Optometry or Pharmacy

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jellyfish889

jellyfish889

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I got into pharmacy school and have interview for optometry school. I have a list of pros and cons of both professions but I wanted some advice on why optometry and the job outlook. BLS says optometry is a growing field but I also have my doubts with the booming technology and job outlook few years from now.
I was wondering how the job outcomes are like considering optometry profession is mostly private practice? Why optometry vs pharmacy?
 
Go to the Pharmacy board. It is probably the biggest doom and gloom board on this website. There are currently Optometry jobs. Sounds like most cities have almost no job opportunities.

Also a question for you. Why do you want to go into Pharmacy? Besides the possible $80-$100K salary? The science? (yeah right) You'll most likely be working nights and weekends in a Walmart or Grocery store. You'll be hourly just praying they don't cut your hours or job one day. So what could be possibly attracting you to Pharmacy?
 
My friend was just forced to take a 75k salary job in a rural area because pharmacy is so bad for new grads. She has just as much debt as an Optometry student would. 75k for a rural area is unheard of for optometry.
 
hellok111 said:
My friend was just forced to take a 75k salary job in a rural area because pharmacy is so bad for new grads. She has just as much debt as an Optometry student would. 75k for a rural area is unheard of for optometry.
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I'm an Optometrist in a rural area. I had a patient that I saw was a Pharmacist and could tell they weren't from the area. I asked how they ended up around here and they said it took almost 2 years to find a job and it was the only job they could find. They had no friends or family in the area. Seemed like a sad situation.
 
jellyfish889 said:
I got into pharmacy school and have interview for optometry school. I have a list of pros and cons of both professions but I wanted some advice on why optometry and the job outlook. BLS says optometry is a growing field but I also have my doubts with the booming technology and job outlook few years from now.
I was wondering how the job outcomes are like considering optometry profession is mostly private practice? Why optometry vs pharmacy?
Click to expand...

What makes you think technology poses a greater threat to optometry than it does to pharmacy?
 
Snakedoctor1 said:
What makes you think technology poses a greater threat to optometry than it does to pharmacy?
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Yeah. I recall that technology might actually help optometrists since the career is shifting away from glasses to primary care for the eyes.
 
I've been in Pharmacy for 30+ years- including the "golden years". No one ever thought it could get this bad. But yes- it is as bad as the Pharmacy board says it is. I'll be happy to elaborate if you have specific questions....
 
Xenophylia said:
I've been in Pharmacy for 30+ years- including the "golden years". No one ever thought it could get this bad. But yes- it is as bad as the Pharmacy board says it is. I'll be happy to elaborate if you have specific questions....
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Would you say optometry is on track for the same fate?
 
What killed Pharmacy was the boom in ACPE accrediting pharmacy schools, which resulted in a HUGE surplus of students and no jobs. The state I live in had 4 when I graduated...and now we have 14. This has decreased salaries and worsened working conditions for the entire profession. A lot of this was caused by the pharmacy chains, who financially supported the new schools and saw this as a means of eventually achieving cheap(er) labor. I don't know enough about Optometry to know if you have that same situation. There were also many schools accredited who didn't deserve to be, resulting in poor quality graduates. Some never make it past the state boards, but many do. But the retail chains have never been about quality as long as their new hires will work for lower wages. It's a pretty vicious circle which shows no signs of improving. When I graduated, you could literally work anywhere and LARGE sign on bonuses were common. New grads will never see that, and will only know that they can be easily replaced by someone who will likely work cheaper. I know some licensed pharmacists personally that graduated 4-5 years ago who still haven't landed their first full time job and have >200k in debt. Who would willingly put themselves in that situation? It boggles my mind....
 
I had a look at some threads in the pharm forum. Funny thing is you could replace the word pharmacy with optometry in a lot of them and they still would be true. That said the pharmacy threads seem to be far more numerous and have far more users contributing than the crash threads we've had here, so it seems the pharmacy situation is worse than the optometry situation (fir now anyways). Definitely sounds rough.
 
Xenophylia said:
I've been in Pharmacy for 30+ years- including the "golden years". No one ever thought it could get this bad. But yes- it is as bad as the Pharmacy board says it is. I'll be happy to elaborate if you have specific questions....
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I see folks referencing hourly wages in the 40s. What would an ideal and reasonable wage be for a typical pharmacist if the job market wasn't so saturated?
 
