Catchphrase) (God I'm old!) Also known as 'The Truth' but you will quickly find any mention or suggestion of 'The Truth' to senior management who are not at the coal face will be met with hostility and how 'you're all being too negative' and 'look at the new services coming through, and ' work smarter' !
Anyway kids, I've rambled on far too long but print this out and take it to your local community pharmacist and ask them if you could pop back tomorrow to see how much they agree/disagree with the above. They won't be able to read it there and then because they'll be doing the jobs that they had 3 people for 10 yrs ago. !!
And so......should you dare write that code down, it used to be B300, it's probably FKDUP50 now, reflecting what the profession is and your years of misery in it (and I use that term loosely when your line manager will have probably been managing a Kwikfit, Lidl, Carphone warehouse, Rymans, last year. Yes, all true!!! Pharmacy is NOT run by pharmacists anymore).
Good luck! You will need it!
Please feel free to add feedback. ("also while you're doing it, could you spend a couple of minutes just filling out the annual customer survey, no, it's just a couple of mins, {while we take 20 minutes to dispense your Ventolin because the old bat in front of you has decided to wait for her and Mr Husband's 24 items. And we're short-staffed. as usual}
Oooooooh, excuse me Sir, there are 2 sides! ")
It may be 3 yrs old but the guy who wrote it (not me!) explains in great detail what is wrong and going wrong, etc.
I will give you a humorous summary below ( because if we didn't laugh in the pharmacy we would be sitting up the corner crying and chewing on diazepam, p.s. don't do that it's illegal! the diazepam, not the crying, although I'm sure the GPhC will issue a SOP or Standard on that soon, after a far-reaching and wide consultation period of course!) but please read that thread! Of course should you have a break-down in the dispensary because you can't get any HRT patches for love nor money nor car-boot sale and there is a lady at the counter shouting about the moustache she's growing, you could use that for an article on CPD, for example Communication, sobbing with her, or Leadership, showing her to the Gillette and Veet products! (but I merely jest! although HRT really is on a delay, so if you see a 50something woman looking like she is about to turn into the Incredible Hulk at the customer service desk in T*sco, then run the other way!)
Don't worry about grades, all the Unis apart from maybe Bath and Nottingham will be in Clearing. They are recruiting, not selecting like a Medical school does. You would get in somewhere with CCC. BTW, when or if (72% pass rate this summer) you pass the pre-reg exam, employers don't give two hoots where you did your degree, how many A*s you got, your 10 GCSE 8s and 9s, they care about one thing, the least amount of money they can get away with paying you for the maximum amount of hours. Honest!
Community Pharmacy is dying. (which employs around two third of pharmacy graduates).
It hit the iceberg in 2005 with the so-called new clinical based pharmacy contract and is taking on water fast and another tilt with Category M generic meds pricing in 2007/08.
We're not quite at the stage of 'Little Leo' being in the water yet, but any sane pharmacist under about age 35/40 is heading for a lifeboat with Kate Winslet!
Anyone over 55 is part-time, semi-retired, dead, a chain-smoking alcoholic (joke!) or very very unlikely to be working 5 days a week in a community pharmacy unless they are a) mad, b)took on a huge mortgage back in the day or c) enjoy the daily interaction with and helping the general public with their problems and ailments! (hahahahah!)
Just found out today a small chain local to my area is selling ALL of its shops! And another local medium chain put 2 up for sale a couple of weeks ago.
Boots and Lloyds are also closing/selling/off-loading via dodgy Swiss/Delaware bank accounts (allegedly) 200 each thereabouts.
Go to your local High street and go and ask to talk to the pharmacist, ask them if they would recommend a career in pharmacy?
Boots, Lloyds, Tesco, Well, Superdrug, Rowlands, Daylewis, Asda, Morrisons are most of the large chains.
Don't forget to try some independents too, that's like "Mr Bloggs" chemist. Usually one man/woman one shop.
Let us know their replies please. Use ***** for the expletives!
Hospital is very competitive to get a pre-reg. I had an excellent student who got a first from a Russell Group Uni and still had to settle for a community pre-reg.
If you want hospital be prepared to move! Do research, where are all the basic grade jobs? NE? SW? small towns out in the sticks? then apply for pre-reg there.
GP surgery, they will probably want a diploma so that's 2 yrs more studying part-time (about 8-10hrs a week for mine).
Then ontop of that the IP course, and if you can add in the Advanced Clinical/Care then you could be going places. Also keep in mind many of my generation X, late40s etc are rushing into these jobs, I think basically so they don't need a knee replacement at 65 from 40 yrs of standing up for 9 hours a day! So in 6 yrs time, I think most GPs will have a Practice Pharmacist so you will be waiting for my lot to jack it in!
Big cities are saturated, school of pharmacy cities and towns are saturated. If you want to stay in one place or area or are of the mind of " I'll never leave Wales" or "I've lived in London all my life so I'm not going to live somewhere like 'Emmerdale' I'd just die of boredom!" is going to struggle with finding a job or end up on a poor salary or locum rate as if a company knows you are unwilling to move and really want/need the job you have lost some of your 'walk-away' bargaining power and to paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Mrs T. May, 'any deal is better than no deal (and unemployment)' !
Industry. errrrr, Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, lottery win statistics, your Dad runs Acmme Pharmaceuticals, 'casting couch'!?
Then add in the government wants the largest number of items dispensed as cheaply as possible in the fewest number of locations (taken from a recent pharmacy journal!) and has just set the funding for the next 5 yrs, until 2024 at a flat rate total of about £13.2bn. (they forgot that little thing called inflation!) so by then you will in effect have had another 10% cut (assuming 2% inflation per yr.) on top of the cut we had a couple of years ago of somewhere between 6 to 12% depending how you calculate it (reference needed please from another old saddo pharmacist plz.!!) Hence. Not looking good.
Pharmacy though, only has itself to blame, free collection of scripts, free delivery of prescriptions, free making up of blister packed daily medicine trays, free blood pressure monitoring, free blood glucose testing, etc etc. You'll be lucky if you can get a GP to sign your passport form for less than £25 quid! (hint: if you want a GP to read something write it on a cheque!)
So eventually, and it's taken years, the government thinks, "well... if they can afford to do all that for free plus provide a van and diesel and a driver, that we don't give any money for, then by golly, we must be over-paying them!! " Hence, harsh, savage cuts! And it will be reflected in your pay packet most certainly. Please note, I speak for community pharmacy, there is a thread from a NQP in hospital who loves her job!? Sadly, there are many more threads like this.
On the plus side.....it's an interesting degree, just over saturated, pay is decreasing rapidly in real terms (not difficult to find pharmacists who have virtually had no raise in wages in a decade, despite being expected to go on courses in your own time, like learn how to shove a flu-jab in an arm for 6 hrs on a Sunday! so you can add more work and stress into your already stressful, over-worked, short-staffed nightmare of a day. Repeat x 5d, x45wks, x50yrs. !)
So you can look forward to 20 Benson a day or be trendy with those CBD drops!, a bottle of wine a night, no lunch hour ever ever again, hence after a few yrs of scoffing on the move, GORD/stomach ulcer, Here, have some Lansoprazole says your GP! No daylight November to February if you work in a centre or a warehouse hub with no windows (take those vitamin D tabs, kids!) obesity as you're too shattered to exercise, high blood pressure from the stress, so that's dispensing your own script for ramipril, the depression, so add citalopram to your script, probably high cholesterol, GPs need those QOF points! so add atorvastatin, so soon you're on as much as the punters! And that's before you get to 45/50! Then there's still another 25 yrs to go! So then we can add in tamsulosin for the men and tolterodine for the ladies, from years, of " I'll just go for a wee in a minute.... still holding on an hour later!" Then your knees start to go so you'll need some strong co-codamol that will bung you up so buy some senna, and naproxen if that ulcer has healed, but here's some omeprazole to protect what's left of your stomach! Have I forgotten anything? Can't remember, my medicines carrier bag is downstairs!!
PS. It's only going to get worse. Look up FMD and the scanning of every single of the thousands of boxes that you use every day/wk/mth/year! EU Directive we are unlikely to dodge (come on Boris, Sort it out for Gawd's sake!!) set up by people who have never set foot in a pharmacy, that you don't know, didn't vote for, and cannot remove from office! (But that's a whole other story! Perhaps after a few days of that as the new slave/dogsbody..... I mean pre-reg, you won't be such a happy youthful remainer?!?!)
Anyway......while all this is going on, I strongly suggest you read Pharmacy Forum and Pharmacy Magazine and Chemist and Druggist, all available on-line with a free sign-up, it may give you food for thought and /or increase your citalopram/Kalms/CBD oil dose, and keep you up to date on what pharmacists can do next 'to ease the pressure on GPs/the NHS/general practice'. (please note you will never see an article on how to ease the pressure on pharmacists and their poor 'I could earn more at Lidl' under-paid staff usually on minimum wage!) You will also see lots of articles on how pharmacists in community are " well-placed" to ............. do just about anything you could think of! All for free of course!
Now, some people may say I'm being negative, I've had verbal abuse off students who have been brain-washed by the lecturers who have fed the Kool-aid out ....." bright new clinical future" It's like the play 'Waiting for Godot' Spoiler alert ..........!
(Never turns up!, don't read it though, the ending will give you ideas!), been hearing that since Mrs Thatcher was on the steps of Number 10 holding up 3 fingers! (1987 for you kids!) Nuffield Report 1986. ) but I say I'm just doing a Roy Walker and 'saying what I see, if you see it, say it! (Catchphrase) (God I'm old!) Also known as 'The Truth' but you will quickly find any mention or suggestion of 'The Truth' to senior management who are not at the coal face will be met with hostility and how 'you're all being too negative' and 'look at the new services coming through, and ' work smarter' !
Anyway kids, I've rambled on far too long but print this out and take it to your local community pharmacist and ask them if you could pop back tomorrow to see how much they agree/disagree with the above. They won't be able to read it there and then because they'll be doing the jobs that they had 3 people for 10 yrs ago. !!
And so......should you dare write that code down, it used to be B300, it's probably FKDUP50 now, reflecting what the profession is and your years of misery in it (and I use that term loosely when your line manager will have probably been managing a Kwikfit, Lidl, Carphone warehouse, Rymans, last year. Yes, all true!!! Pharmacy is NOT run by pharmacists anymore).
Good luck! You will need it!
Please feel free to add feedback. ("also while you're doing it, could you spend a couple of minutes just filling out the annual customer survey, no, it's just a couple of mins, {while we take 20 minutes to dispense your Ventolin because the old bat in front of you has decided to wait for her and Mr Husband's 24 items. And we're short-staffed. as usual}
Oooooooh, excuse me Sir, there are 2 sides! ")
(edited 4 years ago)
Scroll to see replies
Original post by 0895
Read the top 'sticky' on poor pharmacist career prospects and do something else, anything! just not this.
It may be 3 yrs old but the guy who wrote it (not me!) explains in great detail what is wrong and going wrong, etc.
I will give you a humorous summary below ( because if we didn't laugh in the pharmacy we would be sitting up the corner crying and chewing on diazepam, p.s. don't do that it's illegal! the diazepam, not the crying, although I'm sure the GPhC will issue a SOP or Standard on that soon, after a far-reaching and wide consultation period of course!) but please read that thread! Of course should you have a break-down in the dispensary because you can't get any HRT patches for love nor money nor car-boot sale and there is a lady at the counter shouting about the moustache she's growing, you could use that for an article on CPD, for example Communication, sobbing with her, or Leadership, showing her to the Gillette and Veet products! (but I merely jest! although HRT really is on a delay, so if you see a 50something woman looking like she is about to turn into the Incredible Hulk at the customer service desk in T*sco, then run the other way!)
Don't worry about grades, all the Unis apart from maybe Bath and Nottingham will be in Clearing. They are recruiting, not selecting like a Medical school does. You would get in somewhere with CCC. BTW, when or if (72% pass rate this summer) you pass the pre-reg exam, employers don't give two hoots where you did your degree, how many A*s you got, your 10 GCSE 8s and 9s, they care about one thing, the least amount of money they can get away with paying you for the maximum amount of hours. Honest!
