need a little hope for pharmacy admissions, please help me :(

[deleted562805]

No I want to know why you don't give your own opinion instead of promote a YouTuber.

I have already stated my opinion before and use Paul Tran to support my opinion

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[wagrxm2000]

I have already stated my opinion before and use Paul Tran to support my opinion

This isn't pharmacy school, you don't have to support your opinions with a "YouTube expert"

 

[deleted562805]

This isn't pharmacy school, you don't have to support your opinions with a "YouTube expert"

Lol, this YouTuber if you checked his linkedin is a hospital pharmacist with five years of experience. You must not like YouTube. Prepharma are not going to listen to people hiding behind avatars, so might as well show a real person with a real name who is a pharmacist on YouTube who speaks the truth about the market. Actually, in the real world, you do have state sources that support your opinion. it’s not exclusive to pharmacy school

 

[lucas988]

I would talk to your family about how the independent business is going for them. Ask them if it is worth it going to pharmacy school? Are your parents pharmacists?

Many independents are closing down and getting bought out by CVS or Walgreens due to low reimbursement from dispensing services and Pharmacy Benefit Managers charging high DIR fees to pharmacies. YouTube independent pharmacies closing down. Now, since your family owns independents in inside medical clinics, this may not be a issue for now. But again, check with family how the business is going for them. If any one of your family members is a pharmacist, ask them about the job market and is pharmacy school worth it.

It is not too late for working on a bachelors. Many of the prepharm courses will counted towards your chemistry or biology major. However, you might have to spend about two or three extra years if you take 18 credit hour semesters and finish with straight A’s.

Those three extra years are worth it plus working as a pharmacy tech. It would be less expensive than going the pharmacy route and then pursuing PA afterwards.

If you decide to go the pharmacy route, it would take you four years to complete and then if you decide to apply to PA school afterwards, then the stakes are higher. The PA program would expect you to have a job lined up as a pharmacist, which you will have if you work at your family owned independent pharmacies. However, you would have to retake all the pre-reqs due to 5 year expiration date on pre-reqs and get a bachelors. And that is more expensive than working on a major now.

Basically, reinventing yourself and transitioning to PA school now avoiding pharmacy school is less expensive than reinventing yourself to go the PA route after completing pharmacy school.

i shadowed a pharmacist last year and im going to go talk to him about all this regarding if pharmacy is even worth it in this day in age and if i should start working on a bachelors instead. I'll let you know what he says for a better understanding in my dilemma!

 

[lucas988]

For now, he is not fired, for now. His hours are getting affected. Pharmacists who have done residencies in hospitals are still unemployed and their advice is go work at a bank. What Paul Tran says in the video is true and what Tony Guerra says in his podcast is also true.

OP should not do pharmacy at all period, other wise OP will be unemployed.

that sucks honestly i cant imagine going through the admissions process, pharmacy school, board exams and all that just to not even be promised a job.

 

[wagrxm2000]

Actually you do have state sources that support your opinion. it’s not exclusive to pharmacy school

I read the SDN handbook, it's a good read, you actually don't

 

[El-Rami]

that sucks honestly i cant imagine going through the admissions process, pharmacy school, board exams and all that just to not even be promised a job.

No one is promised a job in med school either. The difference is that there's an actual need for physicians and always will be, while no one is really buying pharmacists' sales pitch as to why their profession is important and necessary. It's all supply and demand, and pharmacy is on the wrong side of the economy, in terms of both supply (over-supply) and demand (declining demand).

Pharmacists can talk all day long about how they are necessary in order to catch physician's mistakes whenever they prescribe meds, but the truth is that physicians get plenty of pharmacological knowledge while in med school and residency. The health system sees the pharmacist role as redundant and something that could easily be replaced with something else.

-----

To answer your question about what school you should pursue... If the academic misconduct that you mention isn't due to cheating, then I believe there's still hope in terms of getting into med school or PA school. If you cheated and were caught, you are screwed.

3.7 GPA, even with an initially low GPA, would be perfectly fine for MD programs. You would have shown an upward trend, and 3.7 GPA itself is competitive for MD programs. It would be above-average for DO programs. It would be excellent for DPM programs.

One thing I would caution you about PA programs is that while they are currently popular due to the low amount of schooling and the earning potential, PA programs are making the same mistakes as pharmacy schools made. That is, they are constantly opening new programs left and right. This will create an overabundance of PAs sometime in the future. You can't keep pumping out more and more graduates every year and not expect people to suddenly find themselves unemployed.

