I have already been hearing this for a while but i just didnot want to listen to it. I have started to work as a tech in CVS and it just seems like pharmacy isnot all what i have thought it would have been. All what we doing is counting and the pharmacist verifying crazy fast. It's really stressful and it's really boring like i dont see anything new. I have applied for pharmacy schools and got accepted. My question would there be any clinical positions available for pharmacists cause i hear it is really hard to make it there since there arenot many spots. If not would PA be a better route.
PA vs Pharmacy i am lost
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PA is much better. If PA's ever get independent practice approved like the NPs then PA will be the best healthcare profession.
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Clinica-HAHAHAHA
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Clinical pharmacy is still evolving, but really the only "clinical" stuff you might do is if you specialize in something and work at a government hospital (VA, IHS, etc.). Most hospital "clinical" jobs outside of that seem to be doing basic med reviews and maybe managing a few anticoag drugs. If you want "clinical" in the sense of seeing patients and making treatment decisions a PA would be better. Schools and organizations like to talk about this world where pharmacists manage diseases and run pharmacotherapy clinics, and they have been for years but this hasn't become reality and might not ever happen.
If I went to PA school I would have been done 2 years ago with 1/3 the debt haha. If things continue as they are I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 10 years the average PA salary surpasses that of a pharmacist.
If I went to PA school I would have been done 2 years ago with 1/3 the debt haha. If things continue as they are I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 10 years the average PA salary surpasses that of a pharmacist.
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If you want clinical, you have to pursue something with prescriptive authority. no other way around it. there's a mere handful of truly clinical pharmacist jobs out there for thousand of graduates. your call.
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The actual practice of pharmacy is what you are experiencing. This is real pharmacy. Pharmacy is dispensing pharmaceuticals.
"Clinical" pharmacy is a small niche where you essentially play doctor.
Wouldn't it make more sense to pursue a career where you are a clinician before anything else? Go for PA if you want to be a clinician. Go for pharmacy if you want to dispense medicine. Don't go into pharmacy thinking you will be a clinician. Those jobs are not easy to attain and aren't really there. Pharmacists don't even have provider status, think about that first.
If you want to be a pharmacist its more realistic to believe you will be like the guy behind the counter at CVS pumping out scripts like a machine rather than the guy sitting at the basement of a hospital working on hospital guidelines and rounding with a physician.
"Clinical" pharmacy is a small niche where you essentially play doctor.
Wouldn't it make more sense to pursue a career where you are a clinician before anything else? Go for PA if you want to be a clinician. Go for pharmacy if you want to dispense medicine. Don't go into pharmacy thinking you will be a clinician. Those jobs are not easy to attain and aren't really there. Pharmacists don't even have provider status, think about that first.
If you want to be a pharmacist its more realistic to believe you will be like the guy behind the counter at CVS pumping out scripts like a machine rather than the guy sitting at the basement of a hospital working on hospital guidelines and rounding with a physician.
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Have you shadowed a PA? If not, the answer can only be pharmacist. PA sounds great on paper, maybe it's great in practice, but you shouldn't be making a decision like that without seeing what they do on a daily basis.
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Sounds like a PA is more up your alley.
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This is the truth. The increasing prominence of NP/PA's in healthcare has killed off any hope of pharmacists as viable mid level providers. They get paid less than pharmacists and are actually trained in school to diagnose and prescribe.
With more and more PAs/NPs being graduated every year, it seems like an inevitability that there will essentially be an oversupply of those providers. Actually, in the field of anesthesiology (I.e., CRNAs and PA anesthetists) RAND (non-profit organization that creates healthcare industry workforce projections) predicted a few years back that if a substantial number of CRNA programs don't shut down, there will be an oversupply of 10,000 - 20,000 CRNAs by 2020. It seems like the same thing will eventually happen general PAs/NPs as well, but I could be wrong.
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So basically every non-physician healthcare discipline is getting saturated? I guess schools latched on to the shortage stuff and exploded. They make money, health systems benefit from more laborers/cheaper wages and the individual practitioners are the ones who get screwed in the end.
