Not pursuing residency due to burnout

[pharm B]

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How many of you recent grads decided to go straight into retail just so you could start making money instead of investing another year or two into a residency?

I hated my time as a tech in retail, but it'd be nice to start making those six figures that much sooner...

 

[297point1]

Ahh...the sweet siren of the six figure salary...it has been known to take down even the strongest willed graduating pharmacist.

Based upon your message, you don't seem like retail is where your passion lies. Let's talk about what you want to do. Are you at all interested in pursuing hospital pharmacy? Long-term care pharmacy? A career in pharma? Academia? What I'm asking...is there any chance at all that there is something that you MIGHT want to do some time in the future besides retail pharmacy?

It seems to me the answer is yes. If so, you'll need a residency or another degree beyond the PharmD. The PharmD degree really only qualifies folks for entry-level retail pharmacy, hospital (dispensing, not clinical), and some consulting work...and hospital is reaching the point now that they are getting more selective/competitive in their hiring, and many dispensing-level jobs are going to people with residencies who just want to get their foot in the door. This is not to say that all hospital jobs need residencies now- you can work there as a student, develop a good rep with the DOP and other pharmacists, and have a job for you AT THAT SITE when you graduate. But you might not be able to land a job at another hospital. Ten years ago, people who burned out on retail could get a job at a hospital with relative ease. Today? Yikes...not so much. There are plenty of posts here and elsewhere from people who feel they are trapped in retail hell.

Disclaimer: Many people can find retail a rewarding and fulfilling career. People should do whatever makes them happiest.

If your heart lies in hospital or elsewhere, do the residency now...once you start making $110k/year or more, it gets harer and harder to give that salary up and pursue your dreams. Life tends to get in the way later on as well. Do it now- you are not likely to regret it.

 

[Its Z]

How many of you recent grads decided to go straight into retail just so you could start making money instead of investing another year or two into a residency?

I hated my time as a tech in retail, but it'd be nice to start making those six figures that much sooner...

delayed gratification worth lifetime of satisfaction..

Or take the 6 figure income today and suffer rest of your life..

 

[Its Z]

Disclaimer: Many people can find retail a rewarding and fulfilling career. People should do whatever makes them happiest.

Define Many.

Other than OldTimer and Dr. M (who owns an Indy), I don't know of any retail buddies who are happy with their work... None. Zero.

 

[297point1]

Define Many.

Other than OldTimer and Dr. M (who owns an Indy), I don't know of any retail buddies who are happy with their work... None. Zero.

That's my way of avoiding a beatdown from Mikey...he's not too keen on us academics, in case you hadn't noticed.😱

 

[Its Z]

That's my way of avoiding a beatdown from Mikey...he's not too keen on us academics, in case you hadn't noticed.😱

The problem Academia folks face is that y'all lack the financial sense of real life healthcare practice. Once you learn to teach the rules of justification of pharmacist income in healthcare system, you will have made a leap.

 

[pharm B]

I personally want to pursue a residency, so that's the plan. I've always enjoyed being in a position of instruction, so academia has my interest, but research does not. Since those two seem to go hand-in-hand some times, I'm not sure how viable an option it is for me.

Residency-wise, I'm definitely open-minded and interested. I can't wait to finally get some hospital exposure next year.

I suppose I'm just venting since that siren song is.. well... attractive. I'd love to have some money to put in different investments. My current investments include clothing for the kids and gas money to get to and from school.

 

[lorain]

i work retail and trying to go back for fellowship/residency

but its not the right way to do it, b/c from my research, you have to answer the question 'what did you do to advance yourself in the time after pharm school and now?' working retail thats a tough ? to answer


I was gonna make a post on this subject, just waiting when it comes closer to application deadline time

 

[tungsten87]

I've heard that a lot of people who were dead set on residency change their minds during p3/p4 years because they just want to be out of school and make money, don't have the grades/ECs. me... i want to be a student as long as possible (or as long as my loans permit).

 

[stevephhs016]

Define Many.

Other than OldTimer and Dr. M (who owns an Indy), I don't know of any retail buddies who are happy with their work... None. Zero.

I am. Sorry.

 

[Its Z]

I am. Sorry.

mmm.. I don't know you.

 

[IndustryPharmD]

Hey, I like retail. Of course, I only do it (very) part-time, but I do.

