Is it smart to do medicine after pharmacy??

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feelit83

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I was talking to a customer at CVS cause she was a Pharm.D. worked for a year then went to medical school and it now a ER physician and absolutely love it. She said that if i wanted to do it, it would be "worth" it.

It seems cool, but i dont know if i would ever be able to pay the loans back! And there is potential that docotors salaries could be substantially lower in the lext 10-15 years due to medicare cuts.

Economically is it idiotic to go to med school after pharmacy school. I keep hearing about more and more peeps doin it. What yall think??
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it was once practical to do pharmacy then medicine because pharmacy was once a bachelors. Alot of people are now avoiding that path due to the extension in the programs. The popular trend occuring, although it was there before, now is nursing to medicine.

btw, i doubt doc salaries will lower too much. Once some tort reform gets taken care of and people see how bad socialized medicine truly sucks, itll keep the same privitized medicine we see today.
 
someone on this forum is pursuing their MD after their PharmD...I forgot who, but they wanted to be in school for the rest of their lives. Ideally I say go for it if it interests you that much. BUT the reality is if you have a family/kids/etc... and your future PharmD paycheck will be the primary source of income, you'll have to do some number crunching.

If you can pay the bills and live frugally off the other spouse's income, you should be fine. You can probably part-time it as a pharmacist and make $55+/hr, but you won't be able to work much at all...so consider that bonus money for the family pot. You'll have to give up private school for the kids, possibly delay home ownership, and buy a slightly used Honda vs. a Lexus to make ends meet.

Don't worry about loans so much...student loans are more flexible in terms of repayment than, say, a mortgage holder or basic utilities.
 
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If you are paying in-state tuition then the financial situation shouldn't be too bad. I'd look for the poster whose name is something like "pharmd2md" or some derivation of that and ask how it's going for him/her. You'd certainly be well educated when you got out and would leave your md peers in the dust when it comes to drug therapy, but I'd only make the move if you're certain that being an md is your passion.
 
I know a couple of people in pharm school who want to try and be midlevels...not that crazy of an idea, but we'll see what happens when they graduate and if they go through with it.

Keep in mind, if you went to a 6 year PharmD school you still have an enormous amount of wasted opportunity cost, because then you'd be going to school for another 4 years, and then say a 4 year residency where you get paid peanuts...only to become an MD where you either work for the man or get craptacular reimbursements. This would be even worse if you have a BS already and are already in PharmD school since now it's 8+4+4...

The only good thing is you can work part time and make 40-50 an hour as an RPh through med school, and you'll be a little familiar with stuff since you already have a healthcare background, but it is a huge committment that you don't really do for the money. Reading medblogs like pandabear or kevinmd does not paint a pretty picture for medicine, let alone the future and medicare.

Also, figure out if patient contact is for you or not while you're contemplating such things. I liked the idea of helping patients and etc like you learn in the early years of school, up until I met actual patients...or maybe i'm just a curmudgeonly punk.
 
I know three people who chose to do that. One - immediately after pharmacy school, one after being in practice for 4 or 5 years, and one after practicing for almost 10 years. However, in two cases these were people who really, really wanted to do medicine - and went into pharmacy for all the wrong reason (family insistence, not wanting to spend too long in school, not believing in themselves, etc.). One was different in that he was planning on medical school from the beginning, wanted to get a PharmD to know drugs well, and so he applied in his last year of pharmacy school and got in, now he is in a residency somewhere. :)
 
Pharmacy school's really a different direction than medical school these days, but if you are so inclined, you should follow your goals.
 
If you want to be a MD, go that path, and if you want to be a PharmD, go in that direction. There is overlap between the two, but that is true of almost any health profession.
 
I would have to kill myself if I had to go to 12+ years of higher education, as is it, 8 is making me think about it.

If you can handle the academic aspect, don't worry about the money, that will take care of itself
 
feelit83 said:
I was talking to a customer at CVS cause she was a Pharm.D. worked for a year then went to medical school and it now a ER physician and absolutely love it. She said that if i wanted to do it, it would be "worth" it.

It seems cool, but i dont know if i would ever be able to pay the loans back! And there is potential that docotors salaries could be substantially lower in the lext 10-15 years due to medicare cuts.

Economically is it idiotic to go to med school after pharmacy school. I keep hearing about more and more peeps doin it. What yall think??
Click to expand...

Well, "worth it" means different things to different people. Ask your ER doc patient what she means specifically- she may have had different reasons or circumstances that lead her down that path. I think you are right on about the financial issue. Don't do it for the money, because you'll really regret it. I think your current salary is in the ballpark of an FP or peds doc. It might be worth it to you if it's something you always dreamed of, and you truly find the practice of medicine fascinating. I would have regretted it later in life if I had not taken this plunge. I can't really tell you if it's worth it yet or not- ask me in about 10 years. I'm doing this through the military, so I don't have a financial debt, but I will owe them a big chunk of my life after this. I get depressed sometimes about how long I will be in training, how much there is to know, lack of sleep, no free time, etc. that comes with medical school and will likely get worse in residency.

I realize that this is fairly ambiguous response, but this is something you'll have to figure out for yourself. If you really think you'll regret it later in life if you don't become a physician, I'd say go ahead and pursue it. Otherwise, if just something that seems cool or whatever, I wouldn't mess with it. It's too much time, effort, money, etc. to do on a whim.
 
Has anyone ever heard of a physician switching to pharmacy? I have heard of one who got pharmacist license (don't know the gory detail, though) and continuing to do both things, but I never heard of anyone switching the fields completely.
 
Priapism321 said:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=4333298#post4333298I think he explains his story on #878. Once again the link works for me, not sure if it will for you.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. That thread is a good read... :)

I sometimes do wonder about what my life would have been had I not decided to decline med school after being accepted. But I know for sure I wouldn't have had the travel experiences I enjoyed, nor the job I love (my current position as a fellow!) :) My brother who is 7 years older went on to be an MD, and I saw what it was really like before I made the step myself. It's fun to talk to my high school friends, though, many of them now MDs and DDSs, just done with their residencies and starting out in the big wide world...
 
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