Optogal said:
I see folks referencing hourly wages in the 40s. What would an ideal and reasonable wage be for a typical pharmacist if the job market wasn't so saturated?
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Hours worked would be more important than hourly rates. Many new grads are only being offered 30 hours per week.

To more directly answer your question, the minimum I was looking for when I graduated in 2019 was about $53/hr.
 
I see references to mass layoffs from Walgreens etc. Why all these sudden layoffs?
 
My understanding is that most of it came from cutting pharmacist overlap and some cuts to pharmacy operating hours. There was also speculation that higher paid older pharmacists were being laid off and replaced with cheaper new grads.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like Optometry is becoming primarily corporate now instead of having independent practices. If that is truly the case, Optometry will mirror Pharmacy, since most of the negative things that have befallen us are the result of corporate cost cutting. A "good" pharmacist wage would be around $60/hr. But there are some positions which pay better. $40 is the extreme low end but is not unheard of. It is not unusual for the veteran, experienced older pharmacists to be laid off or fired and replaced with $40 an hour new grads. Experience/ competence counts for nothing anymore. Again it baffles me why anyone would invest the time and $$$ to do pharmacy for that money.

As to the layoffs- simple cost cutting. Doing away with any pharmacist overlap, and replacing pharmacist hours with tech hours. Not sure if anyone mentioned, but its also very hard to get a full time position in pharmacy anymore. They would rather hire part timers than pay benefits, and most of the new grads- who have huge student debt- will take whatever hours they can get.
 
The shift towards more corporate has been going on in optometry for at least 15 years, although private practice certain remains a big part of optometry and many private practices are still doing very well. It seems independent pharmacies are very rare now (?). Independent optometry is still very common.

I don't know the employment structure of chains with pharmacists but in the jurisdiction I'm in, I'm pretty sure the pharmacist OWNS the pharmacy. So within e.g. a Walmart, a pharmacist will be the business owner of the pharmacy. Its his/her meds etc. and his/her staffing. What Walmart hires is a person who is a pharmacist who will run a pharmacy on their premises. That pharmacist will hire other pharmacists to cover hours, so the "associate" pharmacists are employed by the owner pharmacist. It seems a lot of the corporate threads refer to the Walmart/Walgreen directly employing pharmacists. If so, who actually runs and owns the pharmacy itself? Are pharmacists employed by WMWGs signed to long-term contracts with e.g. benefits? If an older/established pharmacist is let go for a newer/cheaper hire, do they get severance?

I see quite a few posts of some users getting upset at other users for accepting (unsatisfactory) pay in the 40s. To those posters, I'm thinking - you've got to be crazy. If there's 200+ people applying for every job, there will be some new grads who haven't been able to get any job, and will work for essentially any pay. Getting paid >>> one's pride about what one thinks one should get paid. Further, salaries are all about supply and demand and the reality is, if there are any pharmacists "overpaying" for their pharmacists (meaning paying above the going rate), it will put them at a competitive disadvantage to pharmacies paying a pittance to their pharmacists, and they will not survive. What starts out as a cost-saving measure will ultimately became the new standard in salaries, so if there are people willing to work for salaries in the 30s, then that's where salaries are headed.
 
What I read from the pharm forums that would also really discourage me (if I was a new grad entering the profession), is not only the numerous applicants for any new positions, but that those who are looking to hire aren't even looking at applicants who don't have at least 2 years of experience. That would be an awful situation. How would any new grad get their first job?
 
Optometry is still a career of it is what you make of it. It is still possible to get into private practice and have good work satisfaction while making a good living. But if you don't mind working in a corporate location making an hourly wage you may not see the upside as much.
 
Optogal said:
I don't know the employment structure of chains with pharmacists but in the jurisdiction I'm in, I'm pretty sure the pharmacist OWNS the pharmacy. So within e.g. a Walmart, a pharmacist will be the business owner of the pharmacy. Its his/her meds etc. and his/her staffing. What Walmart hires is a person who is a pharmacist who will run a pharmacy on their premises. That pharmacist will hire other pharmacists to cover hours, so the "associate" pharmacists are employed by the owner pharmacist.
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I have never heard of this being the case with any chain. North Dakota may be an exception since they have a law stating that all pharmacies must be owned by pharmacists, not sure how that actually works in practice though. But everywhere else, the chain owns the pharmacy and employs everyone. There will be a pharmacist in charge who is legally responsible for ensuring that the pharmacy is in compliance. Any other associates are also employees of the chain, not the individual pharmacy manager. The manager has some say in hiring/firing their staff but it's all managed by corporate. Corporate will also give the manager a budget of how many hours they can use to schedule technicians/clerks.

