Pharmacy PhD?

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luke77

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Hey guys,
I'm just wondering if anyone in here is considering or has any information about the PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences. I don't think this degree is nearly as widely offered as the PharmD, and to tell you the truth I'm having a hard time finding out much about it. At my school, UNC Chapel Hill, this is how they describe it:

The School of Pharmacy offers graduate study leading to the doctor of philosophy degree (PhD) in
pharmaceutical sciences, which may be concentrated in disciplinary areas represented by four divisions.

Molecular Pharmaceutics
Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products
Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy
Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics

It sounds like the program is much more researched based than a normal pharmacy curriculum, and obviously it leads to the PhD degree rather than a PharmD. Does anyone know of similar programs at other schools? And I wonder if people in programs like this are able to obtain a pharmacy certification (so that they can practice in retail) if they decide to? Any idea what the "typical" career path of a graduate of such a program would be?

Thanks,
Luke

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A fair majority of pharmacy schoold offer PhD's in the pharmacy sciences. The PhD programs are research based, just like any other science PhD. They are not for people that want to be pharmacists, but for people that what to do drug research or teach.
 
Similar phd programs go by the title Pharmacology as well and again many schools have this program. As stated before, these are phd as opposed to pharmd, and although they certainly have overlapping classes and ideas the phd will require original research and a dissertation. Typically phd's take 5-6 years beyond a bachelor's as opposed to 3-4 for pharmds.

Generally phd's receive full tuition waivers and a living stipend while in school so there is no additional accumulation of debt, although jobs in industry are difficult to land and pay less than pharmacy jobs. As stated above, a phd cannot be a pharmacist but pharmd's can do research if they choose. Phd's often get stuck in low paying post-doc positions for several years, often in academia, before eventually landing a faculty or industry position. These positions again are generally lower paying than pharmacy, although there is a fairly high ceiling on your earnings should you be smart, hard-working, and lucky enough to eventually get into one of the upper industry positions.

The research done by phd's could be basic science at a university as a faculty member, which is low paying in my opinion for how much work you've put in and how much more you will need for tenure. It could also be in a clinical setting and could involve M.D.'s and maybe some research oriented pharmd's as well. On the industry end you could end up at a drug research company, such as merck or pfizer. Industry positions have been drying up in recent years though as the drug pipeline slows down due to difficulty in drug discovery and how hard it is to actually get a viable drug to market.You will definitely be on the cutting edge of drug research if you land in the right place, and if you are a prof you get to decide what you want to research, you are really your own boss within reason.

My overall opinion, if you have a love of science, or at least find it interesting, and enjoy working on your own a phd could be for you. You need patience to deal with many failures in your research before it works out enough to write about. You also will have to realize that the pharmd you passed up would get you more money in less time with less effort given the current demand for pharmacist. I know I'm ripping on the phd but from what I've seen in grad students, it is long work that is demoralizing as the years drag on.

Hope that at least helps clarify the differences
 
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i thought a lot of schools also offer the dual degree program of pharmd/phd in 7-8 years. for a school like uop, you only pay your pharmacy student tuition as a first year student - after that, the rest of your years are paid for as a phd student, so you're getting your pharmd degree really cheaply.
 
unless you are unable to cover your pharmd schooling costs with loans or want to get into the research field a phd/pharmd probably isn't worth it.

For the roughly 3 or 4 extra years you spend getting that additional phd you are losing around 60k a year in potential salary comparing pharmacy pay vs. grad student pay. For an expensive pharm school you are looking at 30000 tuition a year so add in normal grad student pay you get roughly 50-60k advantage for the combined program during the first four years. Best case senario you roughly break even, but investments in stock/retirment and real estate could probably be made earlier in life as a pharmacist so compounding interest and equity is also in your favor.

Also I have no idea if phd/pharmd's get paid better than pharmacists or not. Surprisingly it's not always the case. Example, the IEEE (very credible electrical engineering body) published findings that the salary range of EE's with additional business degrees was actually lower than people without. If you want to do research an M.D./Phd could be better in that the programs are more well known and you get an M.D., but those are ridiculous to get into.
 
