2019 CVS Pharmacist Rate Decrease/Market Adjustments

Started by josh6718
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Pharmd_rxrx said:
No. The new rate they are speaking of IS the $54.90. Its down from $60/hour last year.
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What area is this again? In my area, the new grad starting rate for retail pharmacy is ~$55 and I think that is appropriate for being a pharmacist. It is inappropriate if you consider the amount of student loan debt because of these outrageous tuitions these schools are charging...
 
josh6718 said:
See, that's the really weird thing-they had been increasing their benefits all last year. They started offering paid 4-week paternity leave to employees with newborns (definitely not a benefit for older pharmacists per se), they began matching 401k at each pay period instead of the end of the year, bi-weekly HSA contributions, and started offering RSU's instead of stock options. Maybe they did this knowing it would be off-set by wage cuts.
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What's RSU?
 
FYI, working as a nurse is harder than working as a pharmacist. There is a reason some hospitals are paying $50+/hr for nurses. It's because they bust their a** and work directly with patients and families. Look how many pharmacists we have who are scared to work with people and avoid retail. You all must be kidding me if you think nursing is an easier way to make money. Pharmacists have it very easy, and a lot of places are paying $70+/hr for RPhs
 
I agree but it's easier to find work for nurses with experience.

In retail pharmacy a lot of what you're doing is triaging various arcane bull**** ("but all you do is slap a label on the bottle") on top of the fundamental task of accurate/safe distribution while being constantly interrupted with dumb questions. One might even argue that being good at video games makes you better at pattern recognition and reaction time and focusing on completing repetitive tasks, which most pharmacists I've worked with are terrible at.
 
farmadiazepine said:
FYI, working as a nurse is harder than working as a pharmacist. There is a reason some hospitals are paying $50+/hr for nurses. It's because they bust their a** and work directly with patients and families. Look how many pharmacists we have who are scared to work with people and avoid retail. You all must be kidding me if you think nursing is an easier way to make money. Pharmacists have it very easy, and a lot of places are paying $70+/hr for RPhs
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I always shake my head when pharmacists talk s**t about nurses. They could be caring for 7-8 patients at once. They're also on their feet all day, deal with blood/vomit/feces, give immunizations (and don't whine like pharmacists do), give IVs, draw blood, and have to know all the drugs just like us.

Sure, we get yelled at in retail but nurses are much more likely to get attacked physically/sexually, they have to restrain violent patients (imagine if you're 100lbs trying to restrain a 250lbs roid rage meathead), and lift/turn morbidly obese people on a daily basis.

I will never talk s**t about nurses while I get to sit at my chair behind a screen all day.
 
mentos said:
I always shake my head when pharmacists talk s**t about nurses. They could be caring for 7-8 patients at once. They're also on their feet all day, deal with blood/vomit/feces, give immunizations (and don't whine like pharmacists do), give IVs, draw blood, and have to know all the drugs just like us.

Sure, we get yelled at in retail but nurses are much more likely to get attacked physically/sexually, they have to restrain violent patients (imagine if you're 100lbs trying to restrain a 250lbs roid rage meathead), and lift/turn morbidly obese people on a daily basis.

I will never talk s**t about nurses while I get to sit at my chair behind a screen all day.
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i would love to sit on a chair all day
 
Software engineering seems like the cushiest position one can get into. You get catered gourmet meals, on-site gym and laundry, pet daycares, employee shuttles, etc. and are almost guaranteed to be allowed to sit in a chair all day. At some companies you could get away with playing foosball or video games for half of your workday.
 
PharmtoCS said:
Software engineering seems like the cushiest position one can get into. You get catered gourmet meals, on-site gym and laundry, pet daycares, employee shuttles, etc. and are almost guaranteed to be allowed to sit in a chair all day. At some companies you could get away with playing foosball or video games for half of your workday.
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That might work for the older generations of pharmacists who got in pharmacy schools for actually being smart. Not sure if that will work out for people who want to go to pharmacy schools now 🙂

Sad as I used to have so much respect for pharmacy though.
 
farmadiazepine said:
FYI, working as a nurse is harder than working as a pharmacist. There is a reason some hospitals are paying $50+/hr for nurses. It's because they bust their a** and work directly with patients and families. Look how many pharmacists we have who are scared to work with people and avoid retail. You all must be kidding me if you think nursing is an easier way to make money. Pharmacists have it very easy, and a lot of places are paying $70+/hr for RPhs
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Although i agree that nurses job could be be harder, depending on what type of nurse you are, you do not get paid based on how hard the work is. If thats true, im sure some garbage men should get paid way more than anyone in health care.

