I'm torn.

[Huskerfan47]

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Up until recently I had no doubts as to pharmacy being my number 1 career choice, and made it my goal to pursue it to the best of my ability. Now I find myself in a predicament, I'm at the end of my sophmore year, almost all of my pre-requisites are done and I'm getting ready to send in my application for later this cycle, the only issue being that I'm scared to finally pull the trigger after reading about how the job market for pharmacists seems to be declining steadily. My stats are adequate in my opinion (3.4 GPA probably 3.2 sGPA), and my PCAT score was much higher than I could have dreamed of getting (95+). I just find myself torn between continuing to pursue pharmacy, which still to me is my dream job, or looking into some other health professions (Like finishing my degree and trying med school or PA school). What are my other options? Any other opinions? Just wondering if anyone had any input about the alternatives I mentioned, or had any words of wisdom, I just feel like I really needed to get this off of my chest.

 

[PharmtoCS]

Computer science, physician assistant, accounting, engineering, etc. are all excellent options as well. With some of these options, you can earn as much as a pharmacist can without having to sacrifice $150k+ in tuition/expenses and 4 years of your life, and have an overall better quality of life.

 

[Jbrl]

"Dream?"

Quote for you:
"The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Would be helpful to know why it's your dream. Why isn't PA school your dream? Why isn't med school your dream?

 

[Huskerfan47]

I feel like pharmacy is something that I have farmiliarized myself with, I'm currently working as a technician, and have been for almost 2 years now. I know that the pharmacy setting isn't perfect, I've dealt with the bustling of retail, doing 450 scripts per day with very limited tech and pharmacist hours. I feel like I've seen some of the ugly of the direction the profession may be heading, but I can't really see myself in any other profession. I feel that I find myself more interested in the helping to improve the medication therapies of patients, or helping physicians alter medication courses rather than physically examining patients in order to make diagnoses. I like the idea of being an accessible resource that people can ask questions about their medications, and I hope that I could provide them with useful input regarding that. I guess that is why I find myself more drawn to pharmacy than say medicine or a PA program. Not to say that I'm not interested in those fields at all, just less so than pharmacy.

 

[Jbrl]

I feel like pharmacy is something that I have farmiliarized myself with, I'm currently working as a technician, and have been for almost 2 years now. I know that the pharmacy setting isn't perfect, I've dealt with the bustling of retail, doing 450 scripts per day with very limited tech and pharmacist hours. I feel like I've seen some of the ugly of the direction the profession may be heading, but I can't really see myself in any other profession. I feel that I find myself more interested in the helping to improve the medication therapies of patients, or helping physicians alter medication courses rather than physically examining patients in order to make diagnoses. I like the idea of being an accessible resource that people can ask questions about their medications, and I hope that I could provide them with useful input regarding that. I guess that is why I find myself more drawn to pharmacy than say medicine or a PA program. Not to say that I'm not interested in those fields at all, just less so than pharmacy.

It's good that you've had a lot of prior exposure and didn't choose that word on a whim.

Next questions are...
What state do you live in? Can you attend a cheap state school? Can you work 15-30 hours every week to pay for school? Do you have any outstanding substantial debts?

 

[Huskerfan47]

I live in Nebraska, one cheaper state school (UNMC) which is much more selective, the other school is Creighton, sort of at the opposite end of the spectrum lol (Higher cost, less selective). I plan on working through out school, hopefully at the same job that I am working at now, although I would become an intern and have no major debts. Does the fact that there are only 2 schools in my state seem to be an advantage? Less competition for jobs?

 

[Jbrl]

Yeah, definitely a better market there than in the NE corridor or in Cali, that's for sure.
I'd ask you if you would be okay with potentially working retail the rest of your life, but from your response earlier that seems to be a yes.

Where do you work? Major retail chain? Independent?
In any case, it seems like you've thought this through. I think being a tech for so long gives you a major leg up in comparison to other people, and you can transition smoothly into an intern position. As long as you work throughout school and during the summer and don't throw around money like a fool, I think you'll be just fine.