U Should Study said:
unless you are unable to cover your pharmd schooling costs with loans or want to get into the research field a phd/pharmd probably isn't worth it.

For the roughly 3 or 4 extra years you spend getting that additional phd you are losing around 60k a year in potential salary comparing pharmacy pay vs. grad student pay. For an expensive pharm school you are looking at 30000 tuition a year so add in normal grad student pay you get roughly 50-60k advantage for the combined program during the first four years. Best case senario you roughly break even, but investments in stock/retirment and real estate could probably be made earlier in life as a pharmacist so compounding interest and equity is also in your favor.

Also I have no idea if phd/pharmd's get paid better than pharmacists or not. Surprisingly it's not always the case.

U Should Study makes some very good points. To answer one point of debate...Nope the PharmD/PhD will typically not make more than the PharmD. The same would be the case when comparing the MD/PhD to the MD (as the degree focused on clinical practice will typically always pay more than the research degree. Basically the PhD would be done for research and financial motivators should be put on the backburner as U Should Study mentioned there are a lot of frustrations and delayed gratification associated w/ doing research. Having said that if research is what you enjoy then go for it.

Yes the industry jobs are shrinking up, but a lot of the drug development studies are being pushed to the major academic medical centers to deal w/ so the avenue may still be available. PhD is the ideal research pathway, especially if you want to do benchwork and want to be competitive w/ funding, but some have accomplished success w/ post doc fellowship training (typically after 2 yrs of residency training). However, in reality amount of time spent is the same (about 4 yrs), but at least during residency and fellowship training you may have more oppurtunities to supplement income w/ Pharmacist moonlighting and may typically produce publications earlier (albeit not at a PhD level as you will typically be in a position to write more case reports and small retrospective studies as practice for more major forms of writing (i.e. dissertation)). I'd still reccommend the PharmD/PhD combo as opposed to PhD as the combo gives you more marketability and options and you always have the PharmD to fall back on to supplement income (unless of course you really just want to do research and have no interest in practicing pharmacy then just go for PhD and save some time perhaps).

If you decide to go the pharmacoeconomics/outcomes pathway then it may be more realistic that may may be able to achieve such a goal w/ just residency and/or fellowship training (or another auxillary degree MBA (focus on business/economics) or MPH(focus on epidemiology/economics) as opposed to PhD). Eitherway outcomes studies are becoming more popular as post marketing surveillance is becoming more of a public interest due to recent events (i.e. Vioxx/Cox-2 issues, atypical antipsychotics and metabolic issues, WHI, etc.).

Easiest way to figure out what you want to do and realize what training is necessary would be to estimate how much time out of your 40hr work week would you like to spend doing research vs clinical. Keep in mind that most positions are 80/20 (i.e. 80% research vs 20% clinical or vice versa) so 4 days/wk spent doing research w/ maybe 1 day per week in the clinic or in some clinical setting (rounding). With the clinical focus your focus would be on the clinical issues taking up the bulk of your time w/ research typically being outcomes (clinically related) and/or drug regimen reviews/retrospective studies and possibly some pharmacogenomics/pharmacokinetics work if you can really manage the time well, but funding will be minimal as most of the funding will be granted to those who are willing to spend 80% (or at least 70%) of their time devoted to research.

If you want to spend the bulk of your time doing research >70 or 80% then the PhD is probably the best path to go or at least do the residency plus post doc.

If the opposite is true and most of your time will be clinical then you may only want to do residency training, but consider post-doc fellowship (or auxillary degree MBA/MPH) after residency if your research will require some type of skill set that you can't obtain on your own during residency training (i.e. pharmacogenomics).
 
Depending on the type of postion you take after a PhD, one may make more than a pharmd or less.