And I hate hospitals. I have spent grand total of 14 weeks in the hospital pharmacy as my school wouldn't let me graduate with less than that, and I can say that six of those 14 weeks were among the most miserable weeks of my life.

Whether to do a residency or not... Unless you want to do any kind of hospital work, or "clinical" work in consulting, managed care or industry, I wouldn't do it.

 

[pharm B]

I'll have to give your industry thread a read. It (industry) has never really drawn my attention.

 

[Its Z]

Hey, I like retail. Of course, I only do it (very) part-time, but I do.

You don't count...you have to at least do 1/2 FTE to qualify a vote.

 

[IndustryPharmD]

You don't count...you have to at least do 1/2 FTE to qualify a vote.

I have even done full-time retail, granted it's been a while... and never longer than three months at a time. What other rules for counting my vote will you invent based on this disclosure? 😀

 

[Its Z]

I have even done full-time retail, granted it's been a while... and never longer than three months at a time. What other rules for counting my vote will you invent based on this disclosure? 😀

Minimum of 6 months full time and it has to be in the past 12 months.

 

[IndustryPharmD]

I'll have to give your industry thread a read. It (industry) has never really drawn my attention.

Generally, my advice to anyone considering pharmaceutical industry as a career would be, "Unless you are sure you want to do it, you probably don't." But go ahead, read it, and feel free to ask any questions.

I think a survey said that pharmacists working in industry had the highest job satisfaction level out of all the pharmacists... but that survey is at least six or seven years old, so that was before the mass layoffs. 😀

 

[IndustryPharmD]

Minimum of 6 months full time and it has to be in the past 12 months.

And what dramatic change have retail undergone in the last 12 months? I worked through Medicare Part D implementation in an area where 90% of people were Medicare age and damn confused... now that was NOT a good time to be in retail. 🙄

 

[Its Z]

And what dramatic change have retail undergone in the last 12 months?

y'know.. actually, a lot happened past 12 months. I think the pharmacist supply hit the tipping point. The employers have changed their attitudes toward pharmacists.."oh, you don't like it? well, then quit because we have pharmacists lined up to take your spot."

 

[pharm B]

Generally, my advice to anyone considering pharmaceutical industry as a career would be, "Unless you are sure you want to do it, you probably don't." But go ahead, read it, and feel free to ask any questions.

I think a survey said that pharmacists working in industry had the highest job satisfaction level out of all the pharmacists... but that survey is at least six or seven years old, so that was before the mass layoffs. 😀

I've just never known enough about it to make an informed decision either way. I'm open-minded. I just pictured PharmD's being pushed around by PhD's, but it sounds like that's not the case.

 

[IndustryPharmD]

y'know.. actually, a lot happened past 12 months. I think the pharmacist supply hit the tipping point. The employers have changed their attitudes toward pharmacists.."oh, you don't like it? well, then quit because we have pharmacists lined up to take your spot."

I think here in the NYC area it has been that way for a while...

Besides, I personally always subscribed to the philosophy that it's extremely difficult (and usually not worth it) to change others, it's easier to control oneself. So if I didn't like something, I went elsewhere. And took a very good look around before getting in, so I liked all my jobs except the very first full-time one, the summer after high school call center job (waited three months I needed to get my sign-on bonus, all $400 of it, and left two weeks later, using the convenient "sorry, school has started!" excuse). When job hunting, I use the list of questions so I don't forget something really important for me, and I get a really good feel for a place. If my gut tells me this is not the place I want to be, I listen.

 

[IndustryPharmD]

I've just never known enough about it to make an informed decision either way. I'm open-minded. I just pictured PharmD's being pushed around by PhD's, but it sounds like that's not the case.

I just tried to imagine someone pushing me around and failed. It's not degree dependent, it's person dependent. 😉 Though when I just started in corporate, I was a bit too conscious of being the youngest person in the room by good two decades, and the most junior by rank, and having no corporate experience whatsoever... actually hurt my reviews, because everyone was saying "she is very smart and offers great insights, just wish she would speak up more in meetings". I have learned since. 🙂

 

[ThePlantation]

I am. Sorry.

I love my retail job too. Must be a DC thing. (as long as it's not chain retail...)

