Is it worth to study pharmacy?
I have seen lots of articles about the poor career prospect of pharmacy. I don’t want to waste my time and money but end up with no job or low salaries.
Edit : I am interested in it but considering radiography after knowing the prospect of pharmacy.
Edit : I am interested in it but considering radiography after knowing the prospect of pharmacy.
(edited 2 years ago)
There is a lot of fear mongering online, it depends on what sort of career you're looking for. I assume if pharmacy is your passion you'll know by now. But if you're just looking for a career that pays well and is interesting pharmacy is a pretty decent place to be and you're virtually guaranteed a job. For reference it's pretty realistic to make around 40-45k in community as soon as you qualify (1 year post uni)
Original post by Ayuda99
There is a lot of fear mongering online, it depends on what sort of career you're looking for. I assume if pharmacy is your passion you'll know by now. But if you're just looking for a career that pays well and is interesting pharmacy is a pretty decent place to be and you're virtually guaranteed a job. For reference it's pretty realistic to make around 40-45k in community as soon as you qualify (1 year post uni)
At hospital pharmacy what's the highest salary you can get to?
Original post by ax4
At hospital pharmacy what's the highest salary you can get to?
I guess technically the highest you can get is 120k a year ish, but that would be as a chief pharmacist which would require a lot of work to get to. As a hospital pharmacist you'll start off at around 34k and your salary slowly goes up as you work your way up the bands
Original post by Ayuda99
I guess technically the highest you can get is 120k a year ish, but that would be as a chief pharmacist which would require a lot of work to get to. As a hospital pharmacist you'll start off at around 34k and your salary slowly goes up as you work your way up the bands
Thanks. I've heard that industrial pharmacy is a particularly popular job. What's that like as a job and how is it's salary?
Original post by Ayuda99
There is a lot of fear mongering online, it depends on what sort of career you're looking for. I assume if pharmacy is your passion you'll know by now. But if you're just looking for a career that pays well and is interesting pharmacy is a pretty decent place to be and you're virtually guaranteed a job. For reference it's pretty realistic to make around 40-45k in community as soon as you qualify (1 year post uni)
Is it true that the drop out rate of pharmacy is high?
Original post by Tmntmn
Is it true that the drop out rate of pharmacy is high?
not sure about all unis and cohorts but a quarter of my cohort dropped out after 1st year and 114/138 graduated final year (some did resit however). 2nd and 3rd year wasnt too bad i think but know a few people who repeated multiple years
(edited 2 years ago)
Original post by ax4
If you are guaranteed a job after a pharmacy degree then why do so many people complain about the jobs? Is it because they are poorly paid?
A mixture of that and job satisfaction. A lot of pharmacists especially in community don't properly value themselves and negotiate accordingly and are left in relatively low pay with a high work load. Hospital pharmacy doesn't pay too great either until you've got a bunch of experience under you however there is a lot of options out there
Reply 9
Original post by Ayuda99
There is a lot of fear mongering online, it depends on what sort of career you're looking for. I assume if pharmacy is your passion you'll know by now. But if you're just looking for a career that pays well and is interesting pharmacy is a pretty decent place to be and you're virtually guaranteed a job. For reference it's pretty realistic to make around 40-45k in community as soon as you qualify (1 year post uni)
(My emphasis in bold)
To answer some of your questions, that salary may look great, and it's not bad if you're age 23/24, the problem is, with the government cutting funding to pharmacy, that salary isn't going to be going anywhere soon. This is also the first year, well 2022, and 2021 in some areas, that locum rates and salaries started to increase. Pharmacist wages and locum rates have been stagnant since about 2008/09/10. So over a decade. (Rural areas, seaside towns, Welsh valleys, Scottish Highlands, England NE, and SW (Devon and Cornwall), usually pay more to get you to move there to work so usually get more money).
