Pharmacy School

[Designz]

Originally Posted by Zeste

and you have to be able to stand on the little platform a foot above the customers and move the pills from the big bottle to the little bottle!

There are pharmacy techs that do that, lol. I think they get paid $15/hr.

And yes, getting admitted to a pharmacy school of your choice is very difficult. It's almost as difficult as med. school!

[MrSpitz]

Pharmacy really is such a scam if you work in a community pharmacy. Basically the techs pull the drugs, count the pills, make the labels, and put it all together and the pharmacist just checks it at the end to make sure everything is correct.


The pharmacist sits around and drinks coffee, listens to some old people complain, sometimes calls insurance if he doesn't have the tech do it, and oversees a lot of amoxicillin, hydocodone, and cholesterol medications. You could really learn everything you need for the job in about 1 year.

[Designz]

Originally Posted by MrSpitz

Pharmacy really is such a scam if you work in a community pharmacy. Basically the techs pull the drugs, count the pills, make the labels, and put it all together and the pharmacist just checks it at the end to make sure everything is correct.


The pharmacist sits around and drinks coffee, listens to some old people complain, sometimes calls insurance if he doesn't have the tech do it, and oversees a lot of amoxicillin, hydocodone, and cholesterol medications. You could really learn everything you need for the job in about 1 year.

I dunno about that. It depends on which pharmacy you work at. Some of the busy pharmacies cause a lot of frustration for pharmacists:

The Angry Pharmacist

If you've ever worked at a CVS (which is becoming the Walmart of pharmacy) pharmacy, they treat their pharmacists like tools. You have a "rating", and if you make customers wait too long or don't pick up the phone, your rating decreases, lol. Everything is time and quantity based, and pharmacists don't have time to properly consult patients.

[MrSpitz]

Well right, but basically its a customer service job. You get a 4-year degree with a 'doctor of pharmacy' title to do a song and dance for customers to retain business for a retail chain.

Yes it can be busy, yes it can be demeaning. But you easily make over six figures a year within your first two years on the job (if not starting over it).... the people who bitch about being 'overworked' in counting out pills and putting labels on containers and fielding complaints but make that amount of money per hour don't know what real work is like. And the best part is the techs do all the grunt work and get about $9 an hour, not 15. It's a scam, comparatively, and that's why so many people are getting into it now.

[Kuriin]

Originally Posted by Kebas239

I heard that it was to weed out people who couldn't handle the work-load. How true is this statement?


.

This is pretty much true for every major out there. The first few undergrad courses are there to weed out the people who can't handle the course load. But, from what I hear from you, sounds like you're really interested in it. The only thing I can suggest is to really work your ass off in undergrad because GPA and GRE/GMAT (and of course, the essay...) are what really counts.

[chu]

I agree that in the past 10 years pharmacy salary has become more lucrative then it has in the past.

If all you care about is staying in a health related field that pays well, consider nursing school too. Many schools will cut your program to 2 years if you already have a science related undergrad degree. Nurses get paid well too, will continue to be paid well probably forever and will always be in demand. Pharmacists may have a bleaker future in the decades to come as more people flock to it.

[Designz]

Originally Posted by chu

I agree that in the past 10 years pharmacy salary has become more lucrative then it has in the past.

If all you care about is staying in a health related field that pays well, consider nursing school too. Many schools will cut your program to 2 years if you already have a science related undergrad degree. Nurses get paid well too, will continue to be paid well probably forever and will always be in demand. Pharmacists may have a bleaker future in the decades to come as more people flock to it.

Dude, nurses totally deserve every penny they make. Many of them get burn out.

[Kuriin]

Nurses don't get paid nearly the amount they deserve; the same can be said for teachers, too.

[chu]

Thanks for the unrelated opinions and I agree. They still get paid relatively well.

Also, keep in mind that there are different nurses. You can get further qualifications allowing you to work in an operating room, etc.

[MrSpitz]

Yea, pay isn't the primary factor but pharmacist salaries on the commerical side have exploded exponentially in the past 10 years. Yet their role in the system has not changed, just weird.

The outlook for pharmacy is uncertain because of the flocking and because many of the insurance companies are pushing centralized fill locations and large scale automoation and mail delivery.

The 'central fill' locations may or may not catch on but insurance is pushing them pretty hard to drive down costs, and have begun limiting what drugs you can get from unspecialized stores like a CVS (ie expensive maintenance cancer drugs, diabetic supplies on some plans).

[Designz]

Haha, pharmacists won't get replaced by robots or automation - pharmacy techs will.

[MrSpitz]

The goal of the program is to reduce pharmacist jobs on the community side, I do not know if there will be expanded roles in hospitals or the like.

The insurance plan is to cut down on the added costs when drugs go through retail pharmacies. Things like extensive shipping to different point of sale locations, discarding old drugs at those locations, and the very very much increased payroll costs for pharmacists have to be accounted for. Thus when a big chain buys drugs from the manufacturer to resell them, they include these costs in the markup of the drug. As part of the insurance reimbursement rate for perscriptions is based on the dollar market of the drugs at the counter of the pharmacy this increases costs for everyone.


