It is possible to create a churn of pharmacists, but that usually occurs with a severe glut (excess of +20% in populations) in looking back at my econ notes. It was especially important to me, because I faced this during the 90's in the technology sector, where fresh from the farm geeks started working for less (and generally screwing things up for the rest of us). Look at where corporate IT in the US is now.
Will it happen if every school doubled their graduation rate, no, it's unrealistic. What would happen is the highly prized areas would suffer a salary stagnation or possible reduction and a greater percentage of "undesirable" locations would be filled, but certainly not all of them. As long as states require a pharmacist to push the scripts out the door and corporate Rx's want to explode, there's going to be a demand. There are two problems on the horizon. Remote Pharmacists and bulk mail order shops. They are problems where the biggest need in pharmacy is right now, the community/retail setting.
If Corporate Pharmacy could get by with having a "product specialist" behind the counter for OTC and someone remotely checking prescriptions, they would do it in a second. Is not Walgreens already remote pharmacist checking now? It allows remote pharmacist to release(??) the script and review the product. (I know not the exact mechanism, but I know the techs I go to school with both have had external pharmacists do everything but counsel the patient.) Their intent is to maximize the utilization of their pharmacist, call center pharmacy is a distinct possibility. Which leads me to mail order shops...
As the technology progresses that companies are able to turn out greater prescriptions per pharmacist (PPP) for bulk meds that will reduce the demand for pharmacists. Once company already does 1000+PPP (in an 8 hour day) by using scanning technology (OCR and LASER), imagine the damage that shop can do to recurring scripts, something this country is all about. In looking at work similar to this for corporate law, I'd assume maximum throughput would top at 1700 or so, that's what we could reasonable expect on document review and it's the same general concept at this point.
Personally I would like to see a +1 year for pharmacy, basically the old bachelors of pharmacy +1 year to get them up to basic pharmacy knowledge. And a separate PharmD program that's more similar to Dental/Optometry programs 3 or 4 years of requirements and 3 or 4 years of schooling plus experiential learning. Then top that with residencies if you want to specialize. I would also like to incorporate a senior project required to graduate. Some research, education curriculum, etc that would tie everything together. The bachelors +1 would have a limited field with which to work (think primarily retail and less "traditional clinical settings").
Oddly enough, I think Mommy Dearest was actually being nicer then she needed (or should have been), calling someone an idiot in professional forum would have likely been an instalock for me, had I been in her shoes. It's unfortunately that the ideas spread here, by idealists, sadists and the lofty people in the know *cough* had to be waylaid for a few hours, but hey, such is life when the average age of people entering pharmacy school is 23; heck I'm not even sure if the average age of maturity here is 23.
