The Student Room Group

Don't do Pharmacy, just DON'T ! AMA!

Main reasons:
12% cuts to pharmacy budget on Dec 1st from govt. will lead to falling wages and salaries.

Massive explosion in schools of pharmacy from 14 to nearly 30 over a decade or so.

3000 graduates a year this year as opposed to around half that 10/15 yrs ago.

Saturated jobs market.

Falling locum rates, now at the same level as they were in 2004/5.

Don't just take my word for it : DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH before you spend 36k in fees .

STRESS. All community pharmacies run on basic skeleton crew to save money for the company. This creates stress as too much to do and not enough people to do it.
You MUST, if you are going to do pharmacy, go and arrange work experience in a chain chemist like Boots or Lloyds. Two thirds of pharmacy graduates will end up in a chain chemist or in community pharmacy somewhere. You will be a health care professional managed by Business men. Their main motive is profit, your main motive may be patient care and following the law! These don't always work together in harmony.

Please feel free to ask questions and debate.
I welcome anyone who is a new pharmacist also adding to this, either side of the debate.

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Are you a pharmacist?
I am a community pharmacist
Original post by crazy.chemist
Main reasons:
I welcome anyone who is a new pharmacist also adding to this, either side of the debate.


What proportion of your former classmates are still in community pharmacy?


Posted from TSR Mobile
(edited 7 years ago)
Reply 4
Original post by crazy.chemist
Main reasons:
12% cuts to pharmacy budget on Dec 1st from govt. will lead to falling wages and salaries.

Massive explosion in schools of pharmacy from 14 to nearly 30 over a decade or so.

3000 graduates a year this year as opposed to around half that 10/15 yrs ago.

Saturated jobs market.

Falling locum rates, now at the same level as they were in 2004/5.

Don't just take my word for it : DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH before you spend 36k in fees .

STRESS. All community pharmacies run on basic skeleton crew to save money for the company. This creates stress as too much to do and not enough people to do it.
You MUST, if you are going to do pharmacy, go and arrange work experience in a chain chemist like Boots or Lloyds. Two thirds of pharmacy graduates will end up in a chain chemist or in community pharmacy somewhere. You will be a health care professional managed by Business men. Their main motive is profit, your main motive may be patient care and following the law! These don't always work together in harmony.

Please feel free to ask questions and debate.
I welcome anyone who is a new pharmacist also adding to this, either side of the debate.


what about optometry? would that be a better option?
Original post by Freiheit
What proportion of your former classmates are still in community pharmacy?


Posted from TSR Mobile


People seem to be leaving or trying to leave by applying to hospitals or for other degrees. One is thinking of training as a teacher, another as starting a management training course in retail.
Original post by goal101
what about optometry? would that be a better option?


I don't know anything about it tbh!
You would have to go and have a look on their threads.
I would imagine the job is slightly less chaotic as you see people by appointment.
What would you say are the chances of someone taking pharmacy and then going into the pharma industry (becoming a induatrial pharmacist or any other positions in the sector) both abroad or in the UK? Or even, the prospects for someone taking pharmacy and then pursues something completely different? I understand that the latter heavily depends on the circumstance but I thought to ask anyway.
I'm shocked
Original post by tsraccount#2
What would you say are the chances of someone taking pharmacy and then going into the pharma industry (becoming a induatrial pharmacist or any other positions in the sector) both abroad or in the UK? Or even, the prospects for someone taking pharmacy and then pursues something completely different? I understand that the latter heavily depends on the circumstance but I thought to ask anyway.


You could do pharmacy then a PhD and try and go in that way.
Industrial pre-reg places V V hard to find. Probably about a dozen or so in the UK per yr. Correct me if i'm wrong if anyone has any accurate figures???
Could always write/email pharmaceutical companies and ask if they do them and how many on offer.
Original post by samina_ay
I'm shocked


What are you shocked about?
Original post by crazy.chemist
What are you shocked about?