On Residency: I was all bright-eye-bushy-tailed out of pharm school, 4 years ago with brilliant grades and so much research projects and publications under my belt. I did a PGY-1 hospital residency the whole shbang with the clinical on-call, staffing duties etc. And come winter, I was soo burnt out. But after making it through I came out with a lot of friends and memories, and a few networks. But I'm not a fan of traditional hospital jobs, nor am I really interested in typical "clinical" jobs either (rounding with the team, lexi-comp fired up and ready, then catching up on some emails and call the pharmacy to check if the Tenoretic is scored or not). I prefer working with my hands, and on my feet, burning calories, and for the moment retail is working out really well in my life.

But chains do suck. I FTE'd for CVS so I got cred.

I say, just do a freakin' residency. The experience alone is worth it. The 6 figures can wait (meanwhile residency pays 5 figures!)

 

[njac]

I can understand the being burned out, I really do. but I really don't regret having gone through with it.

 

[lorain]

^what kind of residency did you all do?

 

[GamecockPharmD]

I was strongly considering a residency but with the combination of academic burnout and a family in need of financial assistance I took a retail job. I figured I better get out now and start making money while there is still money left to be made. I don't know what I'll do in the future. I may pursue a residency when money is not an issue.

 

[rph3664]

Thing is, lots of hospitals HAVE openings, but they won't even look at your resume unless you have a Pharm.D. and a residency, which pretty much eliminates, what, 99% of us? In addition, the Pharm.D/PGY person is going to be less experienced, which means the hospital can pay them less and dink them around in ways they can't with someone like me.

My B.Sc.Pharm. and 16 years of experience are totally worthless right now. I went to a job fair earlier this week, and one of the recruiters said, 90 minutes into this not exactly heavily attended event, "You're the 3rd pharmacist I've seen today. What's going on, anyway?" He worked for a company that had 3 different long term mental health facilities, and they weren't hiring us because they contract out their pharmacy services.

I predict this will go the way of hospitals going all R.N. - in other words, it won't last long when they realize there aren't enough people who meet their standards.

 

[RxMTM]

the regulations change in 2013. You will be able to get the BCPS certification with either your PGY-1 or, alternately, 3 years of hospital experience

 

[aboveliquidice]

the regulations change in 2013. You will be able to get the BCPS certification with either your PGY-1 or, alternately, 3 years of hospital experience

The changes for 2013 adjust what residencies are considered for the PGY1 requirement... only those accredited by ASHP or some other nebulous bodies count. Are there other changes?

Eligibility Requirements

The minimum requirements for this specialty certification are:
Graduation from a pharmacy program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) or a program outside the U.S. that qualifies the individual to practice in the jurisdiction.
Current, active license to practice pharmacy in the U.S. or another jurisdiction.
Completion of three (3) years of practice experience with at least 50% of time spent in pharmacotherapy activities (as defined by the BPS Pharmacotherapy Content Outline)
OR
Completion of a PGY1 residency *. *Effective January 1, 2013, only residencies accredited by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists or other recognized bodies are creditable for this purpose.
Achieving a passing score on the Pharmacotherapy Specialty Certification Examination

 

[p-rog]

y'know.. actually, a lot happened past 12 months. I think the pharmacist supply hit the tipping point. The employers have changed their attitudes toward pharmacists.."oh, you don't like it? well, then quit because we have pharmacists lined up to take your spot."

Damn, you couldn't be more right. I just interviewed with Target at our career fair and when I asked the interviewer (not a pharmacist) about common complaints they get from their pharmacists, that's basically the response I got.

 

[bacillus1]

I was at my school's career fair last week. I was talking to one of the residencies presented there and they were saying that they foresee that it'll be pretty much a requirement by 2015 to have a residency if you work in a hospital (I would imagine a strong preference as opposed to a hard requirement). Also, while it is true that students that graduate before then will be grandfathered in, they'll be less competitive than people who have completed one

 

[rxlea]

I was at my school's career fair last week. I was talking to one of the residencies presented there and they were saying that they foresee that it'll be pretty much a requirement by 2015 to have a residency if you work in a hospital (I would imagine a strong preference as opposed to a hard requirement). Also, while it is true that students that graduate before then will be grandfathered in, they'll be less competitive than people who have completed one

Our hospital already has a "residency preferred" statement on some of the job postings. BTW, we are hiring if anyone is interested 😀

 

[Its Z]

Our hospital already has a "residency preferred" statement on some of the job postings. BTW, we are hiring if anyone is interested 😀

Oh yeah?