The reason people talk pharmacy down is because in community you are labelling boxes and checking them off, talking to patients, maybe doing flu jabs, or providing services, but there are less support staff than you had say, ten yrs ago, and there are a lot more prescriptions. In some places, usually attached to a Dr's surgery, most days can feel like it is constant lunchtime at a big McDonalds, except with pills, not burgers! It just never stops from the minute you open, until you lock the door at the end of the day.
So this makes it difficult to have time to spend with people to provide the new services.
Community pharmacy is now a very tiring and stressful job, with many employed pharmacists only working a 4 day week, which is probably around 36 hours. Or maybe 5 days, if they close for lunch. Doing 9 til 6, for a 5 day week, with no set lunch break is very, very tiring and bad for you physically and mentally, from my experience.
Some companies are bringing in checking dispensers, or accuracy checking technicians (ACTs), which can really help reduce your workload, the only thing is, you are still responsible as the RP, for what they check off for you! ( I know, crazy!).
As for Industry, all the schools will trot out the usual lines about this, but very few actually go from a pharmacy degree into the pharmaceutical industry. If that is your interest, then look at Big Pharma Co's websites and see what degrees they are looking for on their graduate training schemes. (The jobs of regulatory affairs, and qualified persons to sign off medicine batches, is probably the most common jobs that a pharmacist may do in industry.)
Reply 10
Original post by Ayuda99
A mixture of that and job satisfaction. A lot of pharmacists especially in community don't properly value themselves and negotiate accordingly and are left in relatively low pay with a high work load. Hospital pharmacy doesn't pay too great either until you've got a bunch of experience under you however there is a lot of options out there
I totally agree with you, but with the current state of finances in community pharmacy, some companies, as we go through 2023, and into 2024, when the 5 yr (2019-2024) funding needs to be reviewed and decided for the next year/ half decade, whatever they choose this time, they just have no money left to pay more.
This is down to issues like locums had to have a pay rise because you just couldn't get one. Some locum rates were still around where they were back in 2008-2010!. So people were just leaving the profession, the big increase in the minimum wage, pension costs that the employer must contribute, and the basic fact that the funding package above had no allowance for inflation, it was around £2.6 billion for each year. And with inflation now running at around 10% this has not helped. You know things are bad when Boots and Lloyds are now selling stores, or simply closing them down, as they aren't profitable anymore. Plus the American company, Walgreens, spent most of 2022 trying to sell Boots the Chemist, which it owns as WBA, but there wasn't much interest, certainly not at the price they were asking for it, and deals fell through. Basically they want out of the UK pharmacy market as there is no profit to be made anymore.
And yes, job satisfaction and morale is very low right now in community pharmacy, mainly due to everything you are expected to do everyday, and many pharmacists getting burned out, especially if they are working 45 hours +, every week.
Reply 11
The drop out rate can be quite high, as it is a full-time degree, and pretty full-on, so you need to keep up. It is an interesting and varied course, but it can be difficult in places, like lots of organic chemistry, or statistics, if medical stats and data analysis is still taught.
The main reason, especially in some of the newer schools of pharmacy, is they are taking people onto the course who simply wouldn't have got a place 30 yrs ago when there were 15 schools of pharmacy, not the 30 we have now.
If you only get BCC or CCC at A level, and I've heard of some schools taking people with those grades, then unless you work hard, and keep up, then you possibly are going to struggle.
The main reason, especially in some of the newer schools of pharmacy, is they are taking people onto the course who simply wouldn't have got a place 30 yrs ago when there were 15 schools of pharmacy, not the 30 we have now.
If you only get BCC or CCC at A level, and I've heard of some schools taking people with those grades, then unless you work hard, and keep up, then you possibly are going to struggle.
