The Student Room Group

Pharmacy or Medicine?

Basically, I've wanted to be a Doctor (paediatrician) since I was like 7 years old - partly because my Dad is a doctor so it has always been in the family. However, since I have started sixth form I have realised that it may not be a good option and my dad has been asking me whether Pharmacy may be a better option for me ( I know it is still a lot of work in its own right). I have tried to balance out the pros and cons and realistically Pharmacy seems to give me more options in the long term, in terms of employment. But I'm honestly not sure. So I was wondering whether any uni students studying pharmacy or medicine or anyone in the profession could pls give me some advice and tell me how their experience was in uni (with the work) and when they first started working.

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There are no 'easy' careers where you get high pay and lots and lots of autonomy. I'm sure you realise this, just saying it like, for emphasis.

I'm sure your Dad is very wise, however if he were a pharmacist or a teacher I bet he'd be saying almost identical things about don't go into pharmacy, don't go into teaching.

Personally I wouldn't call pharmacy a 'profession'. Yes, obviously it is in the legal sense, but I think this is where some of the frustration comes in. The public don't really take pharmacists that seriously. Most of pharmacy is in community pharmacy and much of that is in retail which is the wild west of pharmacy. It's a retail job. Sure it's a decently paid one. Sure there are some exciting jobs pharmacists do off in industry, which is very rare. There are hospital pharmacists, there are GP practice pharmacists (a cushy number).

Not sure how you come to the conclusion that pharmacy gives more long term employment options than medicine. Community pharmacy is going to have a lot of closures, a lot of automation and hours cuts in the future. Many would argue the opposite.
okay, thank you for the help, I'll keep that in mind. Out of curiosity, are you a pharmacist/doctor?

Original post by marinade
There are no 'easy' careers where you get high pay and lots and lots of autonomy. I'm sure you realise this, just saying it like, for emphasis.

I'm sure your Dad is very wise, however if he were a pharmacist or a teacher I bet he'd be saying almost identical things about don't go into pharmacy, don't go into teaching.

Personally I wouldn't call pharmacy a 'profession'. Yes, obviously it is in the legal sense, but I think this is where some of the frustration comes in. The public don't really take pharmacists that seriously. Most of pharmacy is in community pharmacy and much of that is in retail which is the wild west of pharmacy. It's a retail job. Sure it's a decently paid one. Sure there are some exciting jobs pharmacists do off in industry, which is very rare. There are hospital pharmacists, there are GP practice pharmacists (a cushy number).

Not sure how you come to the conclusion that pharmacy gives more long term employment options than medicine. Community pharmacy is going to have a lot of closures, a lot of automation and hours cuts in the future. Many would argue the opposite.
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by Mayomikun123
okay, thank you for the help, I'll keep that in mind. Out of curiosity, are you a pharmacist/doctor?

No. I was a dispenser in a pharmacy.

I could have done either, instead I did two other science degrees. I absolutely loved chemistry so I worked in a pharmacy for 3.5 years. I worked with a very large number of pharmacists, many more than some pharmacy support staff get to. I got a lot of advice to do a pharmacy degree, go into hospital tech and for a while I took that very seriously mugged up on a fair bit of stuff including funding, legalities. The funding system in pharmacy is the most devastating bit for me.

I wouldn't let talking to pharmacy staff put you off, talk to both pharmacists and staff. You will get some staff that aren't that interested, in the same way that you might occasionally bump into a 2nd pharmacist in a quiet leafy sleepy pharmacy that just nods and says a few good things. Talk to as many people as possible. Some pharmacists can be a bit funny and call us 'school leavers' lol, cheeky things, I have more degrees and years of studying than they do.
Pharmacist here,

Pharmacy at the moment is going through some uncertain and difficult times, especially within the community sector. As a pharmacist, you won't be going without a job, but it's the worsening working conditions that's the problem. Now medicine is definitely not perfect either, you will find many doctors such as GP's that are burning out.

Medicine is not just being a paediatrician, it has so many different options you can chose form. When it comes to pharmacy, the focus will always be more on the medicine side of things, that's what you'll specialise in and naturally that will limit your options compared to something like medicines where you can specialise on different areas ranging from surgery to dermatology etc.

