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Medical school vs pharmacy school difficulty
Started by ivorychins
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Not at all. I know quite a number of pharmacists (>25) who later became physicians. It's definitely harder to get in, and it's a different skillset. It is a huge commitment, and if you were a pharmacist between 2002 and arguably 2015, you would have to take home somewhere around $450k a year for the rest of your career to even break even financially considering the hours from just finishing out your career as a pharmacist. Yeah, you do get the odd exception where a pharmacist goes into a very lucrative specialty (reconstructive plastic surgery) and is completely $ conscious, but the reality is that most end up as some form of primary care (IM, FM, etc.) and is a huge financial penalty for more interesting work.
But anyone who wants to jump the gap, I make it a point to tell them it's about their self-worth (ego) and their own sense of what they want to do. There is not a good objective reason to do so considering the normal prospects for pharmacists. It remains to be seen though whether medicine starts having the same labor problems as nursing, PT, and now pharmacy. I'm feeling that in the specialties, it will if it hasn't hit already in terms of peak prosperity (as in, if I were a practicing anesthesiologist or surgeon, my optimal work to take home ratio peaked sometime in the past four years and either I have to work harder or accept less due to reimbursement changes but it's still a good deal).
I like my time much more and don't believe in humanity enough, pharmacy was the correct health professional choice for me where I can believe in the process and not the people.
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I once wrote a letter to Obama, does that mean I can say I won a Nobel Peace Prize?
Pre-pharmD it made sense- pharmacy school at 5 years was a great pre-med degree - I know several older MD's/ DO's that first went to pharmacy school. Some worked for a few years, other went straight to med school. Pharmacy was a great part time job (if you had time) to make a few bucks during med school. Now that tuition has skyrocketed, and pharmacy is much higher paying, the break even time frane is just to high. I looked at doing it when I gradauted back in the early 2000's, but then I figured if I went into a decent paying specialty (cardiology or nephrology) - I would be in my 50's before I broke even, no thanks, I want to enjoy my life when I am young and I don't want to bust my ass for 60+ hours a week to get to it - I will take my 40 hours and leave
Isn't pharmacy school debt around $120k? With a ~$100k salary that seems pretty reasonable, no?
As cliché as it is, money is not everything -- neither is time. From what I gathered, most make the jump to med because of job satisfaction/fulfillment; not because a pharmacist's salary is not enough.
Pffft.
I can't imagine why anyone would spend another 10 years of their life just to be able to write metformin, Norco, and Zpak on small pieces of paper
You've made a few valid points, but I feel that it was all centered around money and finances. Money is important but it is not everything. Yes, it's more time committed to schooling and education, but I don't feel like that is a bad thing for me. I am excited to learn these things and to seek out these opportunities (even when I was not in med school). I've always done that throughout my whole life. I've worked in industry, hospital, but mostly retail and while in retail, I was floater, staff, and manager.
Yes, the finances are tougher. I don't recommend anyone making the switch from pharmacy to medicine just based on money. There are plenty of other ways to make money much faster. I have friends with comp sci degrees making 150-250k base and 25-80k in stock options each year based on performance. While they started much lower than I did; their personal income has grown tremendously. They are good at what they do and they seem so passionate about what they do. I've worked with pharmacist who are so miserable, who drag their feet to work everyday, who complains each and every day about how terrible it is, but they never do anything about it because they are probably afraid losing that 100k or 120k/year salary or whatever it is. The point is...100k isn't really that much money to be honest. After taxes and deductions, you are looking at 60-70k. I know that my dream/aspiration is worth much more than that...to me it's priceless.
Yes, the transition has been tough for me at every turn (from saving up money, to prepping my app, MCAT, LoRs, the whole process), but I have never felt more at peace with myself and where I am headed. I cannot say that about most people I've worked with. I'm still working part-time and I still see the same people who moan and complain about their job for the past 10 years. I don't want to be that. Is that really worth 70k/year? To me...no. Everyone has their own valuation for their sanity, peace of mind, and the career they want to live. I didn't hate pharmacy; I actually loved it. I love healthcare and I love healing sick people. Yes, there are annoying people but there's annoying aspects for every job. While I was practicing as a pharmacist, the very thought of becoming a doctor has kept me up every night. This is what I say to people who may want to make the switch. Don't do it for the money because, honestly, it's not guarranteed. Healthcare is at an uncertain spot right now; we all know that. Reimbursements are going down, mid level encroachment, and there's saturation in many specialties. I've done all my research and still felt compelled to go through it all. I feel that if you go into medicine (or any career) for a higher purpose or motivation, then you will never regret it. If you go solely for the money or because you're unhappy with your job, then yea, you might find yourself being disappointed.