Ive heard so many arguments regarding this issue. Somehow nurses think its easy to be a pharmacist and that an occupation that does not require a doctorate degree doesnt deserve our current pay rate. That tells you how ignorant some people could be. And each time i hear this i have to explain that we do have a doctorate lol

Its almost the same argument as to why the wnba players do not get paid as much as the nba players.
 
mentos said:
I always shake my head when pharmacists talk s**t about nurses. They could be caring for 7-8 patients at once. They're also on their feet all day, deal with blood/vomit/feces, give immunizations (and don't whine like pharmacists do), give IVs, draw blood, and have to know all the drugs just like us.

Sure, we get yelled at in retail but nurses are much more likely to get attacked physically/sexually, they have to restrain violent patients (imagine if you're 100lbs trying to restrain a 250lbs roid rage meathead), and lift/turn morbidly obese people on a daily basis.

I will never talk s**t about nurses while I get to sit at my chair behind a screen all day.
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Does this actually happen? Lol talking bad about nurses this way? Haha if youre disrespecting someone else’s career to this degree, then you may have some issues you need to see a doctor for lol
 
Pfft. Don't even talk to me about the nurses at my old hospital. They just pissed me off all day. To this day, I have no idea how the hell you lose a TPN. It would happen once a week. And they'd blame us for everything because we were in the basement unable to defend ourselves. And if we complained, they're go all nurses union mob boss on you and get their way because their union is more powerful than God.

The fact that I knew on the back of my head that they cleaned poop all the time was one of the few things keeping me somewhat sane.

Maybe the nurses where y'all live are better, I don't know.
 
I don’t if this is the same for all government hospitals (whether IHS, military, or VA), but personally and generally the pay is good over time. The GS system is fair and the yearly federal employee wage raises for inflation have averaged about 2-3% in the last decade. With that being said, depending on the market, lowest pharmacist salaries range from $90K-$140K as base pay. And fortunately, differential pay is 10-35% depending if its a weekday night, weekend day shift, or weekend night shift. OT is 1.5x and holiday pay is 2x the hourly rate. I interned at a Kroger in pharmacy school 10 years ago and hated it and wanted to work in a VA or governmental hospital. And today I am happy where I work. I work the night shift and get on average 21% differential pay a week and get offered overtime occasionally, the benefits are great. And I have so much less stress than those miserable days interning at Kroger Pharmacy manning the drive-thru. If any of you guys are not liking retail, I would highly recommend a government hospital pharmacist position.
 
Farmer83 said:
I don’t if this is the same for all government hospitals (whether IHS, military, or VA), but personally and generally the pay is good over time. The GS system is fair and the yearly federal employee wage raises for inflation have averaged about 2-3% in the last decade. With that being said, depending on the market, lowest pharmacist salaries range from $90K-$140K as base pay. And fortunately, differential pay is 10-35% depending if its a weekday night, weekend day shift, or weekend night shift. OT is 1.5x and holiday pay is 2x the hourly rate. I interned at a Kroger in pharmacy school 10 years ago and hated it and wanted to work in a VA or governmental hospital. And today I am happy where I work. I work the night shift and get on average 21% differential pay a week and get offered overtime occasionally, the benefits are great. And I have so much less stress than those miserable days interning at Kroger Pharmacy manning the drive-thru. If any of you guys are not liking retail, I would highly recommend a government hospital pharmacist position.
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But that's fairly recent history. The civil service used to be 20-30% underpaid from the market and staffing shortages were rather common. Then again, the benefits even then were really good, and pay has more or less come to parity with the private sector hospitals though retail technically makes "more" before taking benefits into account. But the one thing that most have a hard time dealing with is the bureaucracy and bureaucratism, but you being the night pharmacist shields you from much of that, so night pharmacy as a government worker is a pretty nice career as long as your family can stand it. Getting put in a sinecure also is nice, but it's also a punishment too as you are made aware of just how much people are contributing except you to the solution.
 
Don't know where you are getting your 21% differentials from but my differential is 10%....on my base pay which is only about 2/3 of my actual pay.
 
Saiyo said:
Don't know where you are getting your 21% differentials from but my differential is 10%....on my base pay which is only about 2/3 of my actual pay.
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Shift diff I've never seen numbers close to that even... $3.50-$5/hr is more common. Even nurses get far better shift diff than pharmds.
 
When you have 100 applicants for a part time position, why not reduce by $10 less per year? You really only need 1 sucker to say yes.
 
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