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You may also want to shadow a variety of PA's if you can. Some PA's feel like they hit a career "ceiling". The relationship with the supervising doc often dictates just how much autonomy the PA has. I have heard ortho PA's getting paid very well, but often not respected by their SP's. Depending on the area you practice, you might not be paid as much either. The salaries for NYC PA's is lousy as hell, but there a lot of PA programs there. Shadow Shadow Shadow please. Do your homework and ask every question.
I believe there is a forum similar to SDN for PA's. You might want to take a look.
I believe there is a forum similar to SDN for PA's. You might want to take a look.
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Is that really just healthcare? If some uninformed person is willing to hand over 100's of thousands of dollars, why is it their problem? I could name a lot of programs which I think are ridiculous for the cost vs post-grad employment. Some schools have a "entrepreneurship" major and even a masters for it. Makes no sense to sit in a class and "learn" entrepreneurship, but hey if you want to pay for it the school doesn't care. How many of those students will be employed as "entrepreneurs"......ehhhh. I'm sure if articles published a mass shortage on architects, some idiot will build a new school or program and collect the money from uninformed students. 🙄
You simply need to ask questions and research as much as you can. Treat this like you would a potential partner. Would you walk into a relationship not asking questions only to find out the harsh reality later? Hell no. I wouldn't anyway. Be aware. 😉
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I decided to go into pharmacy in 2008 when things were still relatively good right before the current collapse. In 2012 I started pharmacy school and although things weren't as good in years past it seemed somewhat "stable" with jobs here and there. Things have changed drastically in 4 years in terms of employment in my opinion. Back when I committed myself I had worked in pharmacy, took all the pre-reqs and got accepted. Of course now I have a lot of worry and seeing my area totally saturated means I have to accept that I'll need to move. I did my research, but there are still variables and things that change quickly.
I hadn't known that other fields have been heading in the same direction with the exception of PT and law.
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What was your backup plan in case things went bust with pharmacy? You can correct me I'm wrong, but I believe new schools were starting to prop up around 2012.
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Either shoot for med school, go PA and try to work part time through the program, or get a PhD and go into industry. I got my bachelors so that was also a fall back plan in the event of failing out of the PharmD program (which I wasn't anticipating) or of other grad programs required a BS for admission.
Can I ask what region of the country you live in?
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Southeast. My city has way too many pharmacy schools for its size and the job market here is basically nonexistent.
New schools had been propping up well before 2012. I started pharmacy school in 2009 and the job market was already starting to suck. People were well aware of the oversupply by then.
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That doesn't even make any sense. But I'll keep quiet and be nice for now.- Joined
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Yes this is what I figured so I don't see how some of these students were totally clueless on it. Most job sectors don't just magically go under. The red flags and warnings start to show earlier. Cutback in help, mass merges, wages start to decrease. Remember when every idiot wanted to go to law school and make the big bucks? Yea the signs were there early for law too.
As a funny anecdote, I remember thinking to myself "surely the job market will be better when I graduate" back in 2009. Guess what? It got worse. You see posts here every day with pre-pharmers trying to convince themselves that the market will be better by the time they graduate. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Looking back, I'm lucky to have graduated when I did. I think I managed to slip in before things got too tight and have found myself working in specialist, non-retail positions pretty much since graduation. It was a combination of being in the right place, at the right time, with the right intern experience, and pulling off one hell of an interview.
My fall back Plan was to finish a bachelor in chemical engineering and end up in PA or medical school. I have only finished about three years of college now. Is pharmacy saturated to the point that there is no available clinical positions. I was also wondering does anyone have any idea on a suggested websites that can help me find shadowing opportunities with a PA.
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If you want "clinical" positions, you're basically down to a residency trained pharmacist working with a team of physicians/residents in the hospital. This is 5-6 years and these jobs are very difficult to come by.