Original post by mrlittlebigman
(My emphasis in bold)
To answer some of your questions, that salary may look great, and it's not bad if you're age 23/24, the problem is, with the government cutting funding to pharmacy, that salary isn't going to be going anywhere soon. This is also the first year, well 2022, and 2021 in some areas, that locum rates and salaries started to increase. Pharmacist wages and locum rates have been stagnant since about 2008/09/10. So over a decade. (Rural areas, seaside towns, Welsh valleys, Scottish Highlands, England NE, and SW (Devon and Cornwall), usually pay more to get you to move there to work so usually get more money).
The reason people talk pharmacy down is because in community you are labelling boxes and checking them off, talking to patients, maybe doing flu jabs, or providing services, but there are less support staff than you had say, ten yrs ago, and there are a lot more prescriptions. In some places, usually attached to a Dr's surgery, most days can feel like it is constant lunchtime at a big McDonalds, except with pills, not burgers! It just never stops from the minute you open, until you lock the door at the end of the day.
So this makes it difficult to have time to spend with people to provide the new services.
Community pharmacy is now a very tiring and stressful job, with many employed pharmacists only working a 4 day week, which is probably around 36 hours. Or maybe 5 days, if they close for lunch. Doing 9 til 6, for a 5 day week, with no set lunch break is very, very tiring and bad for you physically and mentally, from my experience.
Some companies are bringing in checking dispensers, or accuracy checking technicians (ACTs), which can really help reduce your workload, the only thing is, you are still responsible as the RP, for what they check off for you! ( I know, crazy!).
To answer some of your questions, that salary may look great, and it's not bad if you're age 23/24, the problem is, with the government cutting funding to pharmacy, that salary isn't going to be going anywhere soon. This is also the first year, well 2022, and 2021 in some areas, that locum rates and salaries started to increase. Pharmacist wages and locum rates have been stagnant since about 2008/09/10. So over a decade. (Rural areas, seaside towns, Welsh valleys, Scottish Highlands, England NE, and SW (Devon and Cornwall), usually pay more to get you to move there to work so usually get more money).
The reason people talk pharmacy down is because in community you are labelling boxes and checking them off, talking to patients, maybe doing flu jabs, or providing services, but there are less support staff than you had say, ten yrs ago, and there are a lot more prescriptions. In some places, usually attached to a Dr's surgery, most days can feel like it is constant lunchtime at a big McDonalds, except with pills, not burgers! It just never stops from the minute you open, until you lock the door at the end of the day.
So this makes it difficult to have time to spend with people to provide the new services.
Community pharmacy is now a very tiring and stressful job, with many employed pharmacists only working a 4 day week, which is probably around 36 hours. Or maybe 5 days, if they close for lunch. Doing 9 til 6, for a 5 day week, with no set lunch break is very, very tiring and bad for you physically and mentally, from my experience.
Some companies are bringing in checking dispensers, or accuracy checking technicians (ACTs), which can really help reduce your workload, the only thing is, you are still responsible as the RP, for what they check off for you! ( I know, crazy!).
To add to the community pharmacy pay scenario, a lot of chains in very competitive areas do not like salary negotiations at all. I recently had an interview with boots for a role they offered to introduce prescribing into community pharmacies and 1 of the reasons I was rejected is because they felt my salary expectations were too high despite the fact it was lower than 2 interviews I had (by a huge margin - think £7000+) for non-community roles / locum rates in my local area, and was in line with what I have been earning the last few years
. In fact, the max. amount boots wanted to pay was actually less than what Ive been earning the last 30-odd months, and their average wage for managers in the area was almost 10 grand less than my old income. other community chains are similar as well tbh but it all depends on chain and area as to how receptive they are to salary demands. but yeah, if you are a pharmacist with over 7 years post-registration experience and people only want to pay 2-3k more than barley qualified pharmacists, you know something needs to be changed
Original post by quasa
To add to the community pharmacy pay scenario, a lot of chains in very competitive areas do not like salary negotiations at all. I recently had an interview with boots for a role they offered to introduce prescribing into community pharmacies and 1 of the reasons I was rejected is because they felt my salary expectations were too high despite the fact it was lower than 2 interviews I had (by a huge margin - think £7000+) for non-community roles / locum rates in my local area, and was in line with what I have been earning the last few years . In fact, the max. amount boots wanted to pay was actually less than what Ive been earning the last 30-odd months, and their average wage for managers in the area was almost 10 grand less than my old income.