Med school is the absolute best bet as far as a career in healthcare.

 

[deleted562805]

No one is promised a job in med school either. The difference is that there's an actual need for physicians and always will be, while no one is really buying pharmacists' sales pitch as to why their profession is important and necessary. It's all supply and demand, and pharmacy is on the wrong side of the economy, in terms of both supply (over-supply) and demand (declining demand).

Pharmacists can talk all day long about how they are necessary in order to catch physician's mistakes whenever they prescribe meds, but the truth is that physicians get plenty of pharmacological knowledge while in med school and residency. The health system sees the pharmacist role as redundant and something that could easily be replaced with something else.

-----

To answer your question about what school you should pursue... If the academic misconduct that you mention isn't due to cheating, then I believe there's still hope in terms of getting into med school or PA school. If you cheated and were caught, you are screwed.

3.7 GPA, even with an initially low GPA, would be perfectly fine for MD programs. You would have shown an upward trend, and 3.7 GPA itself is competitive for MD programs. It would be above-average for DO programs. It would be excellent for DPM programs.

One thing I would caution you about PA programs is that while they are currently popular due to the low amount of schooling and the earning potential, PA programs are making the same mistakes as pharmacy schools made. That is, they are constantly opening new programs left and right. This will create an overabundance of PAs sometime in the future. You can't keep pumping out more and more graduates every year and not expect people to suddenly find themselves unemployed.

Med school is the absolute best bet as far as a career in healthcare.

I agree with you. PA is definitely better than pharmacy school right now, though. However, I can see it getting saturated like pharmacy in the future in long term, maybe after OP graduates from PA school.

What are your thoughts of PA replacing doctors in primary care, ER, and urgent care settings and encroachment into Critical Care? Will physicians become replaced in some fields of medicine? That is what I am hearing from the speciality doctor forums on SDN.

 

[deleted562805]

Is this real?? This is some of the biggest load of bull**** I've ever read.

Unbelievable to use God’s name in vain to market pharmacy.

 

[DH1987]

Unbelievable to use God’s name in vain to market pharmacy.

Yeah, and they're trying to push pharmacy as some kind of heroic profession. Like we're firefighters or soldiers or something.

 

[El-Rami]

I agree with you. PA is definitely better than pharmacy school right now, though. However, I can see it getting saturated like pharmacy in the future in long term, maybe after OP graduates from PA school.

What are your thoughts of PA replacing doctors in primary care, ER, and urgent care settings and encroachment into Critical Care? Will physicians become replaced in some fields of medicine? That is what I am hearing from the speciality doctor forums on SDN.

Physicians are irreplaceable. It's laughable to think that the healthcare system can simply bridge the gap between physician supply and demand by pumping out a ton of midlevels. The training is simply not anywhere close, and it will have an impact on patient safety if midlevels are allowed too much freedom in practice. Lawsuits are inevitably going to become a major issue. That's not to say that midlevels are useless and shouldn't be used, but they are (and will always be) there to supplement physicians rather than replace them. Their training doesn't allow otherwise, although of course there is always the ethics issue with NPs fraudulently presenting themselves as physicians.

Anecdotally, I often have to see NPs if I need to go to urgent care to get something checked out on short notice. Usually, the NPs do well enough on routine stuff, although they might make relatively minor mistakes such as prescribe a drug that is the correct class but has poor tissue penetration for the site of infection. They can get it most of the way in that they know "prescribe x class for y infection" but don't know the finer details that physicians would know.

However, there are some very bad NPs out there. Once, I was seeing one and she introduced herself as "Dr. ____." She had a DNP or whatever. She obviously had this inferiority complex and was trying to compensate, and she told me to discontinue a drug I take for acid reflux (omeprazole) because "it will give you gastric cancer." I politely told her I take the drug to prevent metaplasia (Barrett's esophagus) which subsequently can cause esophageal adenocarcinoma. She got really angry and was like "but WE, THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY, SAY..." I told her I was a medical student and knew what I was talking about and that what she was telling me to do (stop taking the drug altogether in favor of taking sucralfate) was not only against my doctor's advice but also against the medical literature because there is zero evidence that PPIs definitively cause gastric cancer however the pathophysiology of Barrett's esophagus and adenocarcinoma are well understood. She just got defensive, and I left. People like her are a clear and present danger to a patient's health.