If I would give any more advice to you, it'd be that your personality, work experience and friendships/connections are probably the three most important things for the retail world (I'd argue for other things too). Don't bury your head in books unless you're in danger of failing. Well-roundedness is paramount. Passion is detectable and contagious. This applies to many things in life too, I guess, but GPA/ECs will be relatively more important for fellowships/residencies.

If you would like to really help your patients in the future, I'd advise you to learn more about nutrition and lifestyle coaching. Preventive care (diabetes, HTN, obesity) and all that jazz. Little things. Sometimes all people need is to hear some shortcuts to a better life from an HCP they trust.

 

[Huskerfan47]

I'm currently working for a major chain, and while I find the work to be stressful at times I feel that is nothing that is overwhelming to me as I have seen it be to some of my co-workers. I could see myself working retail, but I could also see myself in a clinical setting or a VA setting etc. I guess I'll just have to see where this takes me, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me your input, thank you.

 

[Jbrl]

If you're interested in hospital or VA, you'll need to have 3.5+ gpa to be competitive with ECs/LORs (research, community service, organization involvement, etc.) and should look to transition into a hospital tech job at some point.

In any case, you'll find your dream unfold as you go along. Wish you luck.

 

[alprazolamborghini]

retail is like any other fast food chain. no thinking involved in retail. It is like a factory. If you realllly reallly wanna do pharmacy, get straight A's, and get involved in a lot of extracurricular . Then you may have a shot into residency. But, the thing is... why would you wanna do 4 yrs of school and then (1 or 2 yrs more yrs) of residency? I would rather just go for med school.

 

[darknightzzz]

Up until recently I had no pharmacists seems to be declining steadily. My stats are adequate in my opinion (3.4 GPA probably 3.2 sGPA), and my PCAT score was much higher than I could have dreamed of getting (95+). I just find myself torn between continuing to pursue pharmacy, which still to me is my dream job, or looking into some other health professions (Like finishing my degree and trying med school or PA school). What are mhest.

with this sGPA, med school (even DO) is out of the window and far from long shot for you. I am serious. If you wanna try DO school u gotta pull up 3.3-3.4 AT LEAST to be minimally competitive. Plus, not to undermine pharmacy, but most pharmacy applicants don't have the stats to apply for med school in the first place.

im not sure about PA school thou

 

[Jbrl]

retail is like any other fast food chain. no thinking involved in retail. It is like a factory. If you realllly reallly wanna do pharmacy, get straight A's, and get involved in a lot of extracurricular . Then you may have a shot into residency. But, the thing is... why would you wanna do 4 yrs of school and then (1 or 2 yrs more yrs) of residency? I would rather just go for med school.

Agreed about retail, depending on where you work. Same thing with residencies. A few of my friends are going into clinical pharmacy or looking to go into it and wonder why they didn't go to med school or PA school instead. Pharmacy is a rather roundabout way of reaching that end goal and I can't help but feel that many would do it differently if they could go back. Med school is a huge commitment both financially and temporally, though.

3 years pre-pharm + 4 years pharm + 2 years residency
vs.
4-5 years pre-med (to get his GPA up and take pre-reqs) + 4 years med + 3 years residency (+ 3-5 years fellowship for specialty)

Add loads of volunteering/EC in pre-med, Step 1 and 2 stress. 70-80hr residencies/fellowships (from my limited POV), being on call for the more lucrative specialties for some docs. Falling compensation in the future for specialists due to Obamacare. Med school isn't something to take lightly for anyone who doesn't find clinical patient care to be his or her calling (which he said as much) or is okay with playing second fiddle as PA/NP. Your life revolves around it for pretty much your entire 20s. I'd sooner apply to go to PA school or go to a software engineering boot camp, if the issue is job security.