Community Pharmacy is dying. (which employs around two third of pharmacy graduates).
It hit the iceberg in 2005 with the so-called new clinical based pharmacy contract and is taking on water fast and another tilt with Category M generic meds pricing in 2007/08.
We're not quite at the stage of 'Little Leo' being in the water yet, but any sane pharmacist under about age 35/40 is heading for a lifeboat with Kate Winslet!
Anyone over 55 is part-time, semi-retired, dead, a chain-smoking alcoholic (joke!) or very very unlikely to be working 5 days a week in a community pharmacy unless they are a) mad, b)took on a huge mortgage back in the day or c) enjoy the daily interaction with and helping the general public with their problems and ailments! (hahahahah!)
Just found out today a small chain local to my area is selling ALL of its shops! And another local medium chain put 2 up for sale a couple of weeks ago.
Boots and Lloyds are also closing/selling/off-loading via dodgy Swiss/Delaware bank accounts (allegedly) 200 each thereabouts.
Go to your local High street and go and ask to talk to the pharmacist, ask them if they would recommend a career in pharmacy?
Boots, Lloyds, Tesco, Well, Superdrug, Rowlands, Daylewis, Asda, Morrisons are most of the large chains.
Don't forget to try some independents too, that's like "Mr Bloggs" chemist. Usually one man/woman one shop.
Let us know their replies please. Use ***** for the expletives!
Hospital is very competitive to get a pre-reg. I had an excellent student who got a first from a Russell Group Uni and still had to settle for a community pre-reg.
If you want hospital be prepared to move! Do research, where are all the basic grade jobs? NE? SW? small towns out in the sticks? then apply for pre-reg there.
GP surgery, they will probably want a diploma so that's 2 yrs more studying part-time (about 8-10hrs a week for mine).
Then ontop of that the IP course, and if you can add in the Advanced Clinical/Care then you could be going places. Also keep in mind many of my generation X, late40s etc are rushing into these jobs, I think basically so they don't need a knee replacement at 65 from 40 yrs of standing up for 9 hours a day! So in 6 yrs time, I think most GPs will have a Practice Pharmacist so you will be waiting for my lot to jack it in!
Big cities are saturated, school of pharmacy cities and towns are saturated. If you want to stay in one place or area or are of the mind of " I'll never leave Wales" or "I've lived in London all my life so I'm not going to live somewhere like 'Emmerdale' I'd just die of boredom!" is going to struggle with finding a job or end up on a poor salary or locum rate as if a company knows you are unwilling to move and really want/need the job you have lost some of your 'walk-away' bargaining power and to paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Mrs T. May, 'any deal is better than no deal (and unemployment)' !
Industry. errrrr, Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, lottery win statistics, your Dad runs Acmme Pharmaceuticals, 'casting couch'!?
Then add in the government wants the largest number of items dispensed as cheaply as possible in the fewest number of locations (taken from a recent pharmacy journal!) and has just set the funding for the next 5 yrs, until 2024 at a flat rate total of about £13.2bn. (they forgot that little thing called inflation!) so by then you will in effect have had another 10% cut (assuming 2% inflation per yr.) on top of the cut we had a couple of years ago of somewhere between 6 to 12% depending how you calculate it (reference needed please from another old saddo pharmacist plz.!!) Hence. Not looking good.
Pharmacy though, only has itself to blame, free collection of scripts, free delivery of prescriptions, free making up of blister packed daily medicine trays, free blood pressure monitoring, free blood glucose testing, etc etc. You'll be lucky if you can get a GP to sign your passport form for less than £25 quid! (hint: if you want a GP to read something write it on a cheque!)
So eventually, and it's taken years, the government thinks, "well... if they can afford to do all that for free plus provide a van and diesel and a driver, that we don't give any money for, then by golly, we must be over-paying them!! " Hence, harsh, savage cuts! And it will be reflected in your pay packet most certainly. Please note, I speak for community pharmacy, there is a thread from a NQP in hospital who loves her job!? Sadly, there are many more threads like this.
On the plus side.....it's an interesting degree, just over saturated, pay is decreasing rapidly in real terms (not difficult to find pharmacists who have virtually had no raise in wages in a decade, despite being expected to go on courses in your own time, like learn how to shove a flu-jab in an arm for 6 hrs on a Sunday! so you can add more work and stress into your already stressful, over-worked, short-staffed nightmare of a day. Repeat x 5d, x45wks, x50yrs. !)
So you can look forward to 20 Benson a day or be trendy with those CBD drops!, a bottle of wine a night, no lunch hour ever ever again, hence after a few yrs of scoffing on the move, GORD/stomach ulcer, Here, have some Lansoprazole says your GP! No daylight November to February if you work in a centre or a warehouse hub with no windows (take those vitamin D tabs, kids!) obesity as you're too shattered to exercise, high blood pressure from the stress, so that's dispensing your own script for ramipril, the depression, so add citalopram to your script, probably high cholesterol, GPs need those QOF points! so add atorvastatin, so soon you're on as much as the punters! And that's before you get to 45/50! Then there's still another 25 yrs to go! So then we can add in tamsulosin for the men and tolterodine for the ladies, from years, of " I'll just go for a wee in a minute.... still holding on an hour later!" Then your knees start to go so you'll need some strong co-codamol that will bung you up so buy some senna, and naproxen if that ulcer has healed, but here's some omeprazole to protect what's left of your stomach! Have I forgotten anything? Can't remember, my medicines carrier bag is downstairs!!
PS. It's only going to get worse. Look up FMD and the scanning of every single of the thousands of boxes that you use every day/wk/mth/year! EU Directive we are unlikely to dodge (come on Boris, Sort it out for Gawd's sake!!) set up by people who have never set foot in a pharmacy, that you don't know, didn't vote for, and cannot remove from office! (But that's a whole other story! Perhaps after a few days of that as the new slave/dogsbody..... I mean pre-reg, you won't be such a happy youthful remainer?!?!)
Anyway......while all this is going on, I strongly suggest you read Pharmacy Forum and Pharmacy Magazine and Chemist and Druggist, all available on-line with a free sign-up, it may give you food for thought and /or increase your citalopram/Kalms/CBD oil dose, and keep you up to date on what pharmacists can do next 'to ease the pressure on GPs/the NHS/general practice'. (please note you will never see an article on how to ease the pressure on pharmacists and their poor 'I could earn more at Lidl' under-paid staff usually on minimum wage!) You will also see lots of articles on how pharmacists in community are " well-placed" to ............. do just about anything you could think of! All for free of course!
Now, some people may say I'm being negative, I've had verbal abuse off students who have been brain-washed by the lecturers who have fed the Kool-aid out ....." bright new clinical future" It's like the play 'Waiting for Godot' Spoiler alert ..........!
(Never turns up!, don't read it though, the ending will give you ideas!), been hearing that since Mrs Thatcher was on the steps of Number 10 holding up 3 fingers! (1987 for you kids!) Nuffield Report 1986. ) but I say I'm just doing a Roy Walker and 'saying what I see, if you see it, say it! (Catchphrase) (God I'm old!) Also known as 'The Truth' but you will quickly find any mention or suggestion of 'The Truth' to senior management who are not at the coal face will be met with hostility and how 'you're all being too negative' and 'look at the new services coming through, and ' work smarter' !
Anyway kids, I've rambled on far too long but print this out and take it to your local community pharmacist and ask them if you could pop back tomorrow to see how much they agree/disagree with the above. They won't be able to read it there and then because they'll be doing the jobs that they had 3 people for 10 yrs ago. !!
And so......should you dare write that code down, it used to be B300, it's probably FKDUP50 now, reflecting what the profession is and your years of misery in it (and I use that term loosely when your line manager will have probably been managing a Kwikfit, Lidl, Carphone warehouse, Rymans, last year. Yes, all true!!! Pharmacy is NOT run by pharmacists anymore).
Good luck! You will need it!
Please feel free to add feedback. ("also while you're doing it, could you spend a couple of minutes just filling out the annual customer survey, no, it's just a couple of mins, {while we take 20 minutes to dispense your Ventolin because the old bat in front of you has decided to wait for her and Mr Husband's 24 items. And we're short-staffed. as usual}
Oooooooh, excuse me Sir, there are 2 sides! "
It may be 3 yrs old but the guy who wrote it (not me!) explains in great detail what is wrong and going wrong, etc.
I will give you a humorous summary below ( because if we didn't laugh in the pharmacy we would be sitting up the corner crying and chewing on diazepam, p.s. don't do that it's illegal! the diazepam, not the crying, although I'm sure the GPhC will issue a SOP or Standard on that soon, after a far-reaching and wide consultation period of course!) but please read that thread! Of course should you have a break-down in the dispensary because you can't get any HRT patches for love nor money nor car-boot sale and there is a lady at the counter shouting about the moustache she's growing, you could use that for an article on CPD, for example Communication, sobbing with her, or Leadership, showing her to the Gillette and Veet products! (but I merely jest! although HRT really is on a delay, so if you see a 50something woman looking like she is about to turn into the Incredible Hulk at the customer service desk in T*sco, then run the other way!)
Don't worry about grades, all the Unis apart from maybe Bath and Nottingham will be in Clearing. They are recruiting, not selecting like a Medical school does. You would get in somewhere with CCC. BTW, when or if (72% pass rate this summer) you pass the pre-reg exam, employers don't give two hoots where you did your degree, how many A*s you got, your 10 GCSE 8s and 9s, they care about one thing, the least amount of money they can get away with paying you for the maximum amount of hours. Honest!
Community Pharmacy is dying. (which employs around two third of pharmacy graduates).
It hit the iceberg in 2005 with the so-called new clinical based pharmacy contract and is taking on water fast and another tilt with Category M generic meds pricing in 2007/08.
We're not quite at the stage of 'Little Leo' being in the water yet, but any sane pharmacist under about age 35/40 is heading for a lifeboat with Kate Winslet!
Anyone over 55 is part-time, semi-retired, dead, a chain-smoking alcoholic (joke!) or very very unlikely to be working 5 days a week in a community pharmacy unless they are a) mad, b)took on a huge mortgage back in the day or c) enjoy the daily interaction with and helping the general public with their problems and ailments! (hahahahah!)
Just found out today a small chain local to my area is selling ALL of its shops! And another local medium chain put 2 up for sale a couple of weeks ago.
Boots and Lloyds are also closing/selling/off-loading via dodgy Swiss/Delaware bank accounts (allegedly) 200 each thereabouts.
Go to your local High street and go and ask to talk to the pharmacist, ask them if they would recommend a career in pharmacy?
Boots, Lloyds, Tesco, Well, Superdrug, Rowlands, Daylewis, Asda, Morrisons are most of the large chains.
Don't forget to try some independents too, that's like "Mr Bloggs" chemist. Usually one man/woman one shop.
Let us know their replies please. Use ***** for the expletives!
Hospital is very competitive to get a pre-reg. I had an excellent student who got a first from a Russell Group Uni and still had to settle for a community pre-reg.
If you want hospital be prepared to move! Do research, where are all the basic grade jobs? NE? SW? small towns out in the sticks? then apply for pre-reg there.
GP surgery, they will probably want a diploma so that's 2 yrs more studying part-time (about 8-10hrs a week for mine).
Then ontop of that the IP course, and if you can add in the Advanced Clinical/Care then you could be going places. Also keep in mind many of my generation X, late40s etc are rushing into these jobs, I think basically so they don't need a knee replacement at 65 from 40 yrs of standing up for 9 hours a day! So in 6 yrs time, I think most GPs will have a Practice Pharmacist so you will be waiting for my lot to jack it in!
Big cities are saturated, school of pharmacy cities and towns are saturated. If you want to stay in one place or area or are of the mind of " I'll never leave Wales" or "I've lived in London all my life so I'm not going to live somewhere like 'Emmerdale' I'd just die of boredom!" is going to struggle with finding a job or end up on a poor salary or locum rate as if a company knows you are unwilling to move and really want/need the job you have lost some of your 'walk-away' bargaining power and to paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Mrs T. May, 'any deal is better than no deal (and unemployment)' !
