Sick of this profession!

[VP_Pharm2004]

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I've only been a pharmacist for 6+ years now and if I could go back in time, I'd pick a different career path. I feel like I'm more of a retail b*tch, rather than a pharmacist. I'm trying to leave my current job, but it seems nearly impossible to change to another retail chain, unless it's for CVS or Walgreens. I've applied elsewhere and find out that it's not fulltime, benefits don't start after a year, they can't match the pay, or the position has been filled by an internal applicant!

Pre-pharmacy students & new grads need to get a reality check and realize what they're signing up for! We have two new grads (from new schools) at my store and they're completely making my life a living hell because they can't keep up with the volume of my store and their knowledge base is lacking. I get so many phone calls about dumb errors and complaints. Plus, cutting tech hours left and right doesn't help!

The future of pharmacy hasn't looked good for awhile and now we have *****s running the show...

It's going to continue to get worse and patient safety will be thrown out of the window..

Thank you new schools for ruining this professional and to those desperate *****s that continue to apply to these schools. Good luck paying off your 200k in loans! 🙂

 

[BMBiology]

This saturation has mainly affected two groups so far: (1) the new grads; (2) retail veterans.

It is obviously going to get worse as new and expanded pharmacy schools continue to pump out a tsunami of new grads.

My suggestion:
(1) pre pharm: explore other options. Make sure this is what you want to do. Get a retail job first. Calculate how much 3-4 years of tuition and living expenses will cost you. You should not borrow more than 150 k.
(2) current pharmacy students: you are stuck.
(3) retail pharmacists: get out as soon as you can. It is going to be a hard landing.
(4) other pharmacists: cross our fingers!

Good luck all

 

[MatCauthon]

Retail pharmacy is very glutted right now, but eventually residency trained pharmacists will also face the same kinds of walls. There are only so many jobs to go around, and hospital has less jobs than retail. As residencies expand, more and more residents will have trouble landing work-- this will take another 2-4 years to start happening though. The over-expansion of pharmacy schools is fueling this problem.

I see more and more of my friends get stuck in floating jobs without enough hours and other per diem arrangements. These can be good setups, but they are becoming so flooded that there is immense competition for that full-time job once it opens up. Most full-time jobs that get posted already have a line of internal candidates waiting to fill the position due to all the floaters out there.
I would tell prospective students to look for alternatives to pharmacy. The profession is getting lead by anyone by pharmacists right now and that is not a good thing.

 

[pharmacy7424]

I've only been a pharmacist for 6+ years now and if I could go back in time, I'd pick a different career path. I feel like I'm more of a retail b*tch, rather than a pharmacist. I'm trying to leave my current job, but it seems nearly impossible to change to another retail chain, unless it's for CVS or Walgreens. I've applied elsewhere and find out that it's not fulltime, benefits don't start after a year, they can't match the pay, or the position has been filled by an internal applicant!

Pre-pharmacy students & new grads need to get a reality check and realize what they're signing up for! We have two new grads (from new schools) at my store and they're completely making my life a living hell because they can't keep up with the volume of my store and their knowledge base is lacking. I get so many phone calls about dumb errors and complaints. Plus, cutting tech hours left and right doesn't help!

The future of pharmacy hasn't looked good for awhile and now we have *****s running the show...

It's going to continue to get worse and patient safety will be thrown out of the window..

Thank you new schools for ruining this professional and to those desperate *****s that continue to apply to these schools. Good luck paying off your 200k in loans! 🙂

Did you work in retail before applying to pharmacy school to begin with? If not, joke's on you.

 

[VP_Pharm2004]

Did you work in retail before applying to pharmacy school to begin with? If not, joke's on you.

Yes, I did work in retail prior to pharmacy school. Things were a lot different. Now the retail chains have the upper hand since tons and tons of pharmacists are looking for jobs, which is causing the work environment and physical demands/goals to change.

 

[opinionfree]

Down the road, someone will pen a book about the chains and about the brilliance of their business model. For now, let's just say they biggest obstacle to profitability has been, pharmacists. What to do? Increase the pool of workers, saturate the market and then salaries will plummet, as pharmacists go blood sport for jobs. They've got the workers now, the market is saturated/swelling and pharmacists are at each others throats, over the most petty of protocol and corporate procedures. Game. Set. Match.
If 3 pharmacists want the same job, have massive loan burden and need to procreate beyond their ability to support, they will gladly accept $40/hour.

 

[Gombrich12]

This is only the beginning. I can only imagine what these chains will cook up in a few more years when 20% of the classes are graduating without a job anywhere in sight. The sooner we have large amounts of students graduating without jobs the sooner this thing gets closer to being resolved.