It takes 5 years for you to become a pharmacist or doctor, before you embark on any of these careers, make sure you get as much experience as possible before deciding. Both these courses are intense and will require you to be passionate to study them.

The decision of which of these 2 courses to choose will ultimately by yours only. Nobody else can give you passionate needed to study these courses.
A large pharmacy chain just announced it is selling off (not closing) 70 out of 500 of it's pharmacies. You need to ask, why?

The company I worked for has sold off and closed a large number of pharmacies, but done it pretty secretly, so it's not got the coverage it deserves. All of the big companies have 'fulfilment centres' - giant warehouses - where they intend to do most prescriptions, with stressed out pharmacists and techs hanging around with loads of robots. Community pharmacy dispensing is a devastatingly easy set of tasks to automate in theory, it's just pharmacy is full of technophobes and change is slow. Pharmacists will still exist, the good ones will get jobs and will always get work in community, but in 10 years there will be far fewer physical pharmacies doing far fewer prescriptions and so what's going to happen, is there going to be money for other services?

Community pharmacy is reliant on NHS money or a slight change on this and you go out of business. The NHS isn't all nicey nicey, it's a rough player and gets fantastic value for money for itself, but this has very serious consequences for working conditions and pay for people that work in pharmacy. Pharmacies do loads of stuff for free, like delivery where money is just whooshing out of the till, it's completely mingbendingly bonkers. You might say yeah but you make the money in other areas - no you don't, margins are very tight. The other notable factors on poor working conditions are big chains have massive downward pressure on wages, poor unionisation, vastly too many pharmacy schools in the UK for number of jobs and a large supply of EU, Indian subcontinent and West African pharmacists that all want to work here. All of these things conspire to make poor working conditions and static/falling pay. It's mostly 'too many EU pharmacists' and 'too many pharmacy schools' it gets blamed on.

There's endless promises by the NHS about 'clinical pharmacists'. It is in my opinion a complete crock of. Since 2010 there have been 6000 independent prescribers, that sounds fantastic until you realise there are 40,000+ pharmacists on the register and this is over years to train them and constantly saying this is the future. The NHS is always saying they'll be loads of jobs for these people and apart from an announcement recently it's not backed up by anything solid.
A dispenser riddles this forum with ill-thought 'advice' which is 100% negativity about pharmacy and pharmacists. The person in question is probably someone who couldn't pass the pre-reg assessment after multiple attempts, and hence, has made it his/her duty in life to discourage as many people as possible from being pharmacists.

@OP: Pharmacy is an excellent career. However, no career is perfect. I know of many of my doctor colleagues who constantly complain of burn-out and low pay, it's the same in some aspects of pharmacy. I'm a pharmacist who just qualified in November, I currently earn round about £60,000 whilst working 55-60 hours/week. I enjoy my job in the community.
Original post by Mr Optimist
Pharmacist here,

Pharmacy at the moment is going through some uncertain and difficult times, especially within the community sector. As a pharmacist, you won't be going without a job, but it's the worsening working conditions that's the problem. Now medicine is definitely not perfect either, you will find many doctors such as GP's that are burning out.

Medicine is not just being a paediatrician, it has so many different options you can chose form. When it comes to pharmacy, the focus will always be more on the medicine side of things, that's what you'll specialise in and naturally that will limit your options compared to something like medicines where you can specialise on different areas ranging from surgery to dermatology etc.

It takes 5 years for you to become a pharmacist or doctor, before you embark on any of these careers, make sure you get as much experience as possible before deciding. Both these courses are intense and will require you to be passionate to study them.

The decision of which of these 2 courses to choose will ultimately by yours only. Nobody else can give you passionate needed to study these courses.

Thank you, this gives me a lot to think about. However, I am also going to be sitting my SATs (hopefully at the end of the year) to give me the opportunity to study in America. They obviously don't have an NHS, so do you think that it may widen my opportunities by studying there?
Original post by Izzy2016
A dispenser riddles this forum with ill-thought 'advice' which is 100% negativity about pharmacy and pharmacists. The person in question is probably someone who couldn't pass the pre-reg assessment after multiple attempts, and hence, has made it his/her duty in life to discourage as many people as possible from being pharmacists.