I might apply.

 

[bacillus1]

Our hospital already has a "residency preferred" statement on some of the job postings. BTW, we are hiring if anyone is interested 😀

Well this hospital is in southern DE, so I was surprised that they were saying something like that. I guess it's going to be "residency preferred" all over the country.

 

[Its Z]

Well this hospital is in southern DE, so I was surprised that they were saying something like that. I guess it's going to be "residency preferred" all over the country.

Everything being equal, residency trained pharmacist will be hired over non.

 

[StriveForGlory]

the regulations change in 2013. You will be able to get the BCPS certification with either your PGY-1 or, alternately, 3 years of hospital experience

A pharmacist that works hospital with me just took his BCPS exam and he has no residency training. Is this something that is state specific because this seems to already be the case in NJ.

Also a good number of NJ and NY hospitals are listing residency preferred on their job postings.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

Ahh...the sweet siren of the six figure salary...it has been known to take down even the strongest willed graduating pharmacist.

Based upon your message, you don't seem like retail is where your passion lies. Let's talk about what you want to do. Are you at all interested in pursuing hospital pharmacy? Long-term care pharmacy? A career in pharma? Academia? What I'm asking...is there any chance at all that there is something that you MIGHT want to do some time in the future besides retail pharmacy?

It seems to me the answer is yes. If so, you'll need a residency or another degree beyond the PharmD. The PharmD degree really only qualifies folks for entry-level retail pharmacy, hospital (dispensing, not clinical), and some consulting work...and hospital is reaching the point now that they are getting more selective/competitive in their hiring, and many dispensing-level jobs are going to people with residencies who just want to get their foot in the door. This is not to say that all hospital jobs need residencies now- you can work there as a student, develop a good rep with the DOP and other pharmacists, and have a job for you AT THAT SITE when you graduate. But you might not be able to land a job at another hospital. Ten years ago, people who burned out on retail could get a job at a hospital with relative ease. Today? Yikes...not so much. There are plenty of posts here and elsewhere from people who feel they are trapped in retail hell.

Disclaimer: Many people can find retail a rewarding and fulfilling career. People should do whatever makes them happiest.

If your heart lies in hospital or elsewhere, do the residency now...once you start making $110k/year or more, it gets harer and harder to give that salary up and pursue your dreams. Life tends to get in the way later on as well. Do it now- you are not likely to regret it.

I find it amusing that an academic is talking so much smack on the inferiority of their own product.

They give out doctorates, a degree that implies the highest degree of knowledge one can obtain in academia, and within a decade, those in academia are already conceding defeat and proclaiming that they are failing at their job by not giving the holder of their most advanced degree the tools to do a job in that field.

Can we regress the PharmD and make it a B.S again? At least then you people would be honest.

......

I started fresh out of school doing 50:50 clinical:staff. Got sent on rounds here and there. Did fine. Spent 2 months training and getting my license. A week after I got the license...boom, there I was alone with 160 patients and doing clinical shifts. And I was good at the actual work and science. Now...I sucked at the politics. Maybe that's what a residency prepares you for. How to play the game in the pretentious ass environment of a clinic. Because I was waaaaaaaaaaaay unprepared for that giant ball of bull****.

Of course, I did 4 variations of internal medicine rotations in my P4 year, so maybe I was more prepared than most. One thing I can't speak bad about WVU on is the rotations they sent me to.

......

And let's be honest, hanging out at the clinic isn't as fulfilling as we pretend it is, anyway. I went home pissed off way more than I did when working retail. It's one thing to be pissed off at an insurance company for being what they are...a for profit business....or a member of the general public for being what they are...a collection of complete idiots. But when you are at that hospital and the ****ing head of the ID physicians tells you that its "okay" for the trough of a patient on Vanc to be 4...nope...NOTHING in retail can come CLOSE to pissing me off as much as that. You get to deal with people just as stupid, but with advanced degrees and board certifications to keep you from correctly protecting patients and practicing something that resembles evidence based pharmacy.


......