 

[Angela1234]

Things are just going to get worse with more pharmacy schools opening. If you feel like you are stuck in retail h*ll, you should feel fortunate to have a job at all, because some of us are unemployed, 2 months until new grads and it gets worse. When I worked in retail, I felt like it was a business and not a pharmacy. Also felt like I was a drug enforcement agent.

 

[CardinalGirl210]

I've only been a pharmacist for 6+ years now and if I could go back in time, I'd pick a different career path. I feel like I'm more of a retail b*tch, rather than a pharmacist. I'm trying to leave my current job, but it seems nearly impossible to change to another retail chain, unless it's for CVS or Walgreens. I've applied elsewhere and find out that it's not fulltime, benefits don't start after a year, they can't match the pay, or the position has been filled by an internal applicant!

Pre-pharmacy students & new grads need to get a reality check and realize what they're signing up for! We have two new grads (from new schools) at my store and they're completely making my life a living hell because they can't keep up with the volume of my store and their knowledge base is lacking. I get so many phone calls about dumb errors and complaints. Plus, cutting tech hours left and right doesn't help!

The future of pharmacy hasn't looked good for awhile and now we have *****s running the show...

It's going to continue to get worse and patient safety will be thrown out of the window..

Thank you new schools for ruining this professional and to those desperate *****s that continue to apply to these schools. Good luck paying off your 200k in loans! 🙂

What's really old is the overwhelming amount of negative rants on the SDN pharmacy forum like this one.....this is what gives the pharmacy profession a bad rap. If all the people that complained like this would leave the profession, the saturation problem would be solved!

 

[Waffle Houzen]

waaambulance thread

 

[HouTX]

Things are just going to get worse with more pharmacy schools opening. If you feel like you are stuck in retail h*ll, you should feel fortunate to have a job at all, because some of us are unemployed, 2 months until new grads and it gets worse. When I worked in retail, I felt like it was a business and not a pharmacy. Also felt like I was a drug enforcement agent.

it IS a business. I'm constantly looking at my margins and sales data. my job is safe in retail as long as I am going up against pharmacists that just wanna verify. and this is coming from a 2012 grad.

 

[MatCauthon]

it IS a business. I'm constantly looking at my margins and sales data. my job is safe in retail as long as I am going up against pharmacists that just wanna verify. and this is coming from a 2012 grad.

Your benefits haven't gotten expensive to the company yet. Things will change when you have much better benefits accrued and a hundred new grads are begging for your job for far less money. Corporate trainers look at margins and rphs hours and benefits are the biggest blow to the profits. Many a pharmacy manager with a good eye for margins and sales data have been canned by the big chains.

 

[Hope1974]

Your benefits haven't gotten expensive to the company yet. Things will change when you have much better benefits accrued and a hundred new grads are begging for your job for far less money. Corporate trainers look at margins and rphs hours and benefits are the biggest blow to the profits. Many a pharmacy manager with a good eye for margins and sales data have been canned by the big chains.

Your dead on! Once you have benefits and vaca accumulated, ur out the door. There's a pharmacist I used to see all the time in CVS in Fort Laudy over in Pines, n one day I didn't see him. Come ta find out through some of my other pharmacy friends that the DM or whoever had been in and said something to him, and he replied "How can the quarter back be the wide receiver?" lol and now he' at another store I think, probably high volume. I'm guessing the supervisor wanted him to run around and do data entry, register and everything else like most pharms do now a days. Another pharmacist in the same district who I used to work for also got canned after 25 years.

 

[Hope1974]

Your benefits haven't gotten expensive to the company yet. Things will change when you have much better benefits accrued and a hundred new grads are begging for your job for far less money. Corporate trainers look at margins and rphs hours and benefits are the biggest blow to the profits. Many a pharmacy manager with a good eye for margins and sales data have been canned by the big chains.

Your dead on! Once you have benefits and vaca accumulated, ur out the door. There's a pharmacist I used to see all the time in CVS in Fort Laudy over in Pines, n one day I didn't see him. Come ta find out through some of my other pharmacy friends that the DM or whoever had been in and said something to him, and he replied "How can the quarter back be the wide receiver?" lol and now he' at another store I think, probably high volume. I'm guessing the supervisor wanted him to run around and do data entry, register and everything else like most pharms do now a days. Another pharmacist in the same district who I used to work for also got canned after 25 years.

 

[HouTX]

I understand where you're coming from. we do have a few older rph that's still kicking butt and aren't going anywhere. but we also had a few that were forced to retire or be fired. but at this point, I'm working for a great boss and a good company. I don't know how it will be in 5-10-20 years but I'm already diligently paying down my loans and saving.