STOP ITS A TRAP!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously guys don't do pharmacy, its a complete waste. Life as a pharmacist gets worse every year. They are getting paid less and less and having to work longer hours. Every year there are roughly 3000 new pharmacists, there isn't enough jobs for this kind of growth, unless they settle for lower pay at longer hours, which is what is currently happening in community and hospital pharmacies. The average salary during a pharmacists career is £35K for 6 days a week of work from 8:30am to 6pm, 10 years ago it was easily over £45K a year for regular 9-5 five days a week. Now im not saying £35K is a bad salary, but its nowhere near what pharmacists deserve for all the time and effort they have to put in and all **** they will deal with on a dialy basis. Not to mention all the responsability and liability, if you make an error it can be considered a criminal offence - you could have a criminal record, just for making a simple error during dispensing, which is ridiculous pressure for £35K.
IGNORE what the univeristy's tell you, all they want is your money, they wont tell you the real job climate: the community and hospital job market for pharmacists is oversaturated and getting worse every year, in 5 years time when you guys qualify it will be ridiculously hard to land a decent job. When they say you can go into industry or own your own pharmacy, this is practically a lie:
Industry is extremely difficult to get into in this country with MPharm. They wont even consider you, unless you have previous experience. But to get experience itself is very very hard. Theres less than 20 places in the UK that offer placements, these placements are unpaid for several weeks (12ish if i remeber correctly). So unless you live close to a placement and/or have wealthy parents who will fund everything for you to live out for 12 weeks, its virtually impossible for most people. Then theres the fact that they only take the top students because its so competetive, if you don't have a first class degree, they wont even look at your application. If you want to go industry, PhD in Pharmacology is the way to go, not MPharm these days.
You actually can't open your own pharmacy now unless you have a few million in the bank, its extremely expensive. Not to mention very unlikely, there are too many pharmacies in most areas as it is, you have to pass the pharmacy needs assessment and get permission, which wont happen in todays oversaturated climate.
For your own sakes, avoid pharmacy!!!!