Industry. errrrr, Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, lottery win statistics, your Dad runs Acmme Pharmaceuticals, 'casting couch'!?
Then add in the government wants the largest number of items dispensed as cheaply as possible in the fewest number of locations (taken from a recent pharmacy journal!) and has just set the funding for the next 5 yrs, until 2024 at a flat rate total of about £13.2bn. (they forgot that little thing called inflation!) so by then you will in effect have had another 10% cut (assuming 2% inflation per yr.) on top of the cut we had a couple of years ago of somewhere between 6 to 12% depending how you calculate it (reference needed please from another old saddo pharmacist plz.!!) Hence. Not looking good.
Pharmacy though, only has itself to blame, free collection of scripts, free delivery of prescriptions, free making up of blister packed daily medicine trays, free blood pressure monitoring, free blood glucose testing, etc etc. You'll be lucky if you can get a GP to sign your passport form for less than £25 quid! (hint: if you want a GP to read something write it on a cheque!)
So eventually, and it's taken years, the government thinks, "well... if they can afford to do all that for free plus provide a van and diesel and a driver, that we don't give any money for, then by golly, we must be over-paying them!! " Hence, harsh, savage cuts! And it will be reflected in your pay packet most certainly. Please note, I speak for community pharmacy, there is a thread from a NQP in hospital who loves her job!? Sadly, there are many more threads like this.
On the plus side.....it's an interesting degree, just over saturated, pay is decreasing rapidly in real terms (not difficult to find pharmacists who have virtually had no raise in wages in a decade, despite being expected to go on courses in your own time, like learn how to shove a flu-jab in an arm for 6 hrs on a Sunday! so you can add more work and stress into your already stressful, over-worked, short-staffed nightmare of a day. Repeat x 5d, x45wks, x50yrs. !)
So you can look forward to 20 Benson a day or be trendy with those CBD drops!, a bottle of wine a night, no lunch hour ever ever again, hence after a few yrs of scoffing on the move, GORD/stomach ulcer, Here, have some Lansoprazole says your GP! No daylight November to February if you work in a centre or a warehouse hub with no windows (take those vitamin D tabs, kids!) obesity as you're too shattered to exercise, high blood pressure from the stress, so that's dispensing your own script for ramipril, the depression, so add citalopram to your script, probably high cholesterol, GPs need those QOF points! so add atorvastatin, so soon you're on as much as the punters! And that's before you get to 45/50! Then there's still another 25 yrs to go! So then we can add in tamsulosin for the men and tolterodine for the ladies, from years, of " I'll just go for a wee in a minute.... still holding on an hour later!" Then your knees start to go so you'll need some strong co-codamol that will bung you up so buy some senna, and naproxen if that ulcer has healed, but here's some omeprazole to protect what's left of your stomach! Have I forgotten anything? Can't remember, my medicines carrier bag is downstairs!!
PS. It's only going to get worse. Look up FMD and the scanning of every single of the thousands of boxes that you use every day/wk/mth/year! EU Directive we are unlikely to dodge (come on Boris, Sort it out for Gawd's sake!!) set up by people who have never set foot in a pharmacy, that you don't know, didn't vote for, and cannot remove from office! (But that's a whole other story! Perhaps after a few days of that as the new slave/dogsbody..... I mean pre-reg, you won't be such a happy youthful remainer?!?!)
Anyway......while all this is going on, I strongly suggest you read Pharmacy Forum and Pharmacy Magazine and Chemist and Druggist, all available on-line with a free sign-up, it may give you food for thought and /or increase your citalopram/Kalms/CBD oil dose, and keep you up to date on what pharmacists can do next 'to ease the pressure on GPs/the NHS/general practice'. (please note you will never see an article on how to ease the pressure on pharmacists and their poor 'I could earn more at Lidl' under-paid staff usually on minimum wage!) You will also see lots of articles on how pharmacists in community are " well-placed" to ............. do just about anything you could think of! All for free of course!
Now, some people may say I'm being negative, I've had verbal abuse off students who have been brain-washed by the lecturers who have fed the Kool-aid out ....." bright new clinical future" It's like the play 'Waiting for Godot' Spoiler alert ..........!
(Never turns up!, don't read it though, the ending will give you ideas!), been hearing that since Mrs Thatcher was on the steps of Number 10 holding up 3 fingers! (1987 for you kids!) Nuffield Report 1986. ) but I say I'm just doing a Roy Walker and 'saying what I see, if you see it, say it! (Catchphrase) (God I'm old!) Also known as 'The Truth' but you will quickly find any mention or suggestion of 'The Truth' to senior management who are not at the coal face will be met with hostility and how 'you're all being too negative' and 'look at the new services coming through, and ' work smarter' !
Anyway kids, I've rambled on far too long but print this out and take it to your local community pharmacist and ask them if you could pop back tomorrow to see how much they agree/disagree with the above. They won't be able to read it there and then because they'll be doing the jobs that they had 3 people for 10 yrs ago. !!
And so......should you dare write that code down, it used to be B300, it's probably FKDUP50 now, reflecting what the profession is and your years of misery in it (and I use that term loosely when your line manager will have probably been managing a Kwikfit, Lidl, Carphone warehouse, Rymans, last year. Yes, all true!!! Pharmacy is NOT run by pharmacists anymore).
Good luck! You will need it!
Please feel free to add feedback. ("also while you're doing it, could you spend a couple of minutes just filling out the annual customer survey, no, it's just a couple of mins, {while we take 20 minutes to dispense your Ventolin because the old bat in front of you has decided to wait for her and Mr Husband's 24 items. And we're short-staffed. as usual}
Oooooooh, excuse me Sir, there are 2 sides! "
Are you okay? Should I be concerned?
Original post by Jiiny
Are you okay? Should I be concerned?
I'm fine Jiiny! But we do appreciate your kind concern. And no. It was just some black humour. Are you a 6th former or student or qualified?
I am very fortunate that zooming towards 50, and the mortgage and cars paid off, I can afford to work part-time while awaiting retirement in about 10 to 12 yrs time. Hopefully the Donald will not crash the markets and everyone's pension pots!
Sooooo, I'm free to pick and choose a couple of shifts a week to pay the utility and grocery bills and pass the time.
It's amazing how much better you feel working the opposite of everyone else e.g. 2 on and 5 off! But I should point out that I am a follower of FIRE (financial independence retire early). The best way to describe it is to live like a student for ever! Shop in aldi, buy a 3 or 4 yr old car so someone else has paid the 50% depreciation, switch your gas/elec/phone every year or 2. It becomes a lifestyle.
Do things you never had time for working 5 days, join the library, read a book or two a week, watch Youtube, there are so many interesting channels on health, self-improvement, investing, etc, etc. I absolutely love Youtube.
There is an American guy called Mr.MoneyMustache
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com
and a British guy who is quite amusing and we are the same age basically so I get all his music and cultural references!
https://theescapeartist.me
Obviously this won't suit everyone and I must admit I didn't stop buying all the branded stuff and new cars and designer clothes till I was nearly 30 but compound interest is your friend. I know it's very difficult these days with property prices, but there's always the option of a lodger. MartinMoneyManLewis is your friend also. NEVER, do or buy anything without checking out his advice first:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com
Personally, since the ISA limit has gone to 20k I use these only now, and not pensions, even though you get your tax relief, this is because I am self-employed, so I do have a SIPP from the low ISA limit days. But if you are employed you must take out your workplace pension as if you are putting in 5%, I think your employer has to put in 3% which is basically free money I think Martin calls it!
I also use a company that suggests fund to invest in and also when to exit the market when they foresee a downturn or crash, for example, in 2016, we exited 50% of all our USA funds in case a Trump victory crashed the Dow and S&P500. Obviously this is a fee paying service.
Please, you or anyone, PM me for more info on FIRE or pharmacy.
Original post by 0895
I'm fine Jiiny! But we do appreciate your kind concern. And no. It was just some black humour. Are you a 6th former or student or qualified?
I am very fortunate that zooming towards 50, and the mortgage and cars paid off, I can afford to work part-time while awaiting retirement in about 10 to 12 yrs time. Hopefully the Donald will not crash the markets and everyone's pension pots!
Sooooo, I'm free to pick and choose a couple of shifts a week to pay the utility and grocery bills and pass the time.
It's amazing how much better you feel working the opposite of everyone else e.g. 2 on and 5 off! But I should point out that I am a follower of FIRE (financial independence retire early). The best way to describe it is to live like a student for ever! Shop in aldi, buy a 3 or 4 yr old car so someone else has paid the 50% depreciation, switch your gas/elec/phone every year or 2. It becomes a lifestyle.
Do things you never had time for working 5 days, join the library, read a book or two a week, watch Youtube, there are so many interesting channels on health, self-improvement, investing, etc, etc. I absolutely love Youtube.
There is an American guy called Mr.MoneyMustache
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com
and a British guy who is quite amusing and we are the same age basically so I get all his music and cultural references!
https://theescapeartist.me
Obviously this won't suit everyone and I must admit I didn't stop buying all the branded stuff and new cars and designer clothes till I was nearly 30 but compound interest is your friend. I know it's very difficult these days with property prices, but there's always the option of a lodger. MartinMoneyManLewis is your friend also. NEVER, do or buy anything without checking out his advice first:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com
Personally, since the ISA limit has gone to 20k I use these only now, and not pensions, even though you get your tax relief, this is because I am self-employed, so I do have a SIPP from the low ISA limit days. But if you are employed you must take out your workplace pension as if you are putting in 5%, I think your employer has to put in 3% which is basically free money I think Martin calls it!
I also use a company that suggests fund to invest in and also when to exit the market when they foresee a downturn or crash, for example, in 2016, we exited 50% of all our USA funds in case a Trump victory crashed the Dow and S&P500. Obviously this is a fee paying service.
Please, you or anyone, PM me for more info on FIRE or pharmacy.
I am very fortunate that zooming towards 50, and the mortgage and cars paid off, I can afford to work part-time while awaiting retirement in about 10 to 12 yrs time. Hopefully the Donald will not crash the markets and everyone's pension pots!
Sooooo, I'm free to pick and choose a couple of shifts a week to pay the utility and grocery bills and pass the time.
It's amazing how much better you feel working the opposite of everyone else e.g. 2 on and 5 off! But I should point out that I am a follower of FIRE (financial independence retire early). The best way to describe it is to live like a student for ever! Shop in aldi, buy a 3 or 4 yr old car so someone else has paid the 50% depreciation, switch your gas/elec/phone every year or 2. It becomes a lifestyle.
Do things you never had time for working 5 days, join the library, read a book or two a week, watch Youtube, there are so many interesting channels on health, self-improvement, investing, etc, etc. I absolutely love Youtube.
There is an American guy called Mr.MoneyMustache
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com
and a British guy who is quite amusing and we are the same age basically so I get all his music and cultural references!
https://theescapeartist.me
Obviously this won't suit everyone and I must admit I didn't stop buying all the branded stuff and new cars and designer clothes till I was nearly 30 but compound interest is your friend. I know it's very difficult these days with property prices, but there's always the option of a lodger. MartinMoneyManLewis is your friend also. NEVER, do or buy anything without checking out his advice first:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com
Personally, since the ISA limit has gone to 20k I use these only now, and not pensions, even though you get your tax relief, this is because I am self-employed, so I do have a SIPP from the low ISA limit days. But if you are employed you must take out your workplace pension as if you are putting in 5%, I think your employer has to put in 3% which is basically free money I think Martin calls it!
I also use a company that suggests fund to invest in and also when to exit the market when they foresee a downturn or crash, for example, in 2016, we exited 50% of all our USA funds in case a Trump victory crashed the Dow and S&P500. Obviously this is a fee paying service.
Please, you or anyone, PM me for more info on FIRE or pharmacy.
ik it’s dark humour but way to be a bloody downer for 17/18 year olds on a forum where it’s too late to change our life choices after literally just submitting our applications
Original post by ciaramcpherson
ik it’s dark humour but way to be a bloody downer for 17/18 year olds on a forum where it’s too late to change our life choices after literally just submitting our applications
I'm sorry you feel it's ' a downer' but it is the truth. Ignore all the shiny crap the Unis try to sell you. They want bums on seats and that 9k. They couldn't give a flying f*ck if you get a job, as long as you get a pre-reg, then they can trumpet 100% employment at 6/12 months.
