From med school to PharmD?

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mskk11

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Hey everyone,

I'm in somewhat of a dilemma, I start med school in 3 weeks and am seriously doubting my path. Maybe it's a case of cold feet but I have always been interested in going into pharmacy. I find pharmacology a fascinating field of medicine. However, for some reason, whether it was blindness to my trepidation toward medicine or external family pressures, I ended up going the pre-med route. That said, in the possible event that I discover medical school/medicine is not the life for me, I was wondering if you guys have heard of people dropping out of med school and getting into a pharmD school? I dont really have any pharm experience. All of my volunteering has been in hospitals/hospice care and I've only shadowed MD/DO's. I have a reasonable cgpa of 3.6 wt a science gpa of 3.7, and a degree in biology. I greatly appreciate any advice you may have for me. Have a safe 4th of July!

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Don't second guess yourself, friend. Go to med school and do not look back.

Best of Luck!
 
how could checking prescriptions on a screen all day be remotely as enjoyable as being a doctor?......if you can provide an answer to that, go be a pharmacist
 
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how could checking prescriptions on a screen all day be remotely as enjoyable as being a doctor?......if you can provide an answer to that, go be a pharmacist

How can doing digital rectal exams all day while running on pure caffeine be as much fun as counseling patients? :p
 
how could checking prescriptions on a screen all day be remotely as enjoyable as being a doctor?......if you can provide an answer to that, go be a pharmacist

I am really interested in understanding how medications interact with the body in a physiological standpoint. I quite honestly don't care for direct-patient contact. I value happiness over money. I am a person of routine, I do not like change, I like to find my niche and dig in. Sure, I could make twice as much as a doctor, but do I really want to go through hell for the next 7+ years just so I can work 65+ hrs a week while every insurance company tries to rob me of money? Not particularly. That said, considering I dont really have experience/shadowing of the PharmD field, if worst comes to worst, would I have a good chance of getting accepted considering my degree/GPA?
 
I am really interested in understanding how medications interact with the body in a physiological standpoint. I quite honestly don't care for direct-patient contact. I value happiness over money. I am a person of routine, I do not like change, I like to find my niche and dig in. Sure, I could make twice as much as a doctor, but do I really want to go through hell for the next 7+ years just so I can work 65+ hrs a week while every insurance company tries to rob me of money? Not particularly. That said, considering I dont really have experience/shadowing of the PharmD field, if worst comes to worst, would I have a good chance of getting accepted considering my degree/GPA?

From my understanding, you won't have any trouble getting in. Your numbers are well above the average at many pharmacy schools, and you have a degree. Many pharmacy students don't have a bachelor's.
 
I am really interested in understanding how medications interact with the body in a physiological standpoint. I quite honestly don't care for direct-patient contact. I value happiness over money. I am a person of routine, I do not like change, I like to find my niche and dig in. Sure, I could make twice as much as a doctor, but do I really want to go through hell for the next 7+ years just so I can work 65+ hrs a week while every insurance company tries to rob me of money? Not particularly. That said, considering I dont really have experience/shadowing of the PharmD field, if worst comes to worst, would I have a good chance of getting accepted considering my degree/GPA?

Well, happiness is what people overlook and think it's all about the $$$. It's good that you are considering that. I would not be very hasty to jump ship because the practice of pharmacy is different than the practice of medicine. I would shadow a pharmacist, walk into/observe a pharmacy (good ones would be 24 hour at rush hour or fairly busy ones) and ask questions to pharmacists.