If one really wanted something fulfilling, I'd recommend they go get a PhD in medicinal chemistry or pharmacology. I did it for a semester with a Med Chem grad student and knocked it out of the park. I miss using my brain like that. (And I haven't since...pharmacy really doesn't require that much intelligence...even though they chuck doctorates at us...and we are convinced that inputting a bunch of numbers in a calculator with equations that are already figured out for you in order to do kinetics is the peak of "intellectual" work...if not that, memorizing guideline documents and applying them)

I actually thought about it to the point were I inquired about my GPA to see what the hell it was and if I could actually get into a program with it. And...I found out that the bad part about me going to WVU is, through a series of crap was mostly my own fault, my GPA was killed. I SHOULD have had a GPA of about 3.1 or so, but being given a bull**** F and getting ganked off of a rotation for complaining about not learning anything, it is a 2.81 on the paper of an official transcript. Well, according to my own math it's actually 2.94, but the spreadsheet software they use to compute GPAs somehow allowed 2 classes to bomb my "official" GPA to 2.81. But whatever.

I have no idea if I could get into grad school with this GPA, but I'd assume not. Most seem to want more than 3.0. Some want a lower GPA as a minimum. I suppose I could get a knockout GRE score. Don't know if that would help or not. I'm pretty sure I got a job offer coming to me soon, but the last 4 times I thought I had a job, they fell through...so maybe I will see if my below average GPA can get into grad school, anyhow...

 

[WVUPharm2007]

Our hospital already has a "residency preferred" statement on some of the job postings. BTW, we are hiring if anyone is interested 😀

I'd apply, but I'm possibly the worst candidate they would get on paper, so I'd fail miserably.

I mean, they have a Dave & Buster's in Phoenix. Heck yeah...that's all you need for quality of life.

 

[MountainPharmD]

And what dramatic change have retail undergone in the last 12 months? I worked through Medicare Part D implementation in an area where 90% of people were Medicare age and damn confused... now that was NOT a good time to be in retail. 🙄

Ahhh the great Medicare debacle of 2004! Boy oh boy was that alot of fun! 👎 I can tell you it has gone down hill from there if that tells you what has changed since you last worked retail.

 

[rph3664]

Ahhh the great Medicare debacle of 2004! Boy oh boy was that alot of fun! 👎 I can tell you it has gone down hill from there if that tells you what has changed since you last worked retail.

I worked in retail in 2001-02 when Medicare Part D(isaster) was announced, and there was a lot of press about how pharmacists were almost universally opposed to it. We'd get asked why 10 times a day, and one of my colleagues, who has 20 years on me and had his own store for most of that time, said, "When that goes online, you will find out just how free it is."

👍

 

[pharm B]

I have to say I was impressed this weekend when I was immunizing at a major South Texas retail chain. As a company, they still have to go through all the day-to-day hell (third party calls, rejects, drug seekers, etc), but they also encourage patients to come in monthly for little on-the-spot "clinics" where they can get some simple tests done.

The pharmacists from those stores seem more relaxed and more familiar with their patients compared to the ones from the Wal-Mart model where it's all about numbers and getting the customer out of the door ASAP.

I like the idea of working in something like pharmacovigilance (mentioned in Industry's info thread), and I am going to be looking into that path a little further now.

I just felt relieved to see that not all retail chains are the devil.

 

[spacecowgirl]

I can understand the being burned out, I really do. but I really don't regret having gone through with it.

Word. it was SO worth it. I didn't decide on residency until late in my 4th year, but I never regretted it. I lived frugally, deferred my loans, it was fine.

 

[tungsten87]

Word. it was SO worth it. I didn't decide on residency until late in my 4th year, but I never regretted it. I lived frugally, deferred my loans, it was fine.

shouldn't one be applying during the first half of P4?

 

[njac]

shouldn't one be applying during the first half of P4?

You apply in December/January of your 4th year.

 

[297point1]

The problem Academia folks face is that y'all lack the financial sense of real life healthcare practice.

I'll cede this point to you...this is a fundamental issue that the vast majority of folks in academia fail to grasp.

Once you learn to teach the rules of justification of pharmacist income in healthcare system, you will have made a leap.