If you go the PA route, every job is "clinical" and it takes 2-3 years. Also, if you learn to do procedures as a PA, such as an ER or surgery PA and do central lines, chest tubes, sutures, etc, your per hour salary will be higher than most pharmacist salaries.
I'd go the PA route for sure based on what you're asking.
If you go the PA route, every job is "clinical" and it takes 2-3 years. Also, if you learn to do procedures as a PA, such as an ER or surgery PA and do central lines, chest tubes, sutures, etc, your per hour salary will be higher than most pharmacist salaries.
I'd go the PA route for sure based on what you're asking.
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This is very dependent on the experience of the PA and the location.
If you have a few years experience and aren't in a major city metro, you'll be looking at $80-100/hr ($100/hr is the guy where I'm at makes).
Surgical PAs may or may not have an hourly rate. The one here makes $200-250k per year. I'm not sure how many hours he works exactly. Ortho PAs can also get up to this range in a non-metro city after a couple years.
If you have a few years experience and aren't in a major city metro, you'll be looking at $80-100/hr ($100/hr is the guy where I'm at makes).
Surgical PAs may or may not have an hourly rate. The one here makes $200-250k per year. I'm not sure how many hours he works exactly. Ortho PAs can also get up to this range in a non-metro city after a couple years.
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I don't know if it still holds true but I remember seeing an article that law school were lowering their standards because no one is going to law school due to the fact there aren't anymore jobs,
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The funny thing is law school saturation was a thing well over a decade ago and is just as bad now as it was then, yet every pre-pharm student thinks the entire market will turn around by the time they graduate.
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This is very true. I'm only 1 year into being a retail pharmacist and I'm already deeply regretful. There is literally no "clinical" here whatsoever. I've always thought that performing MTM (medication therapy management) would be a quick way out to satisfy my thirst for clinical knowledge but it's basically like doing medication reconciliation unless the patient is really comfortable sharing their full story with you. Hell, I had patients telling me that they think I'm trying to steal their identity (even though I have access to their medication record and have a pretty good guess what condition they have).
I'm now seriously considering about switching to PA and part time pharmacy to help with the financial part. But going back to school would cost another $70k and I still have $100k in debt. I feel so stuck but I might be even more stuck later on if the market is saturated enough to cut down on salaries.
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Posing as a pharmacist to gain classified info...classic identity thief behavior
I am from the southeast (Georgia), worked in retail pharmacy since 2007, accepted into pharmacy school in 2009. From day one professors had said how the market had changed. In my second year I noticed a huge difference in the amount of jobs and availability my employer was hiring, seemed that you either switched companies (had experience) or were one of the better interns and liked to stay on with the company, even then as an intern you didn't get anywhere desirable unless you were fortunate. I honestly feel the job market held out through 2013 (my grad year) and 2014 with a lot of turnover of pharmacist leaving the chains for the "good" spots at Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Target (now CVS LOL), and Sams.
By 2012 in Georgia, had you been working in pharmacy, you should have known for a minimum of 2 years what the job market has been like.
All the people from the northeast were moving down to NC, SC, and Georgia for jobs...I'm from the tri-state area (NJ/PA/DE) and you guys were our "backup" or relocation jobs...I know quite a few people that took jobs in MD and Virginia because they couldn't find anything up here. Now, these jobs are becoming scarce too.
PA and NP is the way to go now...they're replacing MD/DO in primary care. There is so much flexibility...If I had a second chance I would definitely go this route and do primary care or MD and do specialty.
Is the trend of northerners moving down to GA/SC/NC for jobs still continuing?
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Clinical pharmacy is a complete joke and does not actually exist as a real position. Like MTM before it, clinical pharmacy is a buzzword used by pharmacy universities to increase their enrollment by fooling potential students into thinking pharmacy is not all about soul sucking retail "community" positions. NP and PA have decimated any real function of "Pharmacists as part of a care team" "provider status" "Clinical pharmacists". Individuals that pursue "residencies" aka PGY1 and PGY2 are usually pharmDs with too low IQ / work ethic to get into Med school but want to take on the role of a doctor. The few clinical positions that exist provide little value to patients and consists of a staff pharmacists doing rounds with a MD. The "residencies" consists of making Microsoft TM Powerpoint presentations of soft science metrics and is considered by most medical professionals as busy work and of low medical value.