In the end, I don't want to just show up to work and do a job and drift; I want to excel at what I do and do it well and love it...and in the end..if all that fails? Then so be it. To me, all of this is worth more than some 70k/year. It's just surprising to me that people on here act like a pharmacist's salary gives you such a luxurious lifestyle that you cannot walk away from. Where I live, houses are going for 600-800k and taxes are like 10-20k a year depending on certain areas. Most professionals (comp sci, banking) are coming out of school making equal to or more than pharmacists...so it's not some exurbant lifestyle that everyone here makes it out to be. I can definitely walk away from it to go after my dream, and that's what I did.
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You’re the commander in chief, Mr. President
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It was popular to do before the six year PharmD track was a thing.
Based on what I gathered from his previous posts, PAtoPharmtoUnemployed is a 28-year-old unemployed virgin, with 120K of student debt and nothing to show, and he still lives in his mother's basement. I'm sure he has nothing but free time.
Yeah, nothing but free time to browse job listings for PAs that provide multiple examples of why their job market is so much better than pharmacists' (for now)
true - for me a physician job is not more fulfilling, they all work tons more hours and tons more stress
depends on where you go, mine was a little less - but I know people today who are 250k and up - crazy
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In all honesty, both overeducate and can exhaust the best of students. But it also depends on the institution and how you fare with its curriculum. I'd say medical school is the toughest to enter, but that doesn't mean every student who gets accepted is smart. Have ya seen some prescriptions they write? I'd consider dental school or even a non-healthcare field before medical school.
So you went to med school previously? Why did you discontinue med school if you don't mind me asking?
trolololol
I did both and medical school is about 3x harder than pharmacy school.
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DO schools since we have in average an extra 500 hours of instruction in OMM that MDs don't have to do.
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Is that why it's so easy to get into DO programs?
oh come on dude...MD is way harder to get into than DO. It's a fact.
It may depend on the student and the school... I had 2 med school friends who had far more free time than I did, barely studied, and their rotations didn't seem as bad. Then again I knew others who were swamped. I felt that I had to spend ~70 hours a week on the PharmD program and P2 year was definitely extremely academically challenging. I'm sure overall medical school is harder per average.
Pretty sure he said that he was in his 30s in a previous thread...
I thought he said he was approaching his 30's, but you may be right. Anyhow, it doesn't change the fact that he's a loner living in his parent's basement, while his 100-120K loans are collecting 7% interest (which will compound when he enters school).
It's funny because every grandiose claim he makes is contradicted by the stuff I read on the Clinicians [ RN / NP / PA ] forum. PAtoPharmtoUnemployed is one sad human being.
How did you score ~95th percentile on the MCAT and still not get in?
Makes absolutely no sense. Lower tier, higher tier, all are similar difficulty. Maybe slight variation, but not drastic enough for one to be pharm-school level. All medical students take the same classes and need to know the same stuff to pass the Step 1 exam.
Blah blah blah. Your entire post is nothing but a pathetic attempt to convince yourself that because I'm simply who I am, there is no possible way that I could ever have a better professional future than you. And based on what? A few anecdotal posts made on an online message board that corroborate your presumptions about the salary potential of PAs? If we're playing the anecdotes-as-facts game, then I can just as easily point to thread right here on the pharmacy forums comparing pharmacist and PA salaries and reference the posts made by several hospital pharmacists who all say that PAs with a few years of experience out-earn pharmacists at their facilities (and have higher pay ceilings, as well).
But really, the most significant point here is that even with you being a dedicated pharmacy student who is checking off all the "hustling" boxes (I.e., earning good grades, working as an intern, being involved in extracurricular activities), it still doesn't change the fact that you will soon be graduating into a profession the viability of which as a dependable future career is in question (even looking just 5 years down the road). The threat of automation, wage freezes, staffing cuts, unprecedented job market saturation, stagnant growth, sheer inability to bill for "clinical" services performed, general lack of demand, apathetic and/or destructive political leadership that actively works against its constituency: these are all issues that face the pharmacy profession, and none of which face the PA/NP/AA profession (except saturation in maybe a decade). You can throw all the insults my way that you can come up with, but you're still the one who's going to be stuck as a pharmacist.