@OP: Pharmacy is an excellent career. However, no career is perfect. I know of many of my doctor colleagues who constantly complain of burn-out and low pay, it's the same in some aspects of pharmacy. I'm a pharmacist who just qualified in November, I currently earn round about £60,000 whilst working 55-60 hours/week. I enjoy my job in the community.

I'm so happy that there are some pharmacists that actually enjoy the job, I was getting a bit worried. Out of curiosity, how did you find university and where did you study? and what kind of work experience have you done?
I have some experience, as over the summer I did the mandatory week work experience at a pharmacy and they thought I was really helpful so they asked me to come back and work for them for the rest of the summer (and I did). Is there any other work experience you can recommend/advise me to try and do? (I am also going to hopefully do some work experience in a few hospitals over summer to keep my options open)
Original post by marinade
A large pharmacy chain just announced it is selling off (not closing) 70 out of 500 of it's pharmacies. You need to ask, why?

The company I worked for has sold off and closed a large number of pharmacies, but done it pretty secretly, so it's not got the coverage it deserves. All of the big companies have 'fulfilment centres' - giant warehouses - where they intend to do most prescriptions, with stressed out pharmacists and techs hanging around with loads of robots. Community pharmacy dispensing is a devastatingly easy set of tasks to automate in theory, it's just pharmacy is full of technophobes and change is slow. Pharmacists will still exist, the good ones will get jobs and will always get work in community, but in 10 years there will be far fewer physical pharmacies doing far fewer prescriptions and so what's going to happen, is there going to be money for other services?

Community pharmacy is reliant on NHS money or a slight change on this and you go out of business. The NHS isn't all nicey nicey, it's a rough player and gets fantastic value for money for itself, but this has very serious consequences for working conditions and pay for people that work in pharmacy. Pharmacies do loads of stuff for free, like delivery where money is just whooshing out of the till, it's completely mingbendingly bonkers. You might say yeah but you make the money in other areas - no you don't, margins are very tight. The other notable factors on poor working conditions are big chains have massive downward pressure on wages, poor unionisation, vastly too many pharmacy schools in the UK for number of jobs and a large supply of EU, Indian subcontinent and West African pharmacists that all want to work here. All of these things conspire to make poor working conditions and static/falling pay. It's mostly 'too many EU pharmacists' and 'too many pharmacy schools' it gets blamed on.

There's endless promises by the NHS about 'clinical pharmacists'. It is in my opinion a complete crock of. Since 2010 there have been 6000 independent prescribers, that sounds fantastic until you realise there are 40,000+ pharmacists on the register and this is over years to train them and constantly saying this is the future. The NHS is always saying they'll be loads of jobs for these people and apart from an announcement recently it's not backed up by anything solid.

That's quite concerning, so are you saying that there won't be enough jobs by the time I finish uni?
Original post by marinade
No. I was a dispenser in a pharmacy.

I could have done either, instead I did two other science degrees. I absolutely loved chemistry so I worked in a pharmacy for 3.5 years. I worked with a very large number of pharmacists, many more than some pharmacy support staff get to. I got a lot of advice to do a pharmacy degree, go into hospital tech and for a while I took that very seriously mugged up on a fair bit of stuff including funding, legalities. The funding system in pharmacy is the most devastating bit for me.

I wouldn't let talking to pharmacy staff put you off, talk to both pharmacists and staff. You will get some staff that aren't that interested, in the same way that you might occasionally bump into a 2nd pharmacist in a quiet leafy sleepy pharmacy that just nods and says a few good things. Talk to as many people as possible. Some pharmacists can be a bit funny and call us 'school leavers' lol, cheeky things, I have more degrees and years of studying than they do.