Optogal said:
It seems a lot of the corporate threads refer to the Walmart/Walgreen directly employing pharmacists. If so, who actually runs and owns the pharmacy itself? Are pharmacists employed by WMWGs signed to long-term contracts with e.g. benefits? If an older/established pharmacist is let go for a newer/cheaper hire, do they get severance?
Click to expand...
Pharmacists generally don't have long term contacts since most places are at will employment. They're typically salaried with standard benefits - PTO, 401k match, health insurance. Severance in retail pharmacy is pretty much unheard of as far as I'm aware.
 
WorthlessOxygen said:
I have never heard of this being the case with any chain.
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OK - well I guess I should've said I live in Canada. Where I am, that's how it works.

So a long-time pharmacist can just let go basically at any time? 2 weeks notice is all? Or not even that?
 
Optogal said:
OK - well I guess I should've said I live in Canada. Where I am, that's how it works.
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I routinely get walmart ads for pharmacist/pharmacy manager jobs in canada so I would imagine it's similar to the states but I can't say for certain. May also vary by province.
Optogal said:
So a long-time pharmacist can just let go basically at any time? 2 weeks notice is all? Or not even that?
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For the couple recent large scale layoffs (Walmart in 2018 and Walgreens last year) I believe pharmacists were given a couple weeks notice. It's not like that's required though.
 
Xenophylia said:
What killed Pharmacy was the boom in ACPE accrediting pharmacy schools, which resulted in a HUGE surplus of students and no jobs. The state I live in had 4 when I graduated...and now we have 14. This has decreased salaries and worsened working conditions for the entire profession. A lot of this was caused by the pharmacy chains, who financially supported the new schools and saw this as a means of eventually achieving cheap(er) labor. I don't know enough about Optometry to know if you have that same situation. There were also many schools accredited who didn't deserve to be, resulting in poor quality graduates. Some never make it past the state boards, but many do. But the retail chains have never been about quality as long as their new hires will work for lower wages. It's a pretty vicious circle which shows no signs of improving. When I graduated, you could literally work anywhere and LARGE sign on bonuses were common. New grads will never see that, and will only know that they can be easily replaced by someone who will likely work cheaper. I know some licensed pharmacists personally that graduated 4-5 years ago who still haven't landed their first full time job and have >200k in debt. Who would willingly put themselves in that situation? It boggles my mind....
Click to expand...
Sounds like optometry
 
I think you guys might be headed for a similar fate. Maybe pharmacy is a glimpse of your future. For your sake, I hope not.
 
Optometry will be like pharmacy. The private practice OD will be squeezed out. There will be a few left but most ODs will be working for VSP, EssilorLuxottica or private equity.
 
Xenophylia said:
I think you guys might be headed for a similar fate. Maybe pharmacy is a glimpse of your future. For your sake, I hope not.
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The situation in pharm seems pretty dire right now. Would you say the problem is basically two fold, and have exacerbated each other? 1. over production of graduates and 2. coincidental timing of major cutbacks in the workforce with all the position eliminations at the various chains? It seems the cutbacks are both severe and recent.
 
With pharmacy, the retail chains have their tentacles in everything and manipulate the profession to suit their own selfish needs at our expense. They invested in the opening of too many schools. They pretty much own our state boards, which results in legislation favoring things like reduced staffing and increased tech to pharmacist ratios, all of which make things cheaper for them, and much less safe for the public. The abundance of schools and the glut of pharmacists resulted in cheap and abundant labor. It took the corporations years to do it but now they have the profession right where they want it.
 
Optometry seems more politically active in advancing scope of practice thus decreasing dependency on the sale of goods
 
Xenophylia said:
With pharmacy, the retail chains have their tentacles in everything and manipulate the profession to suit their own selfish needs at our expense. They invested in the opening of too many schools. They pretty much own our state boards, which results in legislation favoring things like reduced staffing and increased tech to pharmacist ratios, all of which make things cheaper for them, and much less safe for the public. The abundance of schools and the glut of pharmacists resulted in cheap and abundant labor. It took the corporations years to do it but now they have the profession right where they want it.
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So, hard question to answer. But what can pharmacists and new grads do? Is there a light at the end of a tunnel? Is there some regulations that can change to improve your situation? Or is it just bleak?
 