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I don't agree with all the personal attacks against you, but no one here is stuck as a pharmacist. We all are making a choice to either stay in the profession or not. There is nothing stopping any of us from applying to PA school if we decide that's what we really want to do. It might not be an easy choice if we have a lot of debt and/or have a good paying job right now, but not easy isn't the same as stuck.
More generally, what are you hoping to get out of these conversations on this board? Are you hoping to feel vindicated, or to get some reassurance that you made the right choice to drop out of pharmacy school? Are you trying to convince others to avoid or leave the pharmacy profession? Are you just bored and looking to bait people into online attacks (i.e. are you just here to troll)? Honestly, just in one sentence, what is your objective?
Agree but if the programs prepare you equally to take the same board exams (most DOs take the same board exams as MDs) and one program has an additional 500 hours of classroom time on another topic not covered on the MD board exams - which is harder?
MD is harder to get into but when you are in medical school then DO is harder due to the extra material in my opinion.
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I disagree...the question was which problem is harder to get into...it's MD. As for which program is harder overall while you're in school...many would say MD as well. 500 hours isn't much. With MD, you are competing with the creme of the crop in terms of grades, research, and ECs. Definitely more stressful than any OMM and to tbh...most of the DO students i've talked to don't even take that seriously.
(question above was for PAtoPharm)
It's hopeless. I have a brother-in-law who is mentally ill, although you wouldn't know it when you first meet him or only have cursory conversations with him. The guy hasn't been able to hold a steady job even though he has an Electrical Engineering degree and worked on avionics for a large airline (the one which was in the news a lot, lately - and not in a good way). I have tried to sit down with my BIL and discussed why he should try to stick with one company for at least a couple of years before moving on. It was like talking to a stone wall. He quit his job a few years ago, bounced around for a bit and is now on welfare (or whatever it's called today).
The point is that those folks have a different worldwiew than the rest of us, and it is impossible to get them to change their opinions and outlook. Don't waste your breath.
Honestly, the people I know who've have moved up quickly are the ones that jumped around. There's no incentive to work for the same company for 10 years like the previous generation. A good bet is to work for a company 2-3 years and then apply for a higher up position with another company.
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Yeah, I get what you're saying, I'm not sure why I got tempted to ask PA2Pharm that question, as I know I'm not likely to get a satisfactory answer (hopeless optimism, maybe?). Some people just lack insight to their behavior and it doesn't matter what you say to them or how intelligent they seem to be, they won't develop that insight. Those are some of the most frustrating people (and patients) to interact with, IMHO.
To get back on topic - generally speaking, there really is no argument that medical school is more difficult than pharmacy school. Individual experiences will vary, because what might be difficult for one person might not be so for the next person, but you can still make some generalizations:
- Admission requirements for medical school are much more rigorous (bachelors degree is almost universally required, MCAT is much more comprehensive than the PCAT, almost all medical schools require shadowing/volunteering/work experience in a medical field)
- Medical school admissions is much more competitive than pharmacy school admissions, more competition means you have to differentiate yourself more, adding a level of difficulty to the admissions process that is not mirrored in pharmacy school admissions
- This is more of an assumption, but anecdotally, I don't hear much about abuse and hazing of pharmacy students, and we don't have entire movements raising awareness about pharmacy student suicides, while the same can't be said about medical schools. Not all medical schools have this problem, but it happens often enough that it's hard to argue that these are just "isolated incidents." This would indicate that medical school is much more demanding, and the mental difficulty of medical school surpasses that of pharmacy school. There are many challenges to collecting data on suicide rates, so I may be off here, but that's my perception. (edit: there is also potential confounding and we can't assume that the people who go to pharmacy school have the same baseline suicide risk as people who go to medical school; it could be that people who decide to pursue medical school are at higher risk for suicide to begin with compared to people who decide to pursue pharmacy school.)
- As mentioned before, medical school covers many more disciplines than just drug action/pharmacology. A larger variety of information and disciplines naturally means a more complex curriculum.