About how bad the job market is for pharmacy graduates, 5 years of hard work gone to waste...
I don't think the pharmacy sector alone is going to be affected. It does look like a bad situation. I wonder what the options are in trying to solve this problem.
Original post by Kiritsugu
I don't think the pharmacy sector alone is going to be affected. It does look like a bad situation. I wonder what the options are in trying to solve this problem.


Well the RPS and the Uni's have no answers. They just talk about GP pharmacists and using pharmacists more !
The govt has refused to cap the student numbers.
I think by 2020, as people start to not be able to get a pre-reg then this is when pharmacy as a degree will start to fall apart.
All the asian parents will wake up to the fact that as a job it's been turned into slave labour for a corporate chain, you will never own your own business, or get the respect that a Dr gets, and there will be a massive drop in applications to pharmacy school, leading to some of the useless crap ones, i.e. some of the old polys either drastically reducing their intake OR closing down. Then there will be an even bigger push to get into Medicine or dentistry or even optometry maybe, even if Jeremy Hunt told Junior doctors to work their 2 foundation years for minimum wage!
Seriously guys, do work experience in Boots or co-op or Lloyds, because there is a big chance you will end up there as a corporate drone. Or you can gamble on the fact that you might be one of the lucky ones (about 30/35 %) who doesn't end up in a shop working for a chain, having the public talk to you like crap because it's Friday, but you haven't even finished printing off the electronic scripts from Wednesday yet, let alone even dispensed them!!

Another friend resigned yesterday.... going to re-train in IT and go into computing/coding/IT stuff, etc.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by crazy.chemist
Well the RPS and the Uni's have no answers. They just talk about GP pharmacists and using pharmacists more !
The govt has refused to cap the student numbers.
I think by 2020, as people start to not be able to get a pre-reg then this is when pharmacy as a degree will start to fall apart.
All the asian parents will wake up to the fact that as a job it's been turned into slave labour for a corporate chain, you will never own your own business, or get the respect that a Dr gets, and there will be a massive drop in applications to pharmacy school, leading to some of the useless crap ones, i.e. some of the old polys either drastically reducing their intake OR closing down. Then there will be an even bigger push to get into Medicine or dentistry or even optometry maybe, even if Jeremy Hunt told Junior doctors to work their 2 foundation years for minimum wage!
Seriously guys, do work experience in Boots or co-op or Lloyds, because there is a big chance you will end up there as a corporate drone. Or you can gamble on the fact that you might be one of the lucky ones (about 30/35 %) who doesn't end up in a shop working for a chain, having the public talk to you like crap because it's Friday, but you haven't even finished printing off the electronic scripts from Wednesday yet, let alone even dispensed them!!

Another friend resigned yesterday.... going to re-train in IT and go into computing/coding/IT stuff, etc.


Good predictions. Sh*t's getting tougher by the day.
I suggest everyone applying to do pharmacy, with a view to working in a sweat-shop, ..., I mean community pharmacy, read up on the new EU law of FMD Falsified Medicines Directive, basically this means you will be scaning every single box of pills etc that you give out, just to check it wasn't made in some back street in the third world!!!!

Now go and ask people already in pharmacy about all the crap we do all day trying to even find a script on the oh-so-wonderful EPS and they will tell you this is going to be the final nail in the coffin. I have met so many ladies over the last 6 months who have said that in 2019, they are OFF ! Probably, as some say, to scan products in Aldi and Lidl and make more money and have much less stress and NO GPhC on their back for when something goes wrong. ! I Strongly suggest you research this !
do u think becoming a forensic scientist is a good idea?
ngl I wouldve still picked mPharm had I not gotten into my firm
Original post by pharmacy15
Not many job opportunities for Forensic science in the UK but if that's what you enjoy go for it but be prepared to compete for a lack of jobs.


what about Criminal Investigator?Detective basically....I want to work in other countries too.Like be transferred:u:
Original post by pharmacy15
My friend has recently become a Police constable without a degree so if you really want to go down that route it's worth finding out if you really need to go to uni to get that job or can you progress your way up from a PC


thanks:biggrin:

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