It's bleak simply because we have no advocates who wield any degree of influence or legislative power. Our own state boards and professional organizations receive too much money from the chains to advocate for us and by doing so oppose their own masters. Maybe in MANY years when the over abundant schools start to shut down due to lack of attendance we'll be more in demand and be able to get some power back. But others see automation and technicians taking over pharmacist roles. So who knows. I thanks god every day I'm close to retirement and an end to this sh*tshow....
 
Xenophylia said:
It's bleak simply because we have no advocates who wield any degree of influence or legislative power. Our own state boards and professional organizations receive too much money from the chains to advocate for us and by doing so oppose their own masters. Maybe in MANY years when the over abundant schools start to shut down due to lack of attendance we'll be more in demand and be able to get some power back. But others see automation and technicians taking over pharmacist roles. So who knows. I thanks god every day I'm close to retirement and an end to this sh*tshow....
Click to expand...
If the only light at the end of the tunnel is the closing of schools, then you guys are in really bad shape. As long as schools are profitable, they really have no reason to close. And they will remain profitable long after serious existential problems have permeated the profession. Have you heard of any schools on the ropes?
 
It will be a slow process if things improve at all. Some schools have actually closed already- there are threads on this in the pharmacy forums. And the really sad part is, the floundering schools with poor reputations have simply lowered admission standards to attract poor quality students to fill seats and stay viable. Many schools don't require the PCAT anymore. People with 2..0 GPAs being accepted- people that NEVER would have even been considered 20 years ago. If you ever need proof that higher education is all about the $$$, look no further than pharmacy.
 
Optogal said:
If the only light at the end of the tunnel is the closing of schools, then you guys are in really bad shape. As long as schools are profitable, they really have no reason to close. And they will remain profitable long after serious existential problems have permeated the profession. Have you heard of any schools on the ropes?
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Not a pharmacist or a pharmacy student but I did go to an undergrad that had a pharm program then transferred to another that had a pharm program as well. Both of those have been sending me periodic emails telling me to apply for their pharmacy program. This is in the past 2-3 years, so pretty recent. Nearly 2 years ago, when I was applying for dental school, I got a rejection that told me I wasn't the type of student they were looking for, but I would be a great fit for their pharmacy program. I looked around to see why the heck I was getting so many pharmacy emails, and found that schools were having trouble filling their seats and they had something like an 85% acceptance rate for that year or something similar. Feel bad for our pharmacy friends, hope you all can get through this.
 
Yeah this type of aggressive recruiting is typical now. A lot of pharmacy schools once had acceptance rates in the single digits. Now, they'll literally take anyone. I'd be really depressed if I wasn't so close to getting out of the game as the whole thing has become quite sad. I remember getting into pharmacy school was once a real achievement. Now they give out acceptance letters as prizes in cereal boxes just to keep their programs open. And I've worked with some of the recent grads. The quality of graduates has definitely declined radically. Honestly there couldn't be a better recipe for killing a once viable profession than what the schools are doing by churning out excessive, unqualified graduates.
 
An OD is an independent prescriber in most cases and now in a handful of already good states to practice provide surgical procedures.This is in diametric opposition to what pharmacy is becoming.

Optometry still has a window to not become the next pharmacy and as each state continues scope advancement it could very well be saved.
 
What kills pharmacy is its involvement with all things RETAIL. It is the chains that have truly killed the profession through their greed, which has created a healthy environment for them and a non viable one for their pharmacists. Believe me, our masters would happily do away with us altogether (and the expense of us, which is what they really hate) if they could and have cheaper technicians with minimal to no education run everything. There is no desire for anything involving "quality" in the retail practice of pharmacy. Years of service or experience have come to count for nothing. Hospitals have even gotten on to this way of thinking- we cost them money but don't bring any money in, as our services are not things we can charge for. Optometry is more fee for service oriented and as such is much more like other medical professions. Just don't let your state boards and professional associations sell you out as we have. Don't allow yourselves to be seen as a liability or needless expense to anyone. It's too late for pharmacy since all of that has already happened. At one point our professional organizations were against us becoming "providers". And look were it has gotten us.
 
Purkinja said:
An OD is an independent prescriber in most cases and now in a handful of already good states to practice provide surgical procedures.This is in diametric opposition to what pharmacy is becoming.

