Getting into PharmD

[toledokid]

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I've recently decided that I want to pursue a career in the health field, at first I had my mind set on Nursing and possibly pursuing further education from that, i.e. NP.

However, I have always and will always be fascinated with the drug aspect of health care, so I've decided maybe I should look into PharmD.

What I'm curious to know is, in what way would be the best to go about pursuing a career in PharmD? I'm currently going to a 2 year college to get some general college credits taken out, and I was planning on transferring into a Bachelors program at a medical college, are there any better options?

Would (trying) to go from RN to PharmD be a wise decision, or would it be time consuming and unnecessary?

I haven't had any luck finding out this myself. 🙁

edit: I'd also like to add I'm currently taking a semester at a Community College, is there a chance these credits won't even be accepted if I look into Pharm.D schools?

 

[tahi193]

I think as long as your community college is accredited you shouldn't have problems with using the credit for pharmacy. I'm sure others will have more to say about this.

I don't think RN to PharmD would be a terrible decision but you're going to need to be prepared to explain why you're not sticking with nursing in your personal statement/interview. Also, it may be time consuming and costly because pharmacy is about a year to 2 years of prerequisites depending on how large of a credit load you can handle at once and what you've already taken. Adding that to nursing school wouldn't be easy and would probably take a while.

If I were in your situation, assuming you really want to go for pharmacy, I would transfer to a university and just focus on the pharmacy prerequisites while taking a useful/interesting major as a backup plan. It seems like pharmacy and nursing have a lot of the same early prerequisites so you could always fall back on nursing if you wanted to.

 

[toledokid]

I think as long as your community college is accredited you shouldn't have problems with using the credit for pharmacy. I'm sure others will have more to say about this.

I hope so.

I don't think RN to PharmD would be a terrible decision but you're going to need to be prepared to explain why you're not sticking with nursing in your personal statement/interview. Also, it may be time consuming and costly because pharmacy is about a year to 2 years of prerequisites depending on how large of a credit load you can handle at once and what you've already taken. Adding that to nursing school wouldn't be easy and would probably take a while.

I'm assuming the statement is when I apply for Pharm School?

If I were in your situation, assuming you really want to go for pharmacy, I would transfer to a university and just focus on the pharmacy prerequisites while taking a useful/interesting major as a backup plan. It seems like pharmacy and nursing have a lot of the same early prerequisites so you could always fall back on nursing if you wanted to.

Yeah, I didn't think about it as a fall back, because from what I see here PharmD. is a hard career to get into, but I feel pretty strongly about it, I've always had a respect and have always wanted to know as much as possible about the chemistry behind medication, and so on.

I also, feel I should point out I am not one of those guys who are only interested in PharmD for money, I legitimately feel as if it might be one of the better choices to fit me, in the medical field. I'm also a little worried about the oversaturation of the Pharmacy field in general.

One last question I have is, where do most PharmD students end up working? Is it pretty much only to retail?