I don't mean to be cruel or mean , but did you actually do any work experience in any community pharmacies and see what utter chaos it is and the work that needs to be done and then look at how many people they give you to do it!
Did you read the sticky at the top of the page that has been there since 2016 ' poor career prospects' and that guy explains it all really well in detail.
Why is it too late? You'l work until you're 70 at least, so what's a year now, pull your application and really think and research what you want to do because to use an analogy for pharmacy's future, you will be learning how to shoe horses, while Henry Ford is rolling his first Model-T off the production line.
Like I say to the kids, 'learn to code' or 'learn mandarin'. Where do the future jobs lie over the next 10 to 20 years ?
They don't lie in sticking labels on boxes!
Original post by 0895
Read the top 'sticky' on poor pharmacist career prospects and do something else, anything! just not this.
It may be 3 yrs old but the guy who wrote it (not me!) explains in great detail what is wrong and going wrong, etc.
I will give you a humorous summary below ( because if we didn't laugh in the pharmacy we would be sitting up the corner crying and chewing on diazepam, p.s. don't do that it's illegal! the diazepam, not the crying, although I'm sure the GPhC will issue a SOP or Standard on that soon, after a far-reaching and wide consultation period of course!) but please read that thread! Of course should you have a break-down in the dispensary because you can't get any HRT patches for love nor money nor car-boot sale and there is a lady at the counter shouting about the moustache she's growing, you could use that for an article on CPD, for example Communication, sobbing with her, or Leadership, showing her to the Gillette and Veet products! (but I merely jest! although HRT really is on a delay, so if you see a 50something woman looking like she is about to turn into the Incredible Hulk at the customer service desk in T*sco, then run the other way!)
Don't worry about grades, all the Unis apart from maybe Bath and Nottingham will be in Clearing. They are recruiting, not selecting like a Medical school does. You would get in somewhere with CCC. BTW, when or if (72% pass rate this summer) you pass the pre-reg exam, employers don't give two hoots where you did your degree, how many A*s you got, your 10 GCSE 8s and 9s, they care about one thing, the least amount of money they can get away with paying you for the maximum amount of hours. Honest!
Community Pharmacy is dying. (which employs around two third of pharmacy graduates).
It hit the iceberg in 2005 with the so-called new clinical based pharmacy contract and is taking on water fast and another tilt with Category M generic meds pricing in 2007/08.
We're not quite at the stage of 'Little Leo' being in the water yet, but any sane pharmacist under about age 35/40 is heading for a lifeboat with Kate Winslet!
Anyone over 55 is part-time, semi-retired, dead, a chain-smoking alcoholic (joke!) or very very unlikely to be working 5 days a week in a community pharmacy unless they are a) mad, b)took on a huge mortgage back in the day or c) enjoy the daily interaction with and helping the general public with their problems and ailments! (hahahahah!)
Just found out today a small chain local to my area is selling ALL of its shops! And another local medium chain put 2 up for sale a couple of weeks ago.
Boots and Lloyds are also closing/selling/off-loading via dodgy Swiss/Delaware bank accounts (allegedly) 200 each thereabouts.
Go to your local High street and go and ask to talk to the pharmacist, ask them if they would recommend a career in pharmacy?
Boots, Lloyds, Tesco, Well, Superdrug, Rowlands, Daylewis, Asda, Morrisons are most of the large chains.
Don't forget to try some independents too, that's like "Mr Bloggs" chemist. Usually one man/woman one shop.
Let us know their replies please. Use ***** for the expletives!
Hospital is very competitive to get a pre-reg. I had an excellent student who got a first from a Russell Group Uni and still had to settle for a community pre-reg.
If you want hospital be prepared to move! Do research, where are all the basic grade jobs? NE? SW? small towns out in the sticks? then apply for pre-reg there.
GP surgery, they will probably want a diploma so that's 2 yrs more studying part-time (about 8-10hrs a week for mine).
Then ontop of that the IP course, and if you can add in the Advanced Clinical/Care then you could be going places. Also keep in mind many of my generation X, late40s etc are rushing into these jobs, I think basically so they don't need a knee replacement at 65 from 40 yrs of standing up for 9 hours a day! So in 6 yrs time, I think most GPs will have a Practice Pharmacist so you will be waiting for my lot to jack it in!
Big cities are saturated, school of pharmacy cities and towns are saturated. If you want to stay in one place or area or are of the mind of " I'll never leave Wales" or "I've lived in London all my life so I'm not going to live somewhere like 'Emmerdale' I'd just die of boredom!" is going to struggle with finding a job or end up on a poor salary or locum rate as if a company knows you are unwilling to move and really want/need the job you have lost some of your 'walk-away' bargaining power and to paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Mrs T. May, 'any deal is better than no deal (and unemployment)' !
Industry. errrrr, Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, lottery win statistics, your Dad runs Acmme Pharmaceuticals, 'casting couch'!?
Then add in the government wants the largest number of items dispensed as cheaply as possible in the fewest number of locations (taken from a recent pharmacy journal!) and has just set the funding for the next 5 yrs, until 2024 at a flat rate total of about £13.2bn. (they forgot that little thing called inflation!) so by then you will in effect have had another 10% cut (assuming 2% inflation per yr.) on top of the cut we had a couple of years ago of somewhere between 6 to 12% depending how you calculate it (reference needed please from another old saddo pharmacist plz.!!) Hence. Not looking good.
Pharmacy though, only has itself to blame, free collection of scripts, free delivery of prescriptions, free making up of blister packed daily medicine trays, free blood pressure monitoring, free blood glucose testing, etc etc. You'll be lucky if you can get a GP to sign your passport form for less than £25 quid! (hint: if you want a GP to read something write it on a cheque!)
So eventually, and it's taken years, the government thinks, "well... if they can afford to do all that for free plus provide a van and diesel and a driver, that we don't give any money for, then by golly, we must be over-paying them!! " Hence, harsh, savage cuts! And it will be reflected in your pay packet most certainly. Please note, I speak for community pharmacy, there is a thread from a NQP in hospital who loves her job!? Sadly, there are many more threads like this.
On the plus side.....it's an interesting degree, just over saturated, pay is decreasing rapidly in real terms (not difficult to find pharmacists who have virtually had no raise in wages in a decade, despite being expected to go on courses in your own time, like learn how to shove a flu-jab in an arm for 6 hrs on a Sunday! so you can add more work and stress into your already stressful, over-worked, short-staffed nightmare of a day. Repeat x 5d, x45wks, x50yrs. !)
So you can look forward to 20 Benson a day or be trendy with those CBD drops!, a bottle of wine a night, no lunch hour ever ever again, hence after a few yrs of scoffing on the move, GORD/stomach ulcer, Here, have some Lansoprazole says your GP! No daylight November to February if you work in a centre or a warehouse hub with no windows (take those vitamin D tabs, kids!) obesity as you're too shattered to exercise, high blood pressure from the stress, so that's dispensing your own script for ramipril, the depression, so add citalopram to your script, probably high cholesterol, GPs need those QOF points! so add atorvastatin, so soon you're on as much as the punters! And that's before you get to 45/50! Then there's still another 25 yrs to go! So then we can add in tamsulosin for the men and tolterodine for the ladies, from years, of " I'll just go for a wee in a minute.... still holding on an hour later!" Then your knees start to go so you'll need some strong co-codamol that will bung you up so buy some senna, and naproxen if that ulcer has healed, but here's some omeprazole to protect what's left of your stomach! Have I forgotten anything? Can't remember, my medicines carrier bag is downstairs!!
PS. It's only going to get worse. Look up FMD and the scanning of every single of the thousands of boxes that you use every day/wk/mth/year! EU Directive we are unlikely to dodge (come on Boris, Sort it out for Gawd's sake!!) set up by people who have never set foot in a pharmacy, that you don't know, didn't vote for, and cannot remove from office! (But that's a whole other story! Perhaps after a few days of that as the new slave/dogsbody..... I mean pre-reg, you won't be such a happy youthful remainer?!?!)
Anyway......while all this is going on, I strongly suggest you read Pharmacy Forum and Pharmacy Magazine and Chemist and Druggist, all available on-line with a free sign-up, it may give you food for thought and /or increase your citalopram/Kalms/CBD oil dose, and keep you up to date on what pharmacists can do next 'to ease the pressure on GPs/the NHS/general practice'. (please note you will never see an article on how to ease the pressure on pharmacists and their poor 'I could earn more at Lidl' under-paid staff usually on minimum wage!) You will also see lots of articles on how pharmacists in community are " well-placed" to ............. do just about anything you could think of! All for free of course!
Now, some people may say I'm being negative, I've had verbal abuse off students who have been brain-washed by the lecturers who have fed the Kool-aid out ....." bright new clinical future" It's like the play 'Waiting for Godot' Spoiler alert ..........!
(Never turns up!, don't read it though, the ending will give you ideas!), been hearing that since Mrs Thatcher was on the steps of Number 10 holding up 3 fingers! (1987 for you kids!) Nuffield Report 1986. ) but I say I'm just doing a Roy Walker and 'saying what I see, if you see it, say it! (Catchphrase) (God I'm old!) Also known as 'The Truth' but you will quickly find any mention or suggestion of 'The Truth' to senior management who are not at the coal face will be met with hostility and how 'you're all being too negative' and 'look at the new services coming through, and ' work smarter' !
Anyway kids, I've rambled on far too long but print this out and take it to your local community pharmacist and ask them if you could pop back tomorrow to see how much they agree/disagree with the above. They won't be able to read it there and then because they'll be doing the jobs that they had 3 people for 10 yrs ago. !!
And so......should you dare write that code down, it used to be B300, it's probably FKDUP50 now, reflecting what the profession is and your years of misery in it (and I use that term loosely when your line manager will have probably been managing a Kwikfit, Lidl, Carphone warehouse, Rymans, last year. Yes, all true!!! Pharmacy is NOT run by pharmacists anymore).
Good luck! You will need it!
Please feel free to add feedback. ("also while you're doing it, could you spend a couple of minutes just filling out the annual customer survey, no, it's just a couple of mins, {while we take 20 minutes to dispense your Ventolin because the old bat in front of you has decided to wait for her and Mr Husband's 24 items. And we're short-staffed. as usual}
Oooooooh, excuse me Sir, there are 2 sides! "
It may be 3 yrs old but the guy who wrote it (not me!) explains in great detail what is wrong and going wrong, etc.
I will give you a humorous summary below ( because if we didn't laugh in the pharmacy we would be sitting up the corner crying and chewing on diazepam, p.s. don't do that it's illegal! the diazepam, not the crying, although I'm sure the GPhC will issue a SOP or Standard on that soon, after a far-reaching and wide consultation period of course!) but please read that thread! Of course should you have a break-down in the dispensary because you can't get any HRT patches for love nor money nor car-boot sale and there is a lady at the counter shouting about the moustache she's growing, you could use that for an article on CPD, for example Communication, sobbing with her, or Leadership, showing her to the Gillette and Veet products! (but I merely jest! although HRT really is on a delay, so if you see a 50something woman looking like she is about to turn into the Incredible Hulk at the customer service desk in T*sco, then run the other way!)
Don't worry about grades, all the Unis apart from maybe Bath and Nottingham will be in Clearing. They are recruiting, not selecting like a Medical school does. You would get in somewhere with CCC. BTW, when or if (72% pass rate this summer) you pass the pre-reg exam, employers don't give two hoots where you did your degree, how many A*s you got, your 10 GCSE 8s and 9s, they care about one thing, the least amount of money they can get away with paying you for the maximum amount of hours. Honest!
Community Pharmacy is dying. (which employs around two third of pharmacy graduates).
It hit the iceberg in 2005 with the so-called new clinical based pharmacy contract and is taking on water fast and another tilt with Category M generic meds pricing in 2007/08.
We're not quite at the stage of 'Little Leo' being in the water yet, but any sane pharmacist under about age 35/40 is heading for a lifeboat with Kate Winslet!