Optometry still has a window to not become the next pharmacy and as each state continues scope advancement it could very well be saved.
Click to expand...
Looking at OD trends, it seems that is being pushed by the optometrists: more procedures / primary care responsibilities to be added to the practice, which frees up the ophthalmologists to do more surgery.

Maybe that bodes well for optometry and helps it avoid the current pharmacy pitfall? I just hope to have a decent job in the future O_O.
 
Xenophylia said:
Don't allow yourselves to be seen as a liability or needless expense to anyone.
Click to expand...
This. People in optometry need to understand this. Our viability remains as long as we aren't viewed as liabilities.

I have wondered about optometry in the past, our role, how we are perceived etc. It's obvious that if big chains could have their way, they would reduce barriers to spectacle sales any way they can. Barriers include e.g. a refraction from a qualified practitioner, and e.g. dispensing by a qualified dispenser. That said, a lot of chains have seem to accepted our role and have integrated the optometrist experience into the entire glasses sale experience. So in that respect, we are being valued (so far).

We don't want optometrists to be viewed as a "middle man" to a spectacle sale. As it is, we do provide "some" value. Our refractions are "reliable", and we screen for eye disease (which the public in general values). Hopefully it remains enough.

Your one sentence here explains your situation entirely. I got it now. Pharmacists now are just viewed as being "in the way" to greater profits. That's very unfortunate.
 
My God. Don't want to be the non-pharm person to post this in the pharm forums (I notice they don't like non-pharms posting bad news about pharm, but will gladly encourage pharm people to do it), but US News job rankings for 2022. They list Optom #13, and Pharm #19, but pharm is predicted to have a net -7000 (lost) jobs this year.

money.usnews.com

Best Healthcare Jobs of 2020

These are the best healthcare jobs in America.
money.usnews.com money.usnews.com
 
LOL....yeah that's common knowledge in the pharm forums. We're trying to warn the naive kids applying to the greedy schools. And I'm not sure why they don't like non pharms posting the truth in the pharm forums. Facts are facts whomever posts them. I'm not one of those people and I kind of like having non pharms in our forum..... In any case- yeah pharmacy is a train wreck.
 
I am a pharmacist - and I will preface this by saying I enjoy my job and I make good money $170k a year - but I am definitely an outlier. I graduated 20 years ago- got lucky, ended up in a great growing hospital, got some great experience without going the residency route. To get my job now you would have to do 4 years undergrad, 4 years pharm school, and two years residency - and to get those two years of residency, each year you are competing against thousands of others. Basically for every 1 residency position, there are like 3 applicants. Most end up in retail, which is a complete cesspool. When I graduated there were 84 schools, there are like 145 now.

Run run run. Like I said, I enjoy my job, but I am probably in the top 5% easily as far as job satisfaction and money.
 
Xenophylia said:
LOL....yeah that's common knowledge in the pharm forums. We're trying to warn the naive kids applying to the greedy schools. And I'm not sure why they don't like non pharms posting the truth in the pharm forums. Facts are facts whomever posts them. I'm not one of those people and I kind of like having non pharms in our forum..... In any case- yeah pharmacy is a train wreck.
Click to expand...

It wasn't that I was surprised by the news. It's that career overviews like that are usually done in the most positive way imaginable, so for a group like USNews to declare there will be a net loss of thousands of jobs this year, is in every way shocking to see. I don't think I've ever seen such a major health profession get an ominous prediction like that in a mainstream publication like that. It's just not what happens.

But yeah - that is one rough reality. What that means is there is no openings for this years grads, and 7000 current pharmacists will be looking for work...
 
There's always jobs available at the worst places- CVS, Walgreens. But who would want to invest all those years of education with that waiting for them at the end? You'd literally have to be clinically insane to enroll these days.
 
Optogal said:
Interesting. The pharmacist situation has even caught the attention of the New York Times.

www.nytimes.com

Angry Customers, More Work and Longer Hours Strain Pharmacists (Published 2022)

Pharmacists and technicians, who have played a critical role in administering Covid-19 tests and vaccines, say they are burned out nearly two years into the pandemic.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
Click to expand...

I would think that most, if not all, of healthcare is burnt out - a symptom of concerns prior to the pandemic that has been exacerbated by the sickness.

If nothing else though, it is a living and pays decently.
 
As I stated earlier in this thread my hope was tied to the scope advancement of optometry. My practice billed about 90k in surgical procedures this past year over years previous.Most all procedures only took 5 to 20 minutes and only one tech helping.Optometry trumps pharmacy easily
 
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