PhD's in Pharmaceutics are very sought after in industry and highly paid. But there are many in the area of pharmacology since this area encompasses cell bio, mol bio, biochem, toxicology, etc. But if you do get a job in industry as head scientist you will may more money than a pharmD....especially in the NE or CA.

A PhD is more involved in the understanding of the mechanisms of action and the indepth function of drugs on cells or the body. A PharmD does not need to know the detailed indepth knowledge of a PhD to do their job. Not to mention that a PhD may study one drug his/her entire life....a PharmD works with hundreds of drugs and in preventing drug interactions or negative side effects in humans...or animals.

As someone said, a PhD takes 5-6-7 years depending on where you get your PhD. A PharmD is 3-4. To get a PhD, one is dependent on a committee of faculty to determine if you have adequate training and possess the correct logic, in order to graduate. If they don't feel you have what it takes you are asked to leave or spend even more time doing research and other duties. Yes you take class and must pass all classes with a B or above or you likely must take the class again.....graduate schools consider a grade of C to be failing.

Both PhD's and PharmD's can teach. Most PhD's teach the foundation courses of pharm schools. Whereas PharmD's usually act as preceptors or are involved in more therapeutics type teaching. There are a few schools that have PharmD's who teach the basic sciences but I'm not sure that is the best use of resources.

There is a great divide between a PhD and a PharmD. It is just a matter of what fits best. One has to decide if they want a professional degree or a graduate degree. One has to decide if they want to be directly involved in healthcare or to study the problem in depth and identify solutions through experimentation. It just depends what interests you. Both can be fullfilling.
 
Thanks everyone. I think I understand now. The PhD is something that I am interested in, because I'm much more interested in research and drug development than drug dispensing or patient interactions.

But how does a Pharmacy PhD differ from something like a Biochemistry or Molecular Biology PhD? Are they pretty much similar fields just different departments/schools?

Thanks again,
Luke
 
Biochemistry and molecular bio phd's will focus on biological pathways, molecular interactions of biomolecules, structure of proteins, etc. A phd in pharmacy will focus more on drug discovery, development, packaging, etc. What your pharmacy phd will focus really depends on which one of the various pharmacy related phd's you pick.
 
luke77 said:
Thanks everyone. I think I understand now. The PhD is something that I am interested in, because I'm much more interested in research and drug development than drug dispensing or patient interactions.

But how does a Pharmacy PhD differ from something like a Biochemistry or Molecular Biology PhD? Are they pretty much similar fields just different departments/schools?

Thanks again,
Luke

It also depends on the PhD program you are accepted into. I know of a pharmacy PhD that has areas in pharmacology, med chem, and pharmaceutics. The areas of pharmacology are in cancer biology, endocrinology, molecular biology, etc.

You can also get a PhD in pharmacy administration if you like. Many school with graduate programs as well as the professional program offer the PhD in pharm ad. I don't know much about pharm ad though. They really don't to laboratory bench work.
 
luke77 said:
Thanks everyone. I think I understand now. The PhD is something that I am interested in, because I'm much more interested in research and drug development than drug dispensing or patient interactions.

But how does a Pharmacy PhD differ from something like a Biochemistry or Molecular Biology PhD? Are they pretty much similar fields just different departments/schools?

Thanks again,
Luke

With a Pharmacy PhD you will doing more Pharmacology research (pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics)

Biochemistry PhD you will be doing more protein and enzyme work (enzyme kinetics etc.)

Molecular Biology you will be doing more gene expression work (DNA, RNA etc.)

There is also immunology where you'll be studying antibodies, antigens etc.

Remember with a PhD you can NOT practice as a Pharmacist. With a PharmD you still have some opportunities to do some research with fellowships, although a PhD will open more doors for research. You should also know that a Post Doc after a PhD is almost 100% required to get a decent position in Biotech or Academia. A Post Doc will usually last about two years and pays about a Third of what you would get in industry. Some times people have to do multiple Post Docs to be competitive in the job market. The job market is not the greatest right now on the research side of things. So just be aware of that. Good Luck.
 
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