Anyone over 55 is part-time, semi-retired, dead, a chain-smoking alcoholic (joke!) or very very unlikely to be working 5 days a week in a community pharmacy unless they are a) mad, b)took on a huge mortgage back in the day or c) enjoy the daily interaction with and helping the general public with their problems and ailments! (hahahahah!)
Just found out today a small chain local to my area is selling ALL of its shops! And another local medium chain put 2 up for sale a couple of weeks ago.
Boots and Lloyds are also closing/selling/off-loading via dodgy Swiss/Delaware bank accounts (allegedly) 200 each thereabouts.
Go to your local High street and go and ask to talk to the pharmacist, ask them if they would recommend a career in pharmacy?
Boots, Lloyds, Tesco, Well, Superdrug, Rowlands, Daylewis, Asda, Morrisons are most of the large chains.
Don't forget to try some independents too, that's like "Mr Bloggs" chemist. Usually one man/woman one shop.
Let us know their replies please. Use ***** for the expletives!
Hospital is very competitive to get a pre-reg. I had an excellent student who got a first from a Russell Group Uni and still had to settle for a community pre-reg.
If you want hospital be prepared to move! Do research, where are all the basic grade jobs? NE? SW? small towns out in the sticks? then apply for pre-reg there.
GP surgery, they will probably want a diploma so that's 2 yrs more studying part-time (about 8-10hrs a week for mine).
Then ontop of that the IP course, and if you can add in the Advanced Clinical/Care then you could be going places. Also keep in mind many of my generation X, late40s etc are rushing into these jobs, I think basically so they don't need a knee replacement at 65 from 40 yrs of standing up for 9 hours a day! So in 6 yrs time, I think most GPs will have a Practice Pharmacist so you will be waiting for my lot to jack it in!
Big cities are saturated, school of pharmacy cities and towns are saturated. If you want to stay in one place or area or are of the mind of " I'll never leave Wales" or "I've lived in London all my life so I'm not going to live somewhere like 'Emmerdale' I'd just die of boredom!" is going to struggle with finding a job or end up on a poor salary or locum rate as if a company knows you are unwilling to move and really want/need the job you have lost some of your 'walk-away' bargaining power and to paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Mrs T. May, 'any deal is better than no deal (and unemployment)' !
Industry. errrrr, Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, lottery win statistics, your Dad runs Acmme Pharmaceuticals, 'casting couch'!?
Then add in the government wants the largest number of items dispensed as cheaply as possible in the fewest number of locations (taken from a recent pharmacy journal!) and has just set the funding for the next 5 yrs, until 2024 at a flat rate total of about £13.2bn. (they forgot that little thing called inflation!) so by then you will in effect have had another 10% cut (assuming 2% inflation per yr.) on top of the cut we had a couple of years ago of somewhere between 6 to 12% depending how you calculate it (reference needed please from another old saddo pharmacist plz.!!) Hence. Not looking good.
Pharmacy though, only has itself to blame, free collection of scripts, free delivery of prescriptions, free making up of blister packed daily medicine trays, free blood pressure monitoring, free blood glucose testing, etc etc. You'll be lucky if you can get a GP to sign your passport form for less than £25 quid! (hint: if you want a GP to read something write it on a cheque!)
So eventually, and it's taken years, the government thinks, "well... if they can afford to do all that for free plus provide a van and diesel and a driver, that we don't give any money for, then by golly, we must be over-paying them!! " Hence, harsh, savage cuts! And it will be reflected in your pay packet most certainly. Please note, I speak for community pharmacy, there is a thread from a NQP in hospital who loves her job!? Sadly, there are many more threads like this.
On the plus side.....it's an interesting degree, just over saturated, pay is decreasing rapidly in real terms (not difficult to find pharmacists who have virtually had no raise in wages in a decade, despite being expected to go on courses in your own time, like learn how to shove a flu-jab in an arm for 6 hrs on a Sunday! so you can add more work and stress into your already stressful, over-worked, short-staffed nightmare of a day. Repeat x 5d, x45wks, x50yrs. !)
So you can look forward to 20 Benson a day or be trendy with those CBD drops!, a bottle of wine a night, no lunch hour ever ever again, hence after a few yrs of scoffing on the move, GORD/stomach ulcer, Here, have some Lansoprazole says your GP! No daylight November to February if you work in a centre or a warehouse hub with no windows (take those vitamin D tabs, kids!) obesity as you're too shattered to exercise, high blood pressure from the stress, so that's dispensing your own script for ramipril, the depression, so add citalopram to your script, probably high cholesterol, GPs need those QOF points! so add atorvastatin, so soon you're on as much as the punters! And that's before you get to 45/50! Then there's still another 25 yrs to go! So then we can add in tamsulosin for the men and tolterodine for the ladies, from years, of " I'll just go for a wee in a minute.... still holding on an hour later!" Then your knees start to go so you'll need some strong co-codamol that will bung you up so buy some senna, and naproxen if that ulcer has healed, but here's some omeprazole to protect what's left of your stomach! Have I forgotten anything? Can't remember, my medicines carrier bag is downstairs!!
PS. It's only going to get worse. Look up FMD and the scanning of every single of the thousands of boxes that you use every day/wk/mth/year! EU Directive we are unlikely to dodge (come on Boris, Sort it out for Gawd's sake!!) set up by people who have never set foot in a pharmacy, that you don't know, didn't vote for, and cannot remove from office! (But that's a whole other story! Perhaps after a few days of that as the new slave/dogsbody..... I mean pre-reg, you won't be such a happy youthful remainer?!?!)
Anyway......while all this is going on, I strongly suggest you read Pharmacy Forum and Pharmacy Magazine and Chemist and Druggist, all available on-line with a free sign-up, it may give you food for thought and /or increase your citalopram/Kalms/CBD oil dose, and keep you up to date on what pharmacists can do next 'to ease the pressure on GPs/the NHS/general practice'. (please note you will never see an article on how to ease the pressure on pharmacists and their poor 'I could earn more at Lidl' under-paid staff usually on minimum wage!) You will also see lots of articles on how pharmacists in community are " well-placed" to ............. do just about anything you could think of! All for free of course!
Now, some people may say I'm being negative, I've had verbal abuse off students who have been brain-washed by the lecturers who have fed the Kool-aid out ....." bright new clinical future" It's like the play 'Waiting for Godot' Spoiler alert ..........!
(Never turns up!, don't read it though, the ending will give you ideas!), been hearing that since Mrs Thatcher was on the steps of Number 10 holding up 3 fingers! (1987 for you kids!) Nuffield Report 1986. ) but I say I'm just doing a Roy Walker and 'saying what I see, if you see it, say it! (Catchphrase) (God I'm old!) Also known as 'The Truth' but you will quickly find any mention or suggestion of 'The Truth' to senior management who are not at the coal face will be met with hostility and how 'you're all being too negative' and 'look at the new services coming through, and ' work smarter' !
Anyway kids, I've rambled on far too long but print this out and take it to your local community pharmacist and ask them if you could pop back tomorrow to see how much they agree/disagree with the above. They won't be able to read it there and then because they'll be doing the jobs that they had 3 people for 10 yrs ago. !!
And so......should you dare write that code down, it used to be B300, it's probably FKDUP50 now, reflecting what the profession is and your years of misery in it (and I use that term loosely when your line manager will have probably been managing a Kwikfit, Lidl, Carphone warehouse, Rymans, last year. Yes, all true!!! Pharmacy is NOT run by pharmacists anymore).
Good luck! You will need it!
Please feel free to add feedback. ("also while you're doing it, could you spend a couple of minutes just filling out the annual customer survey, no, it's just a couple of mins, {while we take 20 minutes to dispense your Ventolin because the old bat in front of you has decided to wait for her and Mr Husband's 24 items. And we're short-staffed. as usual}
Oooooooh, excuse me Sir, there are 2 sides! "
Original post by ciaramcpherson
ik it’s dark humour but way to be a bloody downer for 17/18 year olds on a forum where it’s too late to change our life choices after literally just submitting our applications
Jesus, count yourself lucky that somebody is telling you all this while it's really not too late. A submitted UCAS is nothing. You'll be kicking yourself once you've done your four year degree, pre-reg and are in your first year qualified. Even then it wouldn't be too late, but you' d have to retrain to do something else, will be 50k in debt and have no access to further funding to do another degree.
(edited 4 years ago)
Original post by 0895
Read the top 'sticky' on poor pharmacist career prospects and do something else, anything! just not this.
It may be 3 yrs old but the guy who wrote it (not me!) explains in great detail what is wrong and going wrong, etc.
I will give you a humorous summary below ( because if we didn't laugh in the pharmacy we would be sitting up the corner crying and chewing on diazepam, p.s. don't do that it's illegal! the diazepam, not the crying, although I'm sure the GPhC will issue a SOP or Standard on that soon, after a far-reaching and wide consultation period of course!) but please read that thread! Of course should you have a break-down in the dispensary because you can't get any HRT patches for love nor money nor car-boot sale and there is a lady at the counter shouting about the moustache she's growing, you could use that for an article on CPD, for example Communication, sobbing with her, or Leadership, showing her to the Gillette and Veet products! (but I merely jest! although HRT really is on a delay, so if you see a 50something woman looking like she is about to turn into the Incredible Hulk at the customer service desk in T*sco, then run the other way!)
Don't worry about grades, all the Unis apart from maybe Bath and Nottingham will be in Clearing. They are recruiting, not selecting like a Medical school does. You would get in somewhere with CCC. BTW, when or if (72% pass rate this summer) you pass the pre-reg exam, employers don't give two hoots where you did your degree, how many A*s you got, your 10 GCSE 8s and 9s, they care about one thing, the least amount of money they can get away with paying you for the maximum amount of hours. Honest!
Community Pharmacy is dying. (which employs around two third of pharmacy graduates).
It hit the iceberg in 2005 with the so-called new clinical based pharmacy contract and is taking on water fast and another tilt with Category M generic meds pricing in 2007/08.
We're not quite at the stage of 'Little Leo' being in the water yet, but any sane pharmacist under about age 35/40 is heading for a lifeboat with Kate Winslet!
Anyone over 55 is part-time, semi-retired, dead, a chain-smoking alcoholic (joke!) or very very unlikely to be working 5 days a week in a community pharmacy unless they are a) mad, b)took on a huge mortgage back in the day or c) enjoy the daily interaction with and helping the general public with their problems and ailments! (hahahahah!)
Just found out today a small chain local to my area is selling ALL of its shops! And another local medium chain put 2 up for sale a couple of weeks ago.
Boots and Lloyds are also closing/selling/off-loading via dodgy Swiss/Delaware bank accounts (allegedly) 200 each thereabouts.
Go to your local High street and go and ask to talk to the pharmacist, ask them if they would recommend a career in pharmacy?
Boots, Lloyds, Tesco, Well, Superdrug, Rowlands, Daylewis, Asda, Morrisons are most of the large chains.
Don't forget to try some independents too, that's like "Mr Bloggs" chemist. Usually one man/woman one shop.
Let us know their replies please. Use ***** for the expletives!
Hospital is very competitive to get a pre-reg. I had an excellent student who got a first from a Russell Group Uni and still had to settle for a community pre-reg.
If you want hospital be prepared to move! Do research, where are all the basic grade jobs? NE? SW? small towns out in the sticks? then apply for pre-reg there.
GP surgery, they will probably want a diploma so that's 2 yrs more studying part-time (about 8-10hrs a week for mine).
Then ontop of that the IP course, and if you can add in the Advanced Clinical/Care then you could be going places. Also keep in mind many of my generation X, late40s etc are rushing into these jobs, I think basically so they don't need a knee replacement at 65 from 40 yrs of standing up for 9 hours a day! So in 6 yrs time, I think most GPs will have a Practice Pharmacist so you will be waiting for my lot to jack it in!
Big cities are saturated, school of pharmacy cities and towns are saturated. If you want to stay in one place or area or are of the mind of " I'll never leave Wales" or "I've lived in London all my life so I'm not going to live somewhere like 'Emmerdale' I'd just die of boredom!" is going to struggle with finding a job or end up on a poor salary or locum rate as if a company knows you are unwilling to move and really want/need the job you have lost some of your 'walk-away' bargaining power and to paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Mrs T. May, 'any deal is better than no deal (and unemployment)' !