If I'm wrong about any of this, please correct me.

with this sGPA, med school (even DO) is out of the window and far from long shot for you. I am serious. If you wanna try DO school u gotta pull up 3.3-3.4 AT LEAST to be minimally competitive. Plus, not to undermine pharmacy, but most pharmacy applicants don't have the stats to apply for med school in the first place.

im not sure about PA school thou

He's not THAT far off. Getting a 95+ percentile PCAT is decent also, so I'm sure he would be capable if he strove for something more clinical.

http://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/2014-aacomasappsr.pdf?sfvrsn=24

 

[darknightzzz]

Agreed abou
If I'm wrong about any of this, please correct me.

He's not THAT far off. Getting a 95+ percentile PCAT is decent also, so I'm sure he would be capable if he strove for something more clinical.

http://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/2014-aacomasappsr.pdf?sfvrsn=24

sorry to disappoint you but the MCAT is its own beast and can't be compared with the measly PCAT

 

[Jbrl]

sorry to disappoint you but the MCAT is its own beast and can't be compared with the measly PCAT

No disappointment here. That's already a given. It was never assumed that anyone with 95th percentile PCAT would score anywhere near the 95th percentile on the MCAT or the DAT - they are apples and oranges, and they are certainly much harder. However, we were talking specifically about GPA for DO school, and someone with that score on the PCAT has enough aptitude to apply himself and study hard to better his stats for DO.

 

[darknightzzz]

No disappointment here. That's already a given. It was never assumed that anyone with 95th percentile PCAT would score anywhere near the 95th percentile on the MCAT or the DAT - they are apples and oranges, and they are certainly much harder. However, we were talking specifically about GPA for DO school, and someone with that score on the PCAT has enough aptitude to apply himself and study hard to better his stats for DO.

grass is always greener than the other side. yea, DO route would work but that would require the OP to take 2 year to raise his/her GPA. plus, the recent DO expansion gives no certain future about quality of life of DO doctors. Given the mentioned above Obamacare and govn regulated health care, DO route may not be a wise choice after all (limited to only family practice, and oh no feed in when they say you can specialize with DO route, it happens but super rare)

yea PCAT is hard in its own sense but seeing how pharm schools put much less emphasis on it and many don't require it . it is just sad

 

[Jbrl]

grass is always greener than the other side. yea, DO route would work but that would require the OP to take 2 year to raise his/her GPA. plus, the recent DO expansion gives no certain future about quality of life of DO doctors. Given the mentioned above Obamacare and govn regulated health care, DO route may not be a wise choice after all (limited to only family practice, and oh no feed in when they say you can specialize with DO route, it happens but super rare)

yea PCAT is hard in its own sense but seeing how pharm schools put much less emphasis on it and many don't require it . it is just sad

Yeah, that's the vibe I get from med school students. Lots of uncertainty. At least their profession isn't being diluted by lower admission standards (like you said) and schools popping up like weeds.

 

[darknightzzz]

Yeah, that's the vibe I get from med school students. Lots of uncertainty. At least their profession isn't being diluted by lower admission standards (like you said) and schools popping up like weeds.

a lot of DO school pop up too and their mission to provide enough family physician. Class size of each school is 150- 225 students.

But with obamacare, salary of primary care physician will only drop. soon, DO doctors will just become like high level of RN. I applied to DO school but didn't attend interview because of the dark future. I am shooting for dental now. DO school teach you only the minimum so you can diagnose and refer to the specialist.
Plus, you will constantly deal with the DO discrimination from your MD counter part and encounter people asking "what is a DO?, do you go to med school? that will drive you nuts.

well I believe pharmacy schools open like weed because of the accreditation standard by COCA (pharmacy accreditation agency?) that require only a building and a pharmacy for their interns to work, some only need a building. Thus, it is the accreditation agency's fault too.

I can't imagine with 15k new grad/year what the market will become like

 

[RxStudentatUB]

a lot of DO school pop up too and their mission to provide enough family physician. Class size of each school is 150- 225 students.