It's a shame that this skill has been lost in pharmacy school curricula. It has slowly eroded over the past two decades...when I went to school, the pharmacy administration course was spent on doing financials for an independent pharmacy, purchasing decisions / managing inventory turns, square footage determinations, site selections, salary negotiations (as an employer), etc. This was not an elective- THIS WAS A REQUIRED CLASS. At my previous stop, the pharmacy administration coursework covered all of this in a single class with a guest speaker from a local NCPA member; conversations with others lead me to beleive that this is pretty indicative of how pharmacy schools are addressing this as a required component of the curriculum. Elective courses help to fill in some of this gap, but the only folks who enroll in these courses are the 5% of students who want to own and operate their own pharmacy. For the merry masses who plan on going to work for the big three in retail, understanding the financial issues in pharmacy isn't seen as a high priority- they consider it (and I quote one of them) "Walgreens' problem to worry about". Never mind that regional managers of the big three and hospital DOPs all tell me that graduating pharmacists have no business sense whatsoever...students don't care, or don't realize that they should care until it's too late.

What do you suggest be done? As your fellow Texan Ross Perot once said "I'm all ears."

 

[Its Z]

What do you suggest be done? As your fellow Texan Ross Perot once said "I'm all ears."

As far as learnng the finances, it's like riding a bike. You can't learn by watching it.

The best way is to work for a for profit cut throat health system pharmacy as an admin. This will teach you the bottomline in healthcare and how money flows.

Consulting at an academic facility is always fun. The arrogance is unbelievable.. but I don't have the heart to tell them they're still stuck in the 70's...

 

[Its Z]

Oh..I guess I didn't really address how to get students interested.

The best way for a student to get exposed is a semester long "hospital track" elective along with 6 weeks of shadowing a DOP during a 4th year health system pharmacy administration rotation.

 

[297point1]

I find it amusing that an academic is talking so much smack on the inferiority of their own product.

They give out doctorates, a degree that implies the highest degree of knowledge one can obtain in academia, and within a decade, those in academia are already conceding defeat and proclaiming that they are failing at their job by not giving the holder of their most advanced degree the tools to do a job in that field.

The product is good- the doctor of pharmacy is a clinically-oriented degree, and few people claim that graduates don't know their clinical stuff.

Conceding defeat? Hardly. What has gotten lost with the move to the all PharmD is the ability to differentiate graduates- if everyone gets the same degree, then everyone in theory is graduating with the same set of skills, and become largely interchangeable. Getting your PharmD used to show employers that, all else being equal, you had additional training / an advanced skill set over a BS pharmacist. Now, a residency/fellowship is required, or an MBA degree, or something else. Hospitals have disproportionally benefitted from the move to the all PharmD, and can get (and have gotten) increasingly selective in who they hire, simply becuase they can.

The shame of it is that, with the exception of immunizations, all of this extra schooling that we are giving our graduates is largely wasted on those who enter community pharmacy work. The big players know that their bread is buttered through prescription dispensing...not MTM...not enhanced counseling...not collaborative practices. It's still count, pour, lick, and stick (plus whatever initiatives are getting rolled out this week) after all these years.

Can we regress the PharmD and make it a B.S again? At least then you people would be honest.

Nothing would make me happier than to have the BS degree available once again. But I only get one vote, and you've got a better chance of getting prohibition back than to get ACPE and AACP to bring back the BS degree.

But maybe I'll be president of AACP one day...stranger things have happened.

 

[lorain]

As far as learnng the finances, it's like riding a bike. You can't learn by watching it.

The best way is to work for a for profit cut throat health system pharmacy as an admin. This will teach you the bottomline in healthcare and how money flows.

Consulting at an academic facility is always fun. The arrogance is unbelievable.. but I don't have the heart to tell them they're still stuck in the 70's...

but its not really possible to get any of those spots w.out those 2 yr pharm admin residency, is it?

 

[Its Z]

but its not really possible to get any of those spots w.out those 2 yr pharm admin residency, is it?

I had 4 of those jobs without any residency. Of course I started off from a 35 bed one man show type of LTAC and onto larger hospitals.

The easiest way is to find a DOP position for a podunk town like Caribou Maine and pay your dues for some years and move on to larger and larger facilities.

LTAC - Long Term Acute Care (hospital within a hospital) is a good way to start. It's hard work..typically you'll be on call everyday and will probably have to work a lot of weekends. But it will give you a hands on experience on how to run a hospital pharmacy.