Industry. errrrr, Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, lottery win statistics, your Dad runs Acmme Pharmaceuticals, 'casting couch'!?
Then add in the government wants the largest number of items dispensed as cheaply as possible in the fewest number of locations (taken from a recent pharmacy journal!) and has just set the funding for the next 5 yrs, until 2024 at a flat rate total of about £13.2bn. (they forgot that little thing called inflation!) so by then you will in effect have had another 10% cut (assuming 2% inflation per yr.) on top of the cut we had a couple of years ago of somewhere between 6 to 12% depending how you calculate it (reference needed please from another old saddo pharmacist plz.!!) Hence. Not looking good.
Pharmacy though, only has itself to blame, free collection of scripts, free delivery of prescriptions, free making up of blister packed daily medicine trays, free blood pressure monitoring, free blood glucose testing, etc etc. You'll be lucky if you can get a GP to sign your passport form for less than £25 quid! (hint: if you want a GP to read something write it on a cheque!)
So eventually, and it's taken years, the government thinks, "well... if they can afford to do all that for free plus provide a van and diesel and a driver, that we don't give any money for, then by golly, we must be over-paying them!! " Hence, harsh, savage cuts! And it will be reflected in your pay packet most certainly. Please note, I speak for community pharmacy, there is a thread from a NQP in hospital who loves her job!? Sadly, there are many more threads like this.
On the plus side.....it's an interesting degree, just over saturated, pay is decreasing rapidly in real terms (not difficult to find pharmacists who have virtually had no raise in wages in a decade, despite being expected to go on courses in your own time, like learn how to shove a flu-jab in an arm for 6 hrs on a Sunday! so you can add more work and stress into your already stressful, over-worked, short-staffed nightmare of a day. Repeat x 5d, x45wks, x50yrs. !)
So you can look forward to 20 Benson a day or be trendy with those CBD drops!, a bottle of wine a night, no lunch hour ever ever again, hence after a few yrs of scoffing on the move, GORD/stomach ulcer, Here, have some Lansoprazole says your GP! No daylight November to February if you work in a centre or a warehouse hub with no windows (take those vitamin D tabs, kids!) obesity as you're too shattered to exercise, high blood pressure from the stress, so that's dispensing your own script for ramipril, the depression, so add citalopram to your script, probably high cholesterol, GPs need those QOF points! so add atorvastatin, so soon you're on as much as the punters! And that's before you get to 45/50! Then there's still another 25 yrs to go! So then we can add in tamsulosin for the men and tolterodine for the ladies, from years, of " I'll just go for a wee in a minute.... still holding on an hour later!" Then your knees start to go so you'll need some strong co-codamol that will bung you up so buy some senna, and naproxen if that ulcer has healed, but here's some omeprazole to protect what's left of your stomach! Have I forgotten anything? Can't remember, my medicines carrier bag is downstairs!!
PS. It's only going to get worse. Look up FMD and the scanning of every single of the thousands of boxes that you use every day/wk/mth/year! EU Directive we are unlikely to dodge (come on Boris, Sort it out for Gawd's sake!!) set up by people who have never set foot in a pharmacy, that you don't know, didn't vote for, and cannot remove from office! (But that's a whole other story! Perhaps after a few days of that as the new slave/dogsbody..... I mean pre-reg, you won't be such a happy youthful remainer?!?!)
Anyway......while all this is going on, I strongly suggest you read Pharmacy Forum and Pharmacy Magazine and Chemist and Druggist, all available on-line with a free sign-up, it may give you food for thought and /or increase your citalopram/Kalms/CBD oil dose, and keep you up to date on what pharmacists can do next 'to ease the pressure on GPs/the NHS/general practice'. (please note you will never see an article on how to ease the pressure on pharmacists and their poor 'I could earn more at Lidl' under-paid staff usually on minimum wage!) You will also see lots of articles on how pharmacists in community are " well-placed" to ............. do just about anything you could think of! All for free of course!
Now, some people may say I'm being negative, I've had verbal abuse off students who have been brain-washed by the lecturers who have fed the Kool-aid out ....." bright new clinical future" It's like the play 'Waiting for Godot' Spoiler alert ..........!
(Never turns up!, don't read it though, the ending will give you ideas!), been hearing that since Mrs Thatcher was on the steps of Number 10 holding up 3 fingers! (1987 for you kids!) Nuffield Report 1986. ) but I say I'm just doing a Roy Walker and 'saying what I see, if you see it, say it! (Catchphrase) (God I'm old!) Also known as 'The Truth' but you will quickly find any mention or suggestion of 'The Truth' to senior management who are not at the coal face will be met with hostility and how 'you're all being too negative' and 'look at the new services coming through, and ' work smarter' !
Anyway kids, I've rambled on far too long but print this out and take it to your local community pharmacist and ask them if you could pop back tomorrow to see how much they agree/disagree with the above. They won't be able to read it there and then because they'll be doing the jobs that they had 3 people for 10 yrs ago. !!
And so......should you dare write that code down, it used to be B300, it's probably FKDUP50 now, reflecting what the profession is and your years of misery in it (and I use that term loosely when your line manager will have probably been managing a Kwikfit, Lidl, Carphone warehouse, Rymans, last year. Yes, all true!!! Pharmacy is NOT run by pharmacists anymore).
Good luck! You will need it!
Please feel free to add feedback. ("also while you're doing it, could you spend a couple of minutes just filling out the annual customer survey, no, it's just a couple of mins, {while we take 20 minutes to dispense your Ventolin because the old bat in front of you has decided to wait for her and Mr Husband's 24 items. And we're short-staffed. as usual}
Oooooooh, excuse me Sir, there are 2 sides! ")
It may be 3 yrs old but the guy who wrote it (not me!) explains in great detail what is wrong and going wrong, etc.
I will give you a humorous summary below ( because if we didn't laugh in the pharmacy we would be sitting up the corner crying and chewing on diazepam, p.s. don't do that it's illegal! the diazepam, not the crying, although I'm sure the GPhC will issue a SOP or Standard on that soon, after a far-reaching and wide consultation period of course!) but please read that thread! Of course should you have a break-down in the dispensary because you can't get any HRT patches for love nor money nor car-boot sale and there is a lady at the counter shouting about the moustache she's growing, you could use that for an article on CPD, for example Communication, sobbing with her, or Leadership, showing her to the Gillette and Veet products! (but I merely jest! although HRT really is on a delay, so if you see a 50something woman looking like she is about to turn into the Incredible Hulk at the customer service desk in T*sco, then run the other way!)
Don't worry about grades, all the Unis apart from maybe Bath and Nottingham will be in Clearing. They are recruiting, not selecting like a Medical school does. You would get in somewhere with CCC. BTW, when or if (72% pass rate this summer) you pass the pre-reg exam, employers don't give two hoots where you did your degree, how many A*s you got, your 10 GCSE 8s and 9s, they care about one thing, the least amount of money they can get away with paying you for the maximum amount of hours. Honest!
Community Pharmacy is dying. (which employs around two third of pharmacy graduates).
It hit the iceberg in 2005 with the so-called new clinical based pharmacy contract and is taking on water fast and another tilt with Category M generic meds pricing in 2007/08.
We're not quite at the stage of 'Little Leo' being in the water yet, but any sane pharmacist under about age 35/40 is heading for a lifeboat with Kate Winslet!
Anyone over 55 is part-time, semi-retired, dead, a chain-smoking alcoholic (joke!) or very very unlikely to be working 5 days a week in a community pharmacy unless they are a) mad, b)took on a huge mortgage back in the day or c) enjoy the daily interaction with and helping the general public with their problems and ailments! (hahahahah!)
Just found out today a small chain local to my area is selling ALL of its shops! And another local medium chain put 2 up for sale a couple of weeks ago.
Boots and Lloyds are also closing/selling/off-loading via dodgy Swiss/Delaware bank accounts (allegedly) 200 each thereabouts.
Go to your local High street and go and ask to talk to the pharmacist, ask them if they would recommend a career in pharmacy?
Boots, Lloyds, Tesco, Well, Superdrug, Rowlands, Daylewis, Asda, Morrisons are most of the large chains.
Don't forget to try some independents too, that's like "Mr Bloggs" chemist. Usually one man/woman one shop.
Let us know their replies please. Use ***** for the expletives!
Hospital is very competitive to get a pre-reg. I had an excellent student who got a first from a Russell Group Uni and still had to settle for a community pre-reg.
If you want hospital be prepared to move! Do research, where are all the basic grade jobs? NE? SW? small towns out in the sticks? then apply for pre-reg there.
GP surgery, they will probably want a diploma so that's 2 yrs more studying part-time (about 8-10hrs a week for mine).
Then ontop of that the IP course, and if you can add in the Advanced Clinical/Care then you could be going places. Also keep in mind many of my generation X, late40s etc are rushing into these jobs, I think basically so they don't need a knee replacement at 65 from 40 yrs of standing up for 9 hours a day! So in 6 yrs time, I think most GPs will have a Practice Pharmacist so you will be waiting for my lot to jack it in!
Big cities are saturated, school of pharmacy cities and towns are saturated. If you want to stay in one place or area or are of the mind of " I'll never leave Wales" or "I've lived in London all my life so I'm not going to live somewhere like 'Emmerdale' I'd just die of boredom!" is going to struggle with finding a job or end up on a poor salary or locum rate as if a company knows you are unwilling to move and really want/need the job you have lost some of your 'walk-away' bargaining power and to paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Mrs T. May, 'any deal is better than no deal (and unemployment)' !
Industry. errrrr, Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, lottery win statistics, your Dad runs Acmme Pharmaceuticals, 'casting couch'!?
Then add in the government wants the largest number of items dispensed as cheaply as possible in the fewest number of locations (taken from a recent pharmacy journal!) and has just set the funding for the next 5 yrs, until 2024 at a flat rate total of about £13.2bn. (they forgot that little thing called inflation!) so by then you will in effect have had another 10% cut (assuming 2% inflation per yr.) on top of the cut we had a couple of years ago of somewhere between 6 to 12% depending how you calculate it (reference needed please from another old saddo pharmacist plz.!!) Hence. Not looking good.
Pharmacy though, only has itself to blame, free collection of scripts, free delivery of prescriptions, free making up of blister packed daily medicine trays, free blood pressure monitoring, free blood glucose testing, etc etc. You'll be lucky if you can get a GP to sign your passport form for less than £25 quid! (hint: if you want a GP to read something write it on a cheque!)
So eventually, and it's taken years, the government thinks, "well... if they can afford to do all that for free plus provide a van and diesel and a driver, that we don't give any money for, then by golly, we must be over-paying them!! " Hence, harsh, savage cuts! And it will be reflected in your pay packet most certainly. Please note, I speak for community pharmacy, there is a thread from a NQP in hospital who loves her job!? Sadly, there are many more threads like this.
On the plus side.....it's an interesting degree, just over saturated, pay is decreasing rapidly in real terms (not difficult to find pharmacists who have virtually had no raise in wages in a decade, despite being expected to go on courses in your own time, like learn how to shove a flu-jab in an arm for 6 hrs on a Sunday! so you can add more work and stress into your already stressful, over-worked, short-staffed nightmare of a day. Repeat x 5d, x45wks, x50yrs. !)
So you can look forward to 20 Benson a day or be trendy with those CBD drops!, a bottle of wine a night, no lunch hour ever ever again, hence after a few yrs of scoffing on the move, GORD/stomach ulcer, Here, have some Lansoprazole says your GP! No daylight November to February if you work in a centre or a warehouse hub with no windows (take those vitamin D tabs, kids!) obesity as you're too shattered to exercise, high blood pressure from the stress, so that's dispensing your own script for ramipril, the depression, so add citalopram to your script, probably high cholesterol, GPs need those QOF points! so add atorvastatin, so soon you're on as much as the punters! And that's before you get to 45/50! Then there's still another 25 yrs to go! So then we can add in tamsulosin for the men and tolterodine for the ladies, from years, of " I'll just go for a wee in a minute.... still holding on an hour later!" Then your knees start to go so you'll need some strong co-codamol that will bung you up so buy some senna, and naproxen if that ulcer has healed, but here's some omeprazole to protect what's left of your stomach! Have I forgotten anything? Can't remember, my medicines carrier bag is downstairs!!