TL😀R
Pharmacy is oversaturated and clinical pharmacy does not exist. PA is a more in demand route but also a much harder and competitive route.
Most PA i met hates their jobs. They say they do all ground work and get no respect..
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Nah, my humble sloth, there are plenty of clinical pharmacist spots out there. I even managed to get one after graduated without a residency. It's just that the real clinical jobs, outside of academia, may actually involve verifying orders now and again..... You may actually have to act as a pharmacist!
Not so much i don't think...those areas in the south are getting saturated as well.
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Wrong.
Wrong
Wronger than the previous two. If they didn't add value in terms of outcomes, the positions wouldn't exist.
Lol stop. You have no idea what you're talking about.
This is true of all mid-level providers. If you want respect, you gotta go to the top: MD/DO
It seems like NPs have been climbing their way to the top for the last few years. You might have heard this on the news, but the VA is planning on enabling NPs to function as essentially independent healthcare providers. I was just comparing the BLS job growth predictions for NPs and pharmacists a few minutes ago, and the NP profession is expected to experience 31% growth from 2014-2024, while the pharmacy profession is only expected to exhibit 3% growth (as has been discussed on here in the recent past). I wish I could apply to NP schools right now...
i remember lot of posters here told you NOT to apply to pharmacy, but you kept assuring yourself that pharmacy was good for you.. If your school starts in august you still got time to get out..
Yeah, I'm just grimacing at the thought of having to be a nurse first; I definitely do NOT want to wipe butts, bathe people, etc. and really can't imagine myself doing that kind of work. Then again, is it worth doing it for a few semesters in exchange for the opportunity to become an NP with the potential to work independently?
NP all the way.. I just had pleasure meeting few NP's i was so impressed. I also got to meet PA's, i wasn't so impressed. I already went through pharmacy school orientation, i am doubting my decision right now .. I don't know if its wise to drop out right now. Still got 120 days to return all loans..
Just out of curiosity, why are you personally doubting pharmacy school? I should have added in my last post that it's not so much that the work of a pharmacist sounds bad -- it's more a case of me being disenchanted with the circumstances surrounding the profession (bad job market, 3% future growth, chains offering only 32 hrs/week or less benefits getting reduced, etc.).
Just wondering, why were you not impressed by the PAs?
Doubting because of job market ... I see how Rph are being treated by managment at my own work these days and on top of pay cuts..
About PA, i don't like the way they practice. They don't come out as bright people "to me". They don't seem to have judgment like MD's do.. Sure they can be cheaper alternatives but i wouldn't rely on them solely. I have seen their scripts and have been treated by them, no so fond of them..
What kind of paycuts are the pharmacists at your work getting?
Just imagine what it'll be like four years from now.
I guess it just comes down to whether or not I think I'll be able to handle a year or two of cleaning up crap and bathing people. I can definitely can NOT imagine myself ever doing that stuff. Going to look into NP programs that accept applicants who don't have any RN work experience (I.e., they'll accept people who just graduated from nursing school and want to go straight into NP school).
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I really think it will be better for you to do np. The nursing profession's lobbying power is outrageous and enviable to me. They have managed to push through a lot of advancements(that I personally don't always agree with). Pharmacy leaders don't do sh**. I feel like my huskie pup is more useful than them. Sorry, but its just honest truth.
Depending on what you want to do and where you want to practice, you do have some nice options as an NP.
Also, in the Emergency Department PA's are stars. They get to do quite a lot. Ortho PA's that I know do make 100k. Who are these PA's you talk to? I have met some PA's who knew they wanted to be docs, but didn't do it. Their yearning for MD never went away and are dissatisfied as PA's. Are those the one you are coming across?? Come on man you know what the right decision is. Lets not play around here. 😀