I am going to be talking to a few doctors and pharmacists this week to try and help my decision. Thanks for the insight :smile:
Original post by Izzy2016
A dispenser riddles this forum with ill-thought 'advice' which is 100% negativity about pharmacy and pharmacists. The person in question is probably someone who couldn't pass the pre-reg assessment after multiple attempts, and hence, has made it his/her duty in life to discourage as many people as possible from being pharmacists.

Come on, drop the passive-aggressive behaviour. I've met pharmacists who've failed the pre-reg and it's not particularly funny. Who's the one being 100% negative now? You. Given you have just qualified yourself I'd say thinking up the most imaginative way you can to be beastly to someone else as a pharmacist is quite ugly. I'd far rather you were honest about it than this thinly grisly veiled pretence of being pleasant.

You can answer the points any time you want. I agree with you that pharmacy is a well paid career, at average earnings of £42k, where I disagree with you profoundly is constantly talking about your own starting earnings which is far above average (great) and pretending they are somehow typical.
Original post by Mayomikun123
That's quite concerning, so are you saying that there won't be enough jobs by the time I finish uni?

I'm not saying that at all. Times are tough in some pharmacies.

70/500 at Rowlands. Selling off and not closing. Some would say selling off means that they are 'viable'.

190/1500 Lloyds sold off & closed.

In the past (2016) the government said a quarter of all pharmacies could close. That hasn't happened which has led some people to say it's all hogwash, but there've been some closures in the city I live in. Closures can be avoided, for example in the main pharmacy I worked in hours were cut. That makes it more difficult working conditions-wise for everyone.

Talk to as many different pharmacists as you can. A couple of dozen at least. And spend longer thinking about it.
Original post by marinade
I'm not saying that at all. Times are tough in some pharmacies.

70/500 at Rowlands. Selling off and not closing. Some would say selling off means that they are 'viable'.

190/1500 Lloyds sold off & closed.

In the past (2016) the government said a quarter of all pharmacies could close. That hasn't happened which has led some people to say it's all hogwash, but there've been some closures in the city I live in. Closures can be avoided, for example in the main pharmacy I worked in hours were cut. That makes it more difficult working conditions-wise for everyone.

Talk to as many different pharmacists as you can. A couple of dozen at least. And spend longer thinking about it.

Okay thank you very much
I'm just worried that I'm underestimating the current situation of medicine especially with the current state of the NHS, I don't want to feel like I've done all that hard work for little reward at the end. I have a lot of family and family friends who have gone into medicine and I've watched them be so stressed and they find it difficult to balance the demand of shifts with other aspects of life. That's not something I really want to sacrifice, but at the same time, its an amazing and rewarding career. so I guess I just need to weigh out what i'm willing to sacrifice for that. How stressful is the uni experience with exams, rotations etc?
I have heard that a lot of the first year content is almost a recap of a level, is that true? ( I do psychology, chemistry, biology and math but I'm dropping maths after year 1)
and sorry if I'm being naïve but how is it possible to do neurology on calls from home, I thought it specialised in the nervous system and stuff
Reply 16
Do what YOU want to do, NOT what your Dad wants.
I would do some work experience in a hospital first before deciding. On my work experience placement, I spent one morning shadowing a Pharmacist and the rest of the week a Doctor. (Ive applied to do med)
Also, I would advise against shadowing your Dad (although I am sure he is super nice) it is better to shadow a stranger as you have more freedom to ask questions etc
oh okay
oh that makes sense! :smile:
Original post by mnnbv
Do what YOU want to do, NOT what your Dad wants.
I would do some work experience in a hospital first before deciding. On my work experience placement, I spent one morning shadowing a Pharmacist and the rest of the week a Doctor. (Ive applied to do med)
Also, I would advise against shadowing your Dad (although I am sure he is super nice) it is better to shadow a stranger as you have more freedom to ask questions etc

Thanks for the reply :smile:
My dad isn't forcing me to do anything, both my parents have said that they will support me a 100% with whatever I want to do, he just suggested pharmacy as another option. I am planning on doing some work experience over summer because the timing right now isn't great. I am not able to do work experience with my dad right now anyway because he is a psychiatrist so I have to be over 18.

What made you choose medicine and what unis did you apply for?