PS. It's only going to get worse. Look up FMD and the scanning of every single of the thousands of boxes that you use every day/wk/mth/year! EU Directive we are unlikely to dodge (come on Boris, Sort it out for Gawd's sake!!) set up by people who have never set foot in a pharmacy, that you don't know, didn't vote for, and cannot remove from office! (But that's a whole other story! Perhaps after a few days of that as the new slave/dogsbody..... I mean pre-reg, you won't be such a happy youthful remainer?!?!)
Anyway......while all this is going on, I strongly suggest you read Pharmacy Forum and Pharmacy Magazine and Chemist and Druggist, all available on-line with a free sign-up, it may give you food for thought and /or increase your citalopram/Kalms/CBD oil dose, and keep you up to date on what pharmacists can do next 'to ease the pressure on GPs/the NHS/general practice'. (please note you will never see an article on how to ease the pressure on pharmacists and their poor 'I could earn more at Lidl' under-paid staff usually on minimum wage!) You will also see lots of articles on how pharmacists in community are " well-placed" to ............. do just about anything you could think of! All for free of course!
Now, some people may say I'm being negative, I've had verbal abuse off students who have been brain-washed by the lecturers who have fed the Kool-aid out ....." bright new clinical future" It's like the play 'Waiting for Godot' Spoiler alert ..........!
(Never turns up!, don't read it though, the ending will give you ideas!), been hearing that since Mrs Thatcher was on the steps of Number 10 holding up 3 fingers! (1987 for you kids!) Nuffield Report 1986. ) but I say I'm just doing a Roy Walker and 'saying what I see, if you see it, say it! (Catchphrase) (God I'm old!) Also known as 'The Truth' but you will quickly find any mention or suggestion of 'The Truth' to senior management who are not at the coal face will be met with hostility and how 'you're all being too negative' and 'look at the new services coming through, and ' work smarter' !
Anyway kids, I've rambled on far too long but print this out and take it to your local community pharmacist and ask them if you could pop back tomorrow to see how much they agree/disagree with the above. They won't be able to read it there and then because they'll be doing the jobs that they had 3 people for 10 yrs ago. !!
And so......should you dare write that code down, it used to be B300, it's probably FKDUP50 now, reflecting what the profession is and your years of misery in it (and I use that term loosely when your line manager will have probably been managing a Kwikfit, Lidl, Carphone warehouse, Rymans, last year. Yes, all true!!! Pharmacy is NOT run by pharmacists anymore).
Good luck! You will need it!
Please feel free to add feedback. ("also while you're doing it, could you spend a couple of minutes just filling out the annual customer survey, no, it's just a couple of mins, {while we take 20 minutes to dispense your Ventolin because the old bat in front of you has decided to wait for her and Mr Husband's 24 items. And we're short-staffed. as usual}
Oooooooh, excuse me Sir, there are 2 sides! ")
This made me LOL. You nailed it!
I don't think the doctor will be adding Omeprazole to your script if you're already on Lanzoprazole for the GORD
Original post by 0895
I'm sorry you feel it's ' a downer' but it is the truth. Ignore all the shiny crap the Unis try to sell you. They want bums on seats and that 9k. They couldn't give a flying f*ck if you get a job, as long as you get a pre-reg, then they can trumpet 100% employment at 6/12 months.
I don't mean to be cruel or mean , but did you actually do any work experience in any community pharmacies and see what utter chaos it is and the work that needs to be done and then look at how many people they give you to do it!
Did you read the sticky at the top of the page that has been there since 2016 ' poor career prospects' and that guy explains it all really well in detail.
Why is it too late? You'l work until you're 70 at least, so what's a year now, pull your application and really think and research what you want to do because to use an analogy for pharmacy's future, you will be learning how to shoe horses, while Henry Ford is rolling his first Model-T off the production line.
Like I say to the kids, 'learn to code' or 'learn mandarin'. Where do the future jobs lie over the next 10 to 20 years ?
They don't lie in sticking labels on boxes!
I don't mean to be cruel or mean , but did you actually do any work experience in any community pharmacies and see what utter chaos it is and the work that needs to be done and then look at how many people they give you to do it!
Did you read the sticky at the top of the page that has been there since 2016 ' poor career prospects' and that guy explains it all really well in detail.
Why is it too late? You'l work until you're 70 at least, so what's a year now, pull your application and really think and research what you want to do because to use an analogy for pharmacy's future, you will be learning how to shoe horses, while Henry Ford is rolling his first Model-T off the production line.
Like I say to the kids, 'learn to code' or 'learn mandarin'. Where do the future jobs lie over the next 10 to 20 years ?
They don't lie in sticking labels on boxes!
Every community pharmacist I have ever spoken to regrets their career choice, apart from the ones that own their business. These kids need to go and actually speak to pharmacists. I don't get why you wouldn't
The negative folks seem to flood every single thread in this forum.
In my neck of the woods, I'm yet to meet a single pharmacist manager colleague who regrets studying pharmacy. I have met a couple who regret being 'stuck' in community pharmacy, but they are the lazy ones who have refused to pursue a clinical postgraduate qualification; and even these few ones tell me they are still happy to cry into an annual salary of circa £65,000 plus which they currently all earn. I'm a happy community pharmacist, and I sometimes think I'm being paid more than I deserve by my employers. I'm currently studying a part-time MSc Clinical Pharmacy with Independent Prescribing addon qualification which will net me my third post-graduate degree.
Thankfully, I don't allow negative vibes get close to me in my day job.
To all the young'uns thinking of studying pharmacy. Go for it! Get your degree and qualify. Pharmacy has a wide array of specialities and if you don't like one area, you can delve into the next. The average starting pay for pharmacists is double the national graduate starting pay. If you eventually practice as a pharmacist for a while and you find you don't like every facet of pharmacy, you can self-sponsor yourself to study for any degree you fancy whilst earning good money as a locum pharmacist.
Good luck. #PatientsFIRST #PharmacyPositivity
In my neck of the woods, I'm yet to meet a single pharmacist manager colleague who regrets studying pharmacy. I have met a couple who regret being 'stuck' in community pharmacy, but they are the lazy ones who have refused to pursue a clinical postgraduate qualification; and even these few ones tell me they are still happy to cry into an annual salary of circa £65,000 plus which they currently all earn. I'm a happy community pharmacist, and I sometimes think I'm being paid more than I deserve by my employers. I'm currently studying a part-time MSc Clinical Pharmacy with Independent Prescribing addon qualification which will net me my third post-graduate degree.
Thankfully, I don't allow negative vibes get close to me in my day job.
To all the young'uns thinking of studying pharmacy. Go for it! Get your degree and qualify. Pharmacy has a wide array of specialities and if you don't like one area, you can delve into the next. The average starting pay for pharmacists is double the national graduate starting pay. If you eventually practice as a pharmacist for a while and you find you don't like every facet of pharmacy, you can self-sponsor yourself to study for any degree you fancy whilst earning good money as a locum pharmacist.
Good luck. #PatientsFIRST #PharmacyPositivity
(edited 4 years ago)
Original post by Claremont4ever
The negative folks seem to flood every single thread in this forum.
In my neck of the woods, I'm yet to meet a single pharmacist manager colleague who regrets studying pharmacy. I have met a couple who regret being 'stuck' in community pharmacy, but they are the lazy ones who have refused to pursue a clinical postgraduate qualification; and even these few ones tell me they are still happy to cry into an annual salary of circa £65,000 plus which they currently all earn. I'm a happy community pharmacist, and I sometimes think I'm being paid more than I deserve
SAID NO PHARMACIST EVER!! by my employers. I'm currently studying a part-time MSc Clinical Pharmacy with Independent Prescribing addon qualification which will net me my third post-graduate degree.
Thankfully, I don't allow negative vibes get close to me in my day job.
To all the young'uns thinking of studying pharmacy. Go for it! Get your degree and qualify. Pharmacy has a wide array of specialities and if you don't like one area, you can delve into the next. The average starting pay for pharmacists is double the national graduate starting pay. If you eventually practice as a pharmacist for a while and you find you don't like every facet of pharmacy, you can self-sponsor yourself to study for any degree you fancy whilst earning good money as a locum pharmacist.
Good luck. #PatientsFIRST #PharmacyPositivity
In my neck of the woods, I'm yet to meet a single pharmacist manager colleague who regrets studying pharmacy. I have met a couple who regret being 'stuck' in community pharmacy, but they are the lazy ones who have refused to pursue a clinical postgraduate qualification; and even these few ones tell me they are still happy to cry into an annual salary of circa £65,000 plus which they currently all earn. I'm a happy community pharmacist, and I sometimes think I'm being paid more than I deserve
SAID NO PHARMACIST EVER!! by my employers. I'm currently studying a part-time MSc Clinical Pharmacy with Independent Prescribing addon qualification which will net me my third post-graduate degree.Thankfully, I don't allow negative vibes get close to me in my day job.
To all the young'uns thinking of studying pharmacy. Go for it! Get your degree and qualify. Pharmacy has a wide array of specialities and if you don't like one area, you can delve into the next. The average starting pay for pharmacists is double the national graduate starting pay. If you eventually practice as a pharmacist for a while and you find you don't like every facet of pharmacy, you can self-sponsor yourself to study for any degree you fancy whilst earning good money as a locum pharmacist.
Good luck. #PatientsFIRST #PharmacyPositivity
Firstly, will you STOP filling UK kids' heads with this crap. They are NOT going to earn 65k a yr! YOU might earn it because you work in some ghetto in the NorthEast that no British pharmacist would touch with an opinion poll let alone a barge poll! And because they like their car to still have tyres at the end of the day!
And secondly, can you back up the bold above with some stats and evidence please. What is the average graduate salary? Is it 13-14k a yr because the newly qualified pharmacists I know are on 26/28k? Any degree you fancy? oh ok, what about applying and selection, (pharmacy is a recruitment degree, why are Russell Group Unis in Clearing? alarm bells should ring!) and self-sponsor, in English, you mean add more debt to the 50k you already owe? And good money as a locum? like £18 an hour? that was the average locum rate in about 2002/3.
Are you also going to tell all the kids on here you qualified abroad, and did OSPAP, but won't say where, won't tell your age, been qualified ONE year there abouts in the UK and think you are able to work a 60 to 70 hr week plus study for a Diploma? Do you Sleep??!! And then of course I suppose you are going to tell them about your mansion, yeh, mansion kids, not 2 bed tiny rabbit hutch for 195k. Do pharmacy and live in a MANSION ! NOT!
I agree with Hoganballs above, your work ethic is admirable, but, and I hate to say this, but it's true. British teens and 20somethings are lazy! I know I, and all my friends were! Minimum effort to try and get the maximum return was our motto 25 to 30 yrs ago, and I'm sure it still is.
They don't want to do a 40 hour week, let alone a 64 hour one like you! 16 hour days! You tell a 6th former that they will work and be chained to the pharmacy in Tescburys from 7AM until 11PM, and do it 3 or 4 days in a row, they will drop dead on the spot at just the thought of it.
Back in the day I did a few 8am till 10pm shifts and by about 7pm you're having hallucinations about an outside world, and daylight! And counting every minute down until you can escape at 10pm and literally grab your money, (lovely cash back then) and run outside screaming "I'm free!" I used to drive home with the window open, even in winter, to feel fresh air!!
A customer complained once because I had gone to the toilet. And even though the ladies explained that it was a 14 hour shift, and we have to wee, and have no break, didn't matter, they still went stomping over to Customer Service desk to moan, and the next week the pharmacy manager 'wanted a little word', but when I asked him if he would prefer I just pi*s in the dispensary sink he shut up!
NQPs will moan if they have to do more work on their day off, they've just done 5 yrs, don't you know! ? I've asked you once, and I'll invite you again. Come down to the Midlands or London and go looking for 65k. you won't even get HALF that.