But with obamacare, salary of primary care physician will only drop. soon, DO doctors will just become like high level of RN. I applied to DO school but didn't attend interview because of the dark future. I am shooting for dental now. DO school teach you only the minimum so you can diagnose and refer to the specialist.
Plus, you will constantly deal with the DO discrimination from your MD counter part and encounter people asking "what is a DO?, do you go to med school? that will drive you nuts.

well I believe pharmacy schools open like weed because of the accreditation standard by COCA (pharmacy accreditation agency?) that require only a building and a pharmacy for their interns to work, some only need a building. Thus, it is the accreditation agency's fault too.

I can't imagine with 15k new grad/year what the market will become like

It's the ACPE (equivalent to COCA) that's allowing this madness to happen. Like you said, a building and some instructors are really the only things needed to open a pharmacy school. Perhaps a compounding lab might be a little expensive, but it really is nothing compared to the overhead required to maintain and keep a dental school open. While there are also politics involved in nearly every profession, it seems to be the least transparent in dentistry as opposed to medicine and pharmacy. In medicine and pharmacy, there are just too many tiers and subsectors such as administrators, DNP, MD, DO, RN, NP, RxM, RxSup, PharmD, pharmacy technician, etc. Looking at dentistry, there's the dental assistant and the dentist. Keeps the field relatively nice and simple compared to other health care professions, and probably one of the many reasons why this field is pretty attractive to many!

 

[Jbrl]

a lot of DO school pop up too and their mission to provide enough family physician. Class size of each school is 150- 225 students.

But with obamacare, salary of primary care physician will only drop. soon, DO doctors will just become like high level of RN. I applied to DO school but didn't attend interview because of the dark future. I am shooting for dental now. DO school teach you only the minimum so you can diagnose and refer to the specialist.
Plus, you will constantly deal with the DO discrimination from your MD counter part and encounter people asking "what is a DO?, do you go to med school? that will drive you nuts.

well I believe pharmacy schools open like weed because of the accreditation standard by COCA (pharmacy accreditation agency?) that require only a building and a pharmacy for their interns to work, some only need a building. Thus, it is the accreditation agency's fault too.

I can't imagine with 15k new grad/year what the market will become like

Interesting. Weren't there articles somewhere that estimated a 10% increase in general practitioner salary due to healthcare reimbursement changes?

 

[PharmtoCS]

Interesting. Weren't there articles somewhere that estimated a 10% increase in general practitioner salary due to healthcare reimbursement changes?

Practitioners are actually getting reimbursed less under the ACA exchanges, often less than Medicare and almost as low as Medicaid.

The general trend is that healthcare practitioners including pharmacists will be paid less to do more. Hence my recommendation to avoid healthcare and do computer programming, engineering, or finance.

 

[darknightzzz]

Interesting. Weren't there articles somewhere that estimated a 10% increase in general practitioner salary due to healthcare reimbursement changes?

are you serious in believing this?, healthcare reimbursement just stays the same with inflation (thus it decreases over time) Why would the insurance wanna pay extra when they have a bunch of family physicians under their disposal

Practitioners are actually getting reimbursed less under the AA exchanges, often less than Medicare and almost as low as Medicaid.

The general trend is that healthcare practitioners including pharmacists will be paid less to do more. Hence my recommendation to avoid healthcare and do computer programming, engineering, or finance.

computer programming/engineering face the risk of unemployment in late age if you are not updating fast enough and does not guarantee job security. Other health care careers are still viable

 

[Jbrl]

Practitioners are actually getting reimbursed less under the AA exchanges, often less than Medicare and almost as low as Medicaid.

The general trend is that healthcare practitioners including pharmacists will be paid less to do more. Hence my recommendation to avoid healthcare and do computer programming, engineering, or finance.