However, I do emphasize that you try to get some sort of experience or look behind the counter because it is vastly different than being on the other customer/patient side. This is the main reason why people do not understand why their prescription "takes so long" :rolleyes:

Also, and this is from a retail pharmacy perspective, "medications interacting from a physiological standpoint," it's there but not as glorified as some people think..you lick, stick, pour. In addition, you do some testing and immunizations, which gets extremely crazy during the fall and winter months and have to deal with customers' crap all the time. You may spot a clerical or dosing error and may have to clarify but at times people can get irate about it, especially patients as it adds on to their "wait time"

By the way, you deal with insurance many times a day in pharmacy than medicine..at least over there someone else is taking care of that for you, e.g. a billing department, a med asst or someone else. On the other hand, the pharmacist and all their staff have to deal with insurance, reimbursements, chargebacks etc. Mess up on those things and you'll have the almighty and glorious district pharmacy manager breathing down your neck.

Overall, to be a pharmacist or work in a pharmacy, thick skin is a must, you will get verbal crap from at least a few people a day. Also, great amounts of multitasking, you have a phone next to you, your techs, your patients and your drugs/verifying. Just some things to think about :)

Anyone else, feel free to add anything.
 
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I have a question that ties in to the thread starter: i sometimes see it stated that pharmacy, on average, is less stressful than medicine than average. But then I also hear that retail pharmacy is more stressful than most pharmacy out there.

So the logical question that arises, which I never find answered is, how is the mental stress of medicine (particularly primary care where most people go) compared to retail pharmacy (where most pharmacists go). This is the question that I think is pertinent to most people choosing MD vs PharmD. I dont know the answer - so if anyone knows, please answer!

On a side note, I was looking closely at psychiatry for medicine and comparing it to retail pharmacy and I weighed the positives and negatives of both and it seemed to me that retail pharmacy as a daily job in an average busy story is actually more mentally stressful than this type of medicine. So that would seem to defy the notion that pharmacy has to be less mentally stressful - and psychiatry is not a competitive specialty either (I've also looked at satisfaction rates for psychiatry and they are one of the very highest). But I'm only a pre-pharm and this is just an impression based on knowing some psychiatrists and PharmD's so take it with a grain of salt and if anyone disagrees with this or anything else in my post, please state and I would consider you doing me a favor.

To answer the OP directly, consider that there are fields in medicine (like psychiatry, physiatry, pathology - the 3 P's - and ROAD specialties), types of practices (particularly private), and also the willingness to work less that may contribute to less stress in medicine than a lot are experiencing. Also consider that PharmD semester curriculums are 19 units compared to about 26 for medicine and that there seems to be more to learn in medical school overall. You may want to consider the fact that pharmacy is changing, particularly in California where, once a bill is signed into law (SB 493) will give pharmacists more privileges and hopefully a greater role than they have now.
 
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It would be the biggest mistake of your life passing up on med school.
 
MD vs. PharmD comes down to how much time you want for your life. There is a great video called "Doctor's Diaries" that came out in the early 90's and was just on Netflix. It follows the physicians for over 20 years (They started Harvard Medical School in 1987) and you see just how they look in 20 years. Some of those physicians are in clinical practice, but others are in rather unique jobs.

Both pharmacy school and medical school open doors to jobs that you otherwise wouldn't have, there is a caveat that comes with that, however, the student loans. Many pharmacists and physicians feel like prisoners because they have to pay back 100K, 200K or even more in student loans. Job prospects for physicians, I believe, will be much better than for pharmacists because of the exponential expansion in pharmacy schools.

You will notice these are for the most part all private schools who are happy to take 30K a year in tuition. Supply will exceed demand, some of these programs will fall away as applications stop coming in and the pharmacy profession will again go back into a more normal Supply = Demand situation.

Personally, I would have made sure that my finances were in order such that I would not HAVE to work somewhere, but had choice. I would agree with some of the other posters here, go med and teach pharmacology in a med school if you want. Sounds like you are on the PhD track..
 
Well, given all the "doom and gloom" talk I've read about the future of pharmacy, I don't know if it's a good idea to make the switch from med school to pharmD.
 
Well, given all the "doom and gloom" talk I've read about the future of pharmacy, I don't know if it's a good idea to make the switch from med school to pharmD.