other community chains are similar as well tbh but it all depends on chain and area as to how receptive they are to salary demands. but yeah, if you are a pharmacist with over 7 years post-registration experience and people only want to pay 2-3k more than barley qualified pharmacists, you know something needs to be changed
. In fact, the max. amount boots wanted to pay was actually less than what Ive been earning the last 30-odd months, and their average wage for managers in the area was almost 10 grand less than my old income. other community chains are similar as well tbh but it all depends on chain and area as to how receptive they are to salary demands. but yeah, if you are a pharmacist with over 7 years post-registration experience and people only want to pay 2-3k more than barley qualified pharmacists, you know something needs to be changed
Yeah I fully agree with you, I think one of the reasons community pharmacy pay doesn't change much upon increasing your experience is that essentially the role is very similar regardless of your experience. There's new facets available now like prescribing and you can be trained on a few new services but other than that you don't have much leverage to really ask for too much while salaried as they can find someone who might be a little less trained but essentially does the same job for way less. It's why I'm in hospital currently, although starting salary is less than community I find the role way more interesting and the options for progression are far greater.
Original post by manchego
Speaking of Pharmacy closures... Lloyd's has announced it is closing all 279 sainsburys pharmacies by June this year. Add that to Rowlands closing 79 pharmacies by end of the quarter and it makes you think don't it
Agreed Manchego, it should make those contemplating pharmacy think.
The closures announced are only the start as the multiples further reduce costs by closing bricks and mortar pharmacies and move as much of their business to the cheaper online model as possible. The effects on employment, career progression and salaries is obvious.
This predicted development should be taken with consideration of the recent RPS (Royal Pharmaceutical Society) survey revealing that three-quarters of the pharmacy workforce are considering quitting with community pharmacy being being especially featured.
The results of the survey are covered in a Chemist & Druggist article (12/1/23).
It is a MUST read. Free to view.
https://www.chemistanddruggist.co.uk/CD136685/Threequarters-of-pharmacy-workforce-considering-quitting-finds-RPS-survey
Community pharmacy is declining rapidly and offers a very uncertain future for pharmacy graduates. It is however where currently 2 out of 3 graduates currently find employment so please do think long and hard before committing.
Original post by Tmntmn
It seems that it will be more difficult to find a job in the future. Don’t know if I should go pharmacy
If you have grades for medicine, do medicine or dentistry, otherwise do compsci as those are degrees with good prospects
Original post by ax4
What are the opportunities outside of the regular Pharmacy- directly related roles (e.g Hospital or community pharmacists)? Like what are people quitting pharmacy for instead?
For whatever reason, a lot of pharmacists aren't quitting (if you're in cymru, alba, up north or south west, job market is not bad , everywhere else is crap however but a lot of pharmacists tend to locum all over the place / it isn't unheard off for people to travel over 100 miles a day for locum shifts - my record is 160 round trip)
Outside of hospital and community, general practice and pharma are usual routes for pharmacists.
In terms of non-pharmacy roles:
- software development/ engineering, ui/ux/ur; product management / project management / operations roles do not require a degree and a lot of companies don't need compsci or graphic design degrees anymore due to yt and udemy.
- consulting / accounting / law don't need degrees in respective fields as long as you have a 2:1 or 1st for MPharm and money is good (downside - long hours).
- civil service / government / local councils are always after health professionals for various roles.
- going back to uni and doing something else. Alternatively, research and academia may suit you.
For me, I haven't worked in community or hospital for 3 years and was in 1 field and looking to transition into another. You would be surprised how working conditions are like in other sectors vs community pharmacy or non-foundation Trust hospitals
(edited 2 years ago)
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