I very, very much hope that any 6th former reading your Grimms' Fairy Tales does some fact checking and goes into their local pharmacy and shows the pharmacist your 'knowledge' on pay on their mobile, then watch the pharmacist laugh hysterically like someone on a Psych ward who's missed their Haldol jab.
Please, if you are going to spew any more of this cr*p out, back it up with redacted copies of your pay slip, and stats and evidence for everything else you quote. You are actually making me rather cross now, and filling teenager's heads with candy floss for the brain.
Once more for those asleep at the back:
YOU WILL NOT EARN 65K IN YOUR FIRST OR SECOND YEAR AS A COMMUNITY PHARMACIST. YOU MAY EARN THIS IF YOU MOVE UP THE RANKS AND BECOME A SUPERINTENDENT OR SENIOR SENIOR HOSPITAL PHARMACIST BUT YOU WILL BE WELL INTO YOUR 40s ON AVERAGE. THERE ARE VERY SPECIFIC REASONS WHY THIS PERSON CLAIMS TO EARN 65K, ONE MAINLY BEING LOCATION AND 16 HOUR SHIFTS. THE AVERAGE SALARY IN PHARMACY IS 42K, AND IN COMMUNITY PHARMACY 36K ACCORDING TO CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST WEBSITE.
I very, very much hope some 6th formers will go and speak to their local pharmacists and quote my figures and your figures and see what the answer is.
I also hope that some other pharmacists will back me up that just because YOU earn 65k a yr, allegedly, that this is NOT the norm. ( I had a pharmacy student a couple of years back and she was going to be a locum and earn £40 an hour! And we all looked at her gobsmacked and asked her where exactly?! And that comes from reading posts like yours and just assuming that everyone earns 65k, ooooh good, i'll do pharmacy then.)
i only asked for other students applying to pharmacy to tlk to and discuss their applications and i get all this negativity on pharmacy. sorry pharmacy didnt work out for you but there's no need to be such a downer. my sister, cousin and two aunties do pharmacy and theyre pretty successful so dont be such a downer
Not to be misogynistic (I'm female), but female-dominated industries are notoriously underpaid.The aunties/sisters/daughters you mentioned are probably happy with their pay because they have certain expectations of pay. I know men in male-dominated areas where without a degree they are earning £30k for entry level jobs then quickly moving up the ranks and obtaining substantial pay rises. I know somebody on £57k after less than ten years in engineering without so much as an A level to his name.
Good luck!!
Good luck!!
Original post by tiredndsleepy
i only asked for other students applying to pharmacy to tlk to and discuss their applications and i get all this negativity on pharmacy. sorry pharmacy didnt work out for you but there's no need to be such a downer. my sister, cousin and two aunties do pharmacy and theyre pretty successful so dont be such a downer
what's the point in asking for opinions if you only want positive ones? Just say that next time. And continue to bury your head in the sand.
actually they're earning really good pay clearly because they live in amazing houses and one of them have paid off their daughters loan for uni. theyre pretty successful nd clearly not underpaid thus are happy with their pay. even if it was a low pay there's nothing wrong with tht if the ppl are happy?
Original post by ShootForTheStars
Not to be misogynistic (I'm female), but female-dominated industries are notoriously underpaid.The aunties/sisters/daughters you mentioned are probably happy with their pay because they have certain expectations of pay. I know men in male-dominated areas where without a degree they are earning £30k for entry level jobs then quickly moving up the ranks and obtaining substantial pay rises. I know somebody on £57k after less than ten years in engineering without so much as an A level to his name.
Good luck!!
Good luck!!
Original post by tiredndsleepy
actually they're earning really good pay clearly because they live in amazing houses and one of them have paid off their daughters loan for uni. theyre pretty successful nd clearly not underpaid thus are happy with their pay. even if it was a low pay there's nothing wrong with tht if the ppl are happy?
True
Original post by Claremont4ever
The negative folks seem to flood every single thread in this forum.
In my neck of the woods, I'm yet to meet a single pharmacist manager colleague who regrets studying pharmacy. I have met a couple who regret being 'stuck' in community pharmacy, but they are the lazy ones who have refused to pursue a clinical postgraduate qualification; and even these few ones tell me they are still happy to cry into an annual salary of circa £65,000 plus which they currently all earn. I'm a happy community pharmacist, and I sometimes think I'm being paid more than I deserve by my employers. I'm currently studying a part-time MSc Clinical Pharmacy with Independent Prescribing addon qualification which will net me my third post-graduate degree.
Thankfully, I don't allow negative vibes get close to me in my day job.
To all the young'uns thinking of studying pharmacy. Go for it! Get your degree and qualify. Pharmacy has a wide array of specialities and if you don't like one area, you can delve into the next. The average starting pay for pharmacists is double the national graduate starting pay. If you eventually practice as a pharmacist for a while and you find you don't like every facet of pharmacy, you can self-sponsor yourself to study for any degree you fancy whilst earning good money as a locum pharmacist.
Good luck. #PatientsFIRST #PharmacyPositivity
In my neck of the woods, I'm yet to meet a single pharmacist manager colleague who regrets studying pharmacy. I have met a couple who regret being 'stuck' in community pharmacy, but they are the lazy ones who have refused to pursue a clinical postgraduate qualification; and even these few ones tell me they are still happy to cry into an annual salary of circa £65,000 plus which they currently all earn. I'm a happy community pharmacist, and I sometimes think I'm being paid more than I deserve by my employers. I'm currently studying a part-time MSc Clinical Pharmacy with Independent Prescribing addon qualification which will net me my third post-graduate degree.
Thankfully, I don't allow negative vibes get close to me in my day job.
To all the young'uns thinking of studying pharmacy. Go for it! Get your degree and qualify. Pharmacy has a wide array of specialities and if you don't like one area, you can delve into the next. The average starting pay for pharmacists is double the national graduate starting pay. If you eventually practice as a pharmacist for a while and you find you don't like every facet of pharmacy, you can self-sponsor yourself to study for any degree you fancy whilst earning good money as a locum pharmacist.
Good luck. #PatientsFIRST #PharmacyPositivity
Hey I’m looking to study pharmacy. I was going to ask what your see the career prospect of a pharmacist in the future? But also you mentioned you are going to do your master what band would you fall at and what is the highest pay a pharmacist can make?
Original post by ShootForTheStars
what's the point in asking for opinions if you only want positive ones? Just say that next time. And continue to bury your head in the sand.
I know right!?!
All I'm reading is sisters, aunties, houses, sorry, amazing houses! Paying off student loans, which is not recommended (see MartinMoneyMan's site) unless you are going to be a very high earner. Which as a pharmacist you won't be!
Perhaps you can try and break the myth that pharmacy is still a monied profession. Myself and my colleagues have not had a pay rise since 2008 in community, and 2 chains I locum for cut their rates.
tiredndsleepy:
"actually they're earning really good pay clearly because they live in amazing houses and one of them have paid off their daughters loan for uni. theyre pretty successful nd clearly not underpaid thus are happy with their pay. even if it was a low pay there's nothing wrong with tht if the ppl are happy?"
Just a few points, do they show you their pay slips? the 'amazing' house may be paid for by a spouse, or the bank still owns most of it. How do you know they are successful and not underpaid? Have you asked their salary and then benchmarked it to the part of the profession they work in?
A big house and a big car may or may not be paid for! Those do not necessarily mean they are happy with their pay. You make assumption after assumption. And there is a gender pay gap in pharmacy, if they are female they will probably earn less than a male colleague, and then as pharmacy is a multi-ethnic profession, there is evidence those of a BAME ethnic origin can earn less. Reasons are varied and can depend on location or even things like negotiating skills, men are more likely to ask for more money or ask for a pay rise. (ref : various PJ articles last couple of years).
You don't need to reply to any of this, it's just something to think about, for example, I know a pharmacist who drives a top of the range car on a PCP contract, and lives in a big house in a 'posh' neighbourhood and he hates his job because he is spending all his time working usually 6 days a week, at something he doesn't like all that much, to buy things he doesn't really need to try and impress people he doesn't like/who don't care. (this actually sums up a large proportion of the workforce in general!).
Also, it may be a good idea to remember when you are texting and when you're not. I know this is probably a generational thing, but it drives us 'oldies' crazy!
One last thing, remember you need three A levels, a four year degree, a pre-reg year signed off and a passed pre-reg exam before you get to the 'dosh' !
This is not to you, in fact none of this is, but I very much feel some of you are going to be quite disappointed in six or seven years' time if you're 6th form now, and don't do your in-depth research.
An Auntie or Uncle with a big house and a smile on their face is not a reason to do pharmacy, and I can't emphasise enough to do your own research, especially if you have family in pharmacy. Community pharmacy is going through big changes and this will continue with the arrival of robotics and hub and spoke, with the knock on effect on pharmacy shop numbers and pharmacist numbers required, and salary paid, the five year payment to community pharmacy is flat, there is no incremental increase each year!! Now, go compare to the funding that GP surgeries are getting over the next five years.
(I'll give you an example of family in pharmacy, a boy in my first year, who came from a generation of pharmacists, he would be the third, to take over the business, except he hated it and failed the first year twice, so did a physics degree, was much happier, and then went off to do something with computer programming in the NHS! Luckily he had a forgiving Father!)
"actually they're earning really good pay clearly because they live in amazing houses and one of them have paid off their daughters loan for uni. theyre pretty successful nd clearly not underpaid thus are happy with their pay. even if it was a low pay there's nothing wrong with tht if the ppl are happy?"
Just a few points, do they show you their pay slips? the 'amazing' house may be paid for by a spouse, or the bank still owns most of it. How do you know they are successful and not underpaid? Have you asked their salary and then benchmarked it to the part of the profession they work in?
A big house and a big car may or may not be paid for! Those do not necessarily mean they are happy with their pay. You make assumption after assumption. And there is a gender pay gap in pharmacy, if they are female they will probably earn less than a male colleague, and then as pharmacy is a multi-ethnic profession, there is evidence those of a BAME ethnic origin can earn less. Reasons are varied and can depend on location or even things like negotiating skills, men are more likely to ask for more money or ask for a pay rise. (ref : various PJ articles last couple of years).
You don't need to reply to any of this, it's just something to think about, for example, I know a pharmacist who drives a top of the range car on a PCP contract, and lives in a big house in a 'posh' neighbourhood and he hates his job because he is spending all his time working usually 6 days a week, at something he doesn't like all that much, to buy things he doesn't really need to try and impress people he doesn't like/who don't care. (this actually sums up a large proportion of the workforce in general!).
Also, it may be a good idea to remember when you are texting and when you're not. I know this is probably a generational thing, but it drives us 'oldies' crazy!
One last thing, remember you need three A levels, a four year degree, a pre-reg year signed off and a passed pre-reg exam before you get to the 'dosh' !
This is not to you, in fact none of this is, but I very much feel some of you are going to be quite disappointed in six or seven years' time if you're 6th form now, and don't do your in-depth research.
An Auntie or Uncle with a big house and a smile on their face is not a reason to do pharmacy, and I can't emphasise enough to do your own research, especially if you have family in pharmacy. Community pharmacy is going through big changes and this will continue with the arrival of robotics and hub and spoke, with the knock on effect on pharmacy shop numbers and pharmacist numbers required, and salary paid, the five year payment to community pharmacy is flat, there is no incremental increase each year!! Now, go compare to the funding that GP surgeries are getting over the next five years.
(I'll give you an example of family in pharmacy, a boy in my first year, who came from a generation of pharmacists, he would be the third, to take over the business, except he hated it and failed the first year twice, so did a physics degree, was much happier, and then went off to do something with computer programming in the NHS! Luckily he had a forgiving Father!)
#HappyPharmacist here! I live in a 4 bedroom mansion with a conservatory extension located in a 'posh' estate somewhere in the North East. I drive a landrover valued at over £40,000 all paid for. Pharmacy has been good to me. My earnings place me among the top 5% earners in the UK. I would urge all young'uns to study pharmacy, a good life is guaranteed afterwards!
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