Agreed. Check out some of the PharmD threads. One entitled "How the **** do I get out of retail?" comes to mind. Every time I go to the pharmacy at Target/Walgreens/CVS etc I see overworked pharmacists doing 3 things at once. Medicine will give you lots of options, pharmacy will offer less.
 
I am really interested in understanding how medications interact with the body in a physiological standpoint. I quite honestly don't care for direct-patient contact. I value happiness over money. I am a person of routine, I do not like change, I like to find my niche and dig in. Sure, I could make twice as much as a doctor, but do I really want to go through hell for the next 7+ years just so I can work 65+ hrs a week while every insurance company tries to rob me of money? Not particularly. That said, considering I dont really have experience/shadowing of the PharmD field, if worst comes to worst, would I have a good chance of getting accepted considering my degree/GPA?

The bolded will make you miserable in most areas of medicine (except rads and path, which are two of the few fields of medicine with job market saturation problems if you care about that) as well as a good part of med school.

That said, depending what your interests there are opportunities for physicians to be involved in pharmacology. It's common for them to be involved in clinical trials (this is usually areas with lots of drug development going on so think oncology, ID, neuro). More basic science research would not require but would probably benefit from a Md/PhD, especially since pretty much all of us leave med school with a pretty weak pharmacology background. Academically you obviously will get a much greater mastery of pharmacology from pharmacy school than med school. My med school had a one semester quick overview of pharmacology and that is it (same for most of my colleagues), so really most of us just learn the bare bones basics of pharm from med school plus drug mechanisms.

Anyhow, I'm a recent med school grad in an emergency medicine residency program and I'm very happy with my career choice. And although I like what I do it would definitely be painful to do the 4 years of med school plus 3 minimum of residency if it was something you didn't enjoy (plus, life after residency is still above average work hours and stress in most fields). I would caution against med school if you think going in that it's not for you. Feel free to PM me of post questions here if you want, I don't go on SDN like I used to but still check it frequently enough.
 
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I am really interested in understanding how medications interact with the body in a physiological standpoint. I quite honestly don't care for direct-patient contact. I value happiness over money. I am a person of routine, I do not like change, I like to find my niche and dig in. Sure, I could make twice as much as a doctor, but do I really want to go through hell for the next 7+ years just so I can work 65+ hrs a week while every insurance company tries to rob me of money? Not particularly. That said, considering I dont really have experience/shadowing of the PharmD field, if worst comes to worst, would I have a good chance of getting accepted considering my degree/GPA?

I don't know of any MD that became a PharmD. I heard of dentists becoming PharmD's and I also heard of PharmD's becoming MD's.

On that note, I think you should look at getting a PhD in pharmacology or medicinal chemistry and teaching in pharmacy school or med school. Your hours will be set, you won't have any stress, no direct patient care involved.

When I started pre-pharmacy I became friends with a very bright guy. He would always ace the exams with very little effort. I told him that if I had his gift, I would not do pharmacy....but aim much higher instead. He dropped his major and changed it to bio-chem. He got his PhD and is not a tenured professor at the same college where we met. He loves loves his job....even though it does not pay as much ......he is very happy with his choice.

When I was on rotations with MD intern's, the majority said that if they can go back in time they would have not chosen medicine. Just one girl said that she is very happy with her choice (and she was hot.....so there that...lol). but then again, i heard the same from nurses and pharmacists.
 
For you to start in july, you must be an IMG? There are some issues with residency slots these days, as some U.S. schools have opened, but residency slots have not.
Saying that, if you really don't like medical school, hate it with a passion, you may want to get out, as it will only get much worse before it gets better--but...
Pharmacy is having severe employment problems from new schools and declining employment numbers. Furthermore, the quality of new "pharmacy educators", which is the term used because they will take anyone with the bare minimum qualifications, is very poor and you could get burned from capriciousness and maliciousness.
If you think medical school is okay, you should definitely stick with it. Drs. stick together and wont sell the profession out for an office job, and my medical friends that hated school became psyichatrists or internal medicine guys working shorter weeks and are content now.
 
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