 

[El-Rami]

Yeah, and they're trying to push pharmacy as some kind of heroic profession. Like we're firefighters or soldiers or something.

I Google'd something like "pharmacy has a bright future" the other day and found a recent article from Pharmacy Times that tried to make the case that the future of pharmacy is bright despite what the naysayers say, but funnily enough, the entire article had no real substance and was only a few paragraphs long.

 

[DH1987]

she told me to discontinue a drug I take for acid reflux (omeprazole) because "it will give you gastric cancer." I politely told her I take the drug to prevent metaplasia (Barrett's esophagus) which subsequently can cause esophageal adenocarcinoma. She got really angry and was like "but WE, THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY, SAY..." I told her I was a medical student and knew what I was talking about and that what she was telling me to do (stop taking the drug altogether in favor of taking sucralfate) was not only against my doctor's advice but also against the medical literature because there is zero evidence that PPIs definitively cause gastric cancer however the pathophysiology of Barrett's esophagus and adenocarcinoma are well understood. She just got defensive, and I left. People like her are a clear and present danger to a patient's health.

Yeah, she's full of crap. The main concerns with overusing PPI's are malabsorption of nutrients, interference with gut flora which can increase risk of infection, and a slight possibility of kidney disease (which I need to research a bit further). But if you have Barrett's I'd say the benefits outweigh risks.

 

[DH1987]

I Google'd something like "pharmacy has a bright future" the other day and found a recent article from Pharmacy Times that tried to make the case that the future of pharmacy is bright despite what the naysayers say, but funnily enough, the entire article had no real substance and was only a few paragraphs long.

Must have been this article.

https://www.pharmacytoday.org/article/S1042-0991(18)30233-0/fulltext

Basically says, "We see bad news that isn't true all the time, so we shouldn't be worried. Pharmacists have lots of opportunities, such as [names off things that other health care professionals can do]. Don't worry, it'll be fine!"

 

[El-Rami]

Must have been this article.

https://www.pharmacytoday.org/article/S1042-0991(18)30233-0/fulltext

Basically says, "We see bad news that isn't true all the time, so we shouldn't be worried. Pharmacists have lots of opportunities, such as [names off things that other health care professionals can do]. Don't worry, it'll be fine!"

The article by Kristin Weazel. That's it.

 

[deleted562805]

Physicians are irreplaceable. It's laughable to think that the healthcare system can simply bridge the gap between physician supply and demand by pumping out a ton of midlevels. The training is simply not anywhere close, and it will have an impact on patient safety if midlevels are allowed too much freedom in practice. Lawsuits are inevitably going to become a major issue. That's not to say that midlevels are useless and shouldn't be used, but they are (and will always be) there to supplement physicians rather than replace them. Their training doesn't allow otherwise, although of course there is always the ethics issue with NPs fraudulently presenting themselves as physicians.

Anecdotally, I often have to see NPs if I need to go to urgent care to get something checked out on short notice. Usually, the NPs do well enough on routine stuff, although they might make relatively minor mistakes such as prescribe a drug that is the correct class but has poor tissue penetration for the site of infection. They can get it most of the way in that they know "prescribe x class for y infection" but don't know the finer details that physicians would know.

However, there are some very bad NPs out there. Once, I was seeing one and she introduced herself as "Dr. ____." She had a DNP or whatever. She obviously had this inferiority complex and was trying to compensate, and she told me to discontinue a drug I take for acid reflux (omeprazole) because "it will give you gastric cancer." I politely told her I take the drug to prevent metaplasia (Barrett's esophagus) which subsequently can cause esophageal adenocarcinoma. She got really angry and was like "but WE, THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY, SAY..." I told her I was a medical student and knew what I was talking about and that what she was telling me to do (stop taking the drug altogether in favor of taking sucralfate) was not only against my doctor's advice but also against the medical literature because there is zero evidence that PPIs definitively cause gastric cancer however the pathophysiology of Barrett's esophagus and adenocarcinoma are well understood. She just got defensive, and I left. People like her are a clear and present danger to a patient's health.

I definitely agree with you. The clinical experience/expertise is not even close. If HMOs, private equity groups were to replace all doctors with NPs and PAs, it can only be done if healthcare policy changes to single payer socialized healthcare, like in UK, which I fear is a huge threat to physicians. I don’t foresee it happening anytime soon since Trump will more than likely stay as President for the next four years and a possible Republican control of House and Senate.

