I have two more years till I would begin pharmacy school but want to figure this out soon as possible. I am trying to decide on clinical or retail pharmacy or maybe something else I may not know about yet. I want to do something interesting that makes a good salary. I know that's just about anything pharmacy but I want something challenging. Also, is getting a masters degree along with the Pharm. D worth it with jobs like clinical or retail??? Will this help you get ahead at all??? Thank you for any help. 🙂
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Clinical or retail?????
Started by Spoonbig21
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The best way to find out is to ask your local pharmacists in both types of practices. You will get a better feel for both. Personally, I prefer clinical because you have the opportunity to work more closely with specialists and other healthcare professionals. Retail exposure is fairly limited, and you often get sucked into corporate guidelines that tend to be focused more on corporate interests than necessarily patient interests. Also, you should decide why you want to be a pharmacist. If you're doing it for the money, it's a terrible reason to do it. For the amount of work you do, you don't make nearly as much as you would with an MBA. My friend graduated with a BS in economics, and now makes 6 figures flying around everywhere working for KB Homes. You have to go through 4 years of schooling, a lot of stress, and a lot of debt...and you won't even come out making nearly as much as he does. So make sure that you're picking a healthcare career for the right reasons; there are real lives at risk here and if your mentality isn't putting the patients first and foremost, there'll be problems in the future.
A master's degree is good too, especially if you want to work in the industry or if you want to do pharmaceutical management. Not really necessary though for the typical practitioner.
There are more opportunities available than just community or hospital pharmacy, too. Personally, I don't want to do either. Ambulatory infusion and nuclear pharmacy seem to be the most appealing to me, personally. Don't get caught up in deciding yet, you'll have four years of exposure to all sort of opportunities to help you decide.