Insurance companies want to buy the drugs directly from the manufacturer, have them shipped and filled at centralized locations to decrease the markup and expand automation. Almost every pharmacy now has a machine that fills the most perscribed drugs and does pretty much everything once you input the script and directions in the computer. This can be greatly expanded and would require not only less techs but less pharmacists, just a core staff of constant reviewers. The drugs are then mailed out currently, the delivery method is what's tricky.


And quite honestly they should be cut down. Making 120,000 a year to do what those guys behind the counter of a CVS do? Are you kidding? It's a cost to the system that is totally ridiculous and just gets passed on. I hope they are reduced. Sorry if that was your plan.

[Designz]

Originally Posted by MrSpitz

The goal of the program is to reduce pharmacist jobs on the community side, I do not know if there will be expanded roles in hospitals or the like.

The insurance plan is to cut down on the added costs when drugs go through retail pharmacies. Things like extensive shipping to different point of sale locations, discarding old drugs at those locations, and the very very much increased payroll costs for pharmacists have to be accounted for. Thus when a big chain buys drugs from the manufacturer to resell them, they include these costs in the markup of the drug. As part of the insurance reimbursement rate for perscriptions is based on the dollar market of the drugs at the counter of the pharmacy this increases costs for everyone.


Insurance companies want to buy the drugs directly from the manufacturer, have them shipped and filled at centralized locations to decrease the markup and expand automation. Almost every pharmacy now has a machine that fills the most perscribed drugs and does pretty much everything once you input the script and directions in the computer. This can be greatly expanded and would require not only less techs but less pharmacists, just a core staff of constant reviewers. The drugs are then mailed out currently, the delivery method is what's tricky.


And quite honestly they should be cut down. Making 120,000 a year to do what those guys behind the counter of a CVS do? Are you kidding? It's a cost to the system that is totally ridiculous and just gets passed on. I hope they are reduced. Sorry if that was your plan.

Well, your impression of the little work pharmacists do may be different than reality. Before my sister became a nurse, I thought a nurse's job was easy. In the hospital, all I saw were nurses sitting around chatting and walking around casually with seemingly nothing to do. Of course, this is totally not true, as my sister was exhausted every single day after work.

I think a lot of a pharmacist's job is mental work: juggling between filling prescriptions, keeping track of which ones need to be rechecked, calling doctors, calling insurance companies, and consulting patients while a bunch of impatient people complain. I doubt it's as easy as you make it. Plus, it requires at least 6 years of education and 1500 intern hours (in CA). Not everyone can do it, and although 120k might be high for some positions, I don't think pharmacists are getting paid too much.

A pharmacist's duty isn't just to give medications to patients. A pharmacist is often a patient's first medical resource; sadly, the way drug chains are pushing their pharmacists to fill more and more prescriptions, the patients are losing along with the pharmacists.

Of course, I'm still a student. Maybe I'm too idealistic.

[MrSpitz]

I worked in a Rite Aid for about a year and became certified as a pharmacy tech during that time. The pharmacists were great guys, really got to know them pretty well as we were a 24 hour pharmacy by an emergency facility so lot of long shifts and crazy things.

Listen dude, I'm not bullshiting you. Ask any community pharmacist yourself, the job is a joke. That doesn't mean the pharmD degree is a joke, nor are pharmacists bad people. Yes it is hard dealing with sick people who have insurance complaints and are pissed off they waited in line for 20 minutes... but that's so far on the low end of the scale of exertion and mental toughness. To get that level of reimbursement is an insult to careers like nursing.

I assure you I'm not speaking from ignorance. You want to see a pharmacist who really knows his shit? Go on rounds with the attending physician for liquid tumors at an inpatient facility. The pharmacist there is fucking invaluable and worth his or her weight in gold. Because hospitals make MUCH less money then a CVS however, this pharmacist only gets about 90,000.


You'll see in due time anyway but I'm not blowing smoke up your ass from what I read online.

Edit: Just one thing, the community pharmacists only goal is to give medications to patients with a clear set of instructions. The physician decides everything else and accepts all liabilities and where necesary is responsible for monitoring side effects. And it is somewhat ridiculous to me that the primary care physician who is responsible for all that and works far more makes less and continues to get shit on. It's not good for anyone in the long run where that position is headed.

[Snugglebear]

The PharmD from the hospital my medical college is associated with does creatine clearance calculations for doctors. And he teaches part of the medical pharmacology class. So if you don't want to just sit around and dispense prescriptions at Wal-Mart, there are other more involved options.

No one has mentioned this (or I missed it), but doesn't pharmacy school require loads of chemistry? It's a major part of the entrance exam, and I'm pretty sure you will need to retain that stuff for the PharmD classes once you get in. Did you get much chemistry in Psychology? Around here, Psychology is basically a bullshit degree.