 

[El-Rami]

I doubt single-payer would replace physicians with midlevels. We can have a system like the NHS (UK healthcare system) and have physicians, just like they do. In fact, if done correctly, I believe such a system could be superior to our current one even.

Fully subsidized medical education and forgiveness of all outstanding student debt for physicians would be a must before such a system can be implemented, though. I feel that the current way we train physicians (which saddles people with easily a quarter-of-a-millon dollars in loans) is unethical. If certain politicians had their way, medical school would only be accessible to the rich.

It's a greed-driven system, not one that really focuses on patients. A common word that I heard when people discussed which specialty they should choose was "lucrative."

 

[PharmD 2021]

hey everyone,
im about to be a 4th year university student pursuing a career in pharmacy. I am in this field because i have always wanted to become a pharmacist since high school and it is just something i really want to do. However my first year of college didnt go so well, i was going through a lot my first semester and ended up on academic probation with a 1.96 gpa and got out of it as soon as i could. i ended up having to retake a couple classes like chemistry, psych and a bio class. During my first bio class, my lab professor cited me for academic code of conduct because i said i took an online quiz when in reality i missed it by accident and it slipped my mind; i know it was a horrible thing but live and you learn. I was not kicked out of the class or recieved an F, he just said he will be reporting me and there will be citation on record. I did end up retaking the class and getting an A in it. my sophomore year last year, i was on the road to getting an A in my general chemistry class but i wasnt prepared for the final because i contracted cellulitis so my professor allowed to make it up after break and he would submit a grade change form; however he never did and it shows as XE on my transcript and i have emailed him numerous times before and i got no response, even showed up to his office and left a note. I did take the class the following semester and got an A+ in it. I am currently standing at a 3.6 gpa and a solid 515 on my pcat score, im debating on taking it again to get a more perfect score. From my first few semesters i have redeemed myself and have been getting 4.0's and A's in all my classes ever since i got my life together. My issue is due to my past semesters, did i ruin my shot at pharmacy school? will i manage to land an interview anywhere? i feel like i dug a hole i cannot get myself out of and i need some advice since ive been stressing none stop. i know i messed up in the beginning but mentally i was going through it and i have been striving to become the best ever since. would appreciate any feedback please.

You will definitely get accepted. Don't worry about your old semesters. If you will be asked during the interview, just clarify why you got those grades.

 

[El-Rami]

They probably wouldn't even ask, and if they did, you could give a half-baked response to it without actually preparing for your interview. Trust me, there are no standards in pharmacy admissions right now.

 

[mentos]

I'm surprised they haven't waived interviews by now. Has anyone actually been rejected after the interview? It's just a formality at this point.

 

[casprph]

Everyone wants you. All you need is a pulse and a student loan. Come join THE BEST pharmacy school in CA.

View attachment 310011

my friend is the IPPE DIRECTOR there and all I can say is I still wouldn’t go there!

 

[casprph]

I'm surprised they haven't waived interviews by now. Has anyone actually been rejected after the interview? It's just a formality at this point.

remember when interviews actually meant something?

 

[casprph]

Yeah, she's full of crap. The main concerns with overusing PPI's are malabsorption of nutrients, interference with gut flora which can increase risk of infection, and a slight possibility of kidney disease (which I need to research a bit further). But if you have Barrett's I'd say the benefits outweigh risks.

And bone density issues

 

[DH1987]

And bone density issues

Right, that is derived from impaired calcium absorption.

 

[PSOP Student]

that sucks honestly i cant imagine going through the admissions process, pharmacy school, board exams and all that just to not even be promised a job.

PharmaScam School need more students like you! You should apply to pharmacy schools and help them by giving them tuition money! There are so many empty seats right now schools are begging for more dumb students so they can keep their jobs and rake in the money while they still can.

Seriously though, don't get scammed. You already got your answer. You should thank everyone on here for giving you the cold hard facts and avoid pharmacy at all cost. Machines will count pills faster than you ever can. Schools are passing ever the most unqualified students so they can keep their tuition money.

Anyone telling you to still apply to pharmacy school on this board is likely a recruiter from a pharmacy school...yes pharmacy schools have resorted to these tactics to keep students attracted to a obsolete field.