The desire to do good tends to override rationality, though, so a helpful question may be what healthcare field someone should go into that balances both of these things

are you serious in believing this?, healthcare reimbursement just stays the same with inflation (thus it decreases over time) Why would the insurance wanna pay extra when they have a bunch of family physicians under their disposal

Shrug. I was clearly asking an exploratory question. I don't know nearly enough about what is happening with primary care physicians since it's not within my scope.

 

[RxStudentatUB]

computer programming/engineering face the risk of unemployment in late age if you are not updating fast enough and does not guarantee job security. Other health care careers are still viable

This is a tough part of the job, but it ensures solid engineers and programmers will be more likely to stay in work and advance in their fields, eliminating those that don't adapt nor are efficient enough to solve problems. The "what you know" holds a bit more weight than "who you know" in engineering, programming, even in medicine and dentistry as far as obtaining specialized training and certification goes. A neurosurgeon, orthodontist, electrical engineer for CISCO obtained their goals and positions by merit. Perhaps a little bit of schmoozing for a reference letter, but we all know it was hard work and inner drive that put them in a good position to succeed. Otherwise, patients would be dying, network systems would constantly be failing, dentists out of business, etc. Different with pharmacy. Because the skills are mostly subjective and not tangible (most of it is verification, recommendation, suggestions, counseling), "who you know" is much more important than "what you know," making pharmacy a job like many others out there and an extremely risky proposition for many students that don't have rich parents to front the 6 digit tuition dollars, nor the luxury to waste 4 years of time in a competitive 2010s-2020s nor the connections with managers nor HR.

 

[SClENCE]

I would say peruse med school, however your grades will need to come up. The good news is that you are only a sophomore... you are ahead of the game which means you have time to get a technician job in a pharmacy and truly decide if it is for you.

 

[MybuttsHadouken]

With a 95+ you should be able to easily translate that with any other health profession tests (mcat/oat/dat). Nowadays I keep hearing every industry is becoming saturated. Its what you make of it. good luc

 

[gladlyfocused]

a lot of DO school pop up too and their mission to provide enough family physician. Class size of each school is 150- 225 students.

But with obamacare, salary of primary care physician will only drop. soon, DO doctors will just become like high level of RN. I applied to DO school but didn't attend interview because of the dark future. I am shooting for dental now. DO school teach you only the minimum so you can diagnose and refer to the specialist.
Plus, you will constantly deal with the DO discrimination from your MD counter part and encounter people asking "what is a DO?, do you go to med school? that will drive you nuts.

well I believe pharmacy schools open like weed because of the accreditation standard by COCA (pharmacy accreditation agency?) that require only a building and a pharmacy for their interns to work, some only need a building. Thus, it is the accreditation agency's fault too.

I can't imagine with 15k new grad/year what the market will become like

I'm not sure where you're getting your info from regarding the DO route, but most of it is not accurate. What dark future are you talking about? Recently, ACGME and AOA have agreed on a merger of the two, soon DO students can apply to all allopathic residencies and fellowships and vice versa. The gap of both physician degrees is only getting smaller and people are more aware of DOs now. MD colleagues respect their DO colleagues in the work place. DOs will never be a "high level of RN" and DO "teaches the minimum" is a wrong sentiment, they learn as much and study as much as their MD counterparts.

Further, DO students are not limited to family practice. Although, yes, the majority get into primary care such as internal med, family med, peds, etc, it's mostly because there is a higher number of positions in those respective fields. DO residency positions in competitive specialties are few in number and only the best get in. That's what makes them "competitive". Allopathic residency programs are more in number in both primary and competitive specialties; although in a single competitive program they might have only one position open for an incoming intern.

To the OP, you have a great chance of getting into DO school, rock the MCAT and apply broadly. You want more info? Visit the DO forum on SDN.

Edit: Removed mean, sharp comments that I found were unnecessary to the point of the post...sorry darknightzzz if you read the unedited one.

 

[gladlyfocused]

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