- If you're stuck on a deserted island, and you can only have either a pharmacist or a physician to operate your desert island medical clinic and pharmacy, who would you pick?
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I'd pick PA2Pharm2AA2Dentistry2RN2Nothing, duh. Best of all seven worlds.
I think it just comes down to how amazed I am by the sheer paradox that exists in the pharmacy profession in terms of considering all the aforementioned negative factors that are destroying the field in light of the pharmacy "leaders'" responses to pharmacists who bring up those issues (for example, the AACP lady who said during a recent interview, "we think there's going to be another shortage soon because of some BS study we're doing that involves placing pharmacists in doctors offices!" when asked about the job market issues). The nature of the whole paradox simply provokes conversation, in addition to the fact that I spent some time/money in pharmacy school and will always be interested in keeping up with the progressive downward spiral. It's like you can't help but talk about it when some sort of disaster occurs (e.g., terrorist attack, natural disaster, economic crash, etc.). It just feels natural.
Edited to add: BTW - something that gets me is that all the insults towards me revolve around the central, basic theme of "at least we have jobs that pay well, even if they're in pharmacy, and you don't," as if that invalidates everything I say. It also seems to suggest that by dropping out of pharmacy school, I made some sort of mistake that will adversely affect my future career prospects, and I like to point out how that makes zero sense considering the issues in pharmacy and the practically inevitable future trajectory the path will take. To me, it is a question of why WOULDN'T someone leave pharmacy school to try to do something else with a better outlook?
In fact, I can't think of any good reason why a student in their P1/P2 year would insist on staying in pharmacy school just so they can make the statement that they're on track to graduate into some/any white collar profession. If there's a very real chance that in 5-7 years (possibly before they've even had a chance to pay off all their pharmacy school loans) the multitude of issues in the profession will make it a necessity for them and thousands of other pharmacists to go back to school to do plan B, why not just do plan B now and avoid the hassle of completing a degree that isn't likely to provide a long-term "forever" career?
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Question for you. What are you going to do when I graduate from either AA or PA school and am able to provide proof that I have a job that pays more money and offers better benefits and vacation time than what most pharmacists get (this would especially be the case as an AA), what are you going to choose for my new screenname? Or is it forever going to be the case that everybody here insists that there's no possible way I could move on to something better than what pharmacy offers, despite there being a very real risk that in 10 years or less, there might not even BE a pharmacist job market as you know it?
Let's be real for a second. You have started and left two professional programs. By any objective measure that's a really bad track record. So this idea that you're somehow smarter than all the pharmacy students who are staying in school is just laughably absurd. Do you really think that you have it all figured out better than every other Pharmacy student?
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After witnessing for myself the number of pharmacy students who are totally oblivious to the issues in the field, yes, I think I have it "all figured out better" than the majority of them. What does that have to do with what does/doesn't happen to the profession in the future? Even the pharmacy students who had tech experience prior to matriculating at pharmacy school, are earning good grades, and are working as interns while in school won't be safe if the overall nature of how labor (I.e., pharmacists, techs) is utilized in the field changes dramatically in 5 years. That's the point I'm making here.
Really, because it seemed like your point was that you and anyone who stayed in school would be a fool to do so.
I guess I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
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You are simply twisting around my words here (issue of semantics) to avoid acknowledging that you understand the points I'm making. There's no way you don't "get" what I'm saying. The future of pharmacy on multiple fronts will probably be disastrous. If a pharmacy student is well-informed about the issues and isn't truly all-or-nothing passionate about pharmacy, they would be making a smart move to drop out and pursue a healthcare profession with a better outlook. Staying in pharmacy school "because at least it's better than dropping out and having no guarantee that I, personally, will be able to transition to something better" is a bad justification for staying in pharmacy school. Even if someone truly does enjoy pharmacy work, that doesn't mean they will be safe in the future when/if huge cutbacks occur as a result of industry-wide changes to how pharmacy services are delivered. Do you get it now?
I always got your point. It's you that don't seem to get mine.
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I'd love to see it bro. Please provide said proof when you're done with any grad school and have better salary/vacation/benefits, etc.
I agree with many of your points regarding pharmacy, but I don't extrapolate them to the degree of complete disaster like you do. It will be very interesting to see what is to come in the next 5-10 years, and I hope you are still around for it. Don't let us scare you off in the mean time 😀
