Alternative options with a PharmD

[Emb327]

I recently began doing research into attending pharmacy school, and there is a lot of negativity on here about the current state of the industry (mostly market saturation in some areas for pharmacists). I'm thinking though that the degree is pretty versatile and there will be good options in a variety of fields (business, academics, hospital admin, medical science liaison etc.) beyond just retail pharmacy. Thoughts?

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[PharmtoCS]

Those jobs are out there but they probably employ less than 5% of all pharmacists. In fact, they're probably 10x more saturated than retail since everyone else wants these positions from the residency grad to your retail or hospital veteran trying to jump ship. The vast majority of the jobs are still in retail and has always been, despite what the schools tell you about the "versatility" of a PharmD. There is a problem when 80% of the students want positions that make up less than 20% of the available positions.

A PharmD would be a colossal waste of money if you're not actually interested in practicing pharmacy. You're better off pursuing other degrees that cost less than a PharmD and will actually get you straight to your field of interest.

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[gwarm01]

The PharmD is a very expensive and time consuming degree that is only worth it if your goal is to practice pharmacy. Those other sorts of jobs tend to be a next step in your career and aren't typically entry level. You could probably find one if you tried, but you have to be willing to move away from friends and family.

 

[mentos]

No, professional doctorate degrees in general are not versatile at all. They are highly specific to their field. Markets are saturated in all areas, not just some.

 

[MindGeek]

The PharmD degree is surprisingly specific. Focus on demonstrating examples of you being highly adaptable and easily trainable to potential employers.

There are lots of pharmacy-adjacent jobs out there, but you have to know what queries to type in on indeed, be willing to be equals with someone who is not an RPh, and be willing to take a pay cut.

 

[Litha]

Agree with all the comments above. Only go to pharmacy school if you want to be a pharmacist and are ok with the fact that you will most likely be working in retail. That is all.

 

[mentos]

Imagine if you are an employer and a PharmD applies to your "alternative" job. The first thing you think is that this employee will bounce as soon as he/she gets a 6 figure offer at a retail chain. This is the same concept as the PharmDs who apply for jobs as pharmacy technicians/interns because they can't find a job as a pharmacist. Yes, it's that bad out there... search the threads.

If you don't want to be a pharmacist then you're better off doing dental hygienist or something. You can go to community college and make 70k+ in a fraction of the time/debt. Looking back, I would have been much happier if I had done this.

 

[PAtoPharm]

Imagine if you are an employer and a PharmD applies to your "alternative" job. The first thing you think is that this employee will bounce as soon as he/she gets a 6 figure offer at a retail chain. This is the same concept as the PharmDs who apply for jobs as pharmacy technicians/interns because they can't find a job as a pharmacist. Yes, it's that bad out there... search the threads.

If you don't want to be a pharmacist then you're better off doing dental hygienist or something. You can go to community college and make 70k+ in a fraction of the time/debt. Looking back, I would have been much happier if I had done this.

I considered this as well. Last year, the local newspaper ran an article talking about how, at least here locally as well as throughout the southeast (not sure about other regions), starting salaries have actually surpassed $80k, with many employers offering a commission-based schedule that allows their hygienists to earn additional money. In other words, there are dental hygienists out there who earn more than $100k when both base salary and commission/bonuses have been factored in. To top it all off, the dental hygiene program here only takes a year to complete and costs less than $5k. So, which career path sounds better to you: spending 6-8 years in school and residency to make $85k as a hospital pharmacist with $200k in loans to pay back, or spend 1 year in school to make at least that much and likely more as a dental hygienist with less than $5k in loans to pay back?

 

[Emb327]

I considered this as well. Last year, the local newspaper ran an article talking about how, at least here locally as well as throughout the southeast (not sure about other regions), starting salaries have actually surpassed $80k, with many employers offering a commission-based schedule that allows their hygienists to earn additional money. In other words, there are dental hygienists out there who earn more than $100k when both base salary and commission/bonuses have been factored in. To top it all off, the dental hygiene program here only takes a year to complete and costs less than $5k. So, which career path sounds better to you: spending 6-8 years in school and residency to make $85k as a hospital pharmacist with $200k in loans to pay back, or spend 1 year in school to make at least that much and likely more as a dental hygienist with less than $5k in loans to pay back?

I guess (maybe naively) I want to believe the best for this line of work.

I'm not necessarily with you on the dental hygienist path. Sure it's minimal debt, and
Maybe your region is an exception but the average starting salary for DH is around 45k, and the average mid career is around 70. Also if
You get bored with your job 8-10 years down the line what options do you have for upward mobility besides going back to school (which will negate some of the credibility from
The debt disparity argument).

Pharmacists start around 90k so the difference in salary alone the first four years could cover the cost of pharmacy school plus you would have a doctorate to your name, which has to count for something if you wanted to move to business and academics.

Am I wrong??
I'm truly not trying to be argumentative, just attempting to discern facts about the state of the field from people's horror stories and sour grapes

 

[PharmtoCS]

Pharmacists start around 90k so the difference in salary alone the first four years could cover the cost of pharmacy school plus you would have a doctorate to your name, which has to count for something if you wanted to move to business and academics.

Remember that you also have to take into account that you'll be in a higher tax bracket (non-deductible) when you start at a higher salary and would lose 4 years of earning potential during which you could earn money instead of taking on more debt. Don't forget that you accrue interest at over 6% per year. A doctorate would be useless to the average pharmacist without experience, residency/fellowship, or some other connection. You want to go into business, get an MBA and work experience. You want to go into academia, get a PhD. You want to practice pharmacy, get a PharmD.

Software engineers and investment bankers can easily start out with a pharmacist salary or much more without the $200k+ in loans and 4 years of lost earnings opportunity cost.

 

[gwarm01]

I considered this as well. Last year, the local newspaper ran an article talking about how, at least here locally as well as throughout the southeast (not sure about other regions), starting salaries have actually surpassed $80k, with many employers offering a commission-based schedule that allows their hygienists to earn additional money. In other words, there are dental hygienists out there who earn more than $100k when both base salary and commission/bonuses have been factored in. To top it all off, the dental hygiene program here only takes a year to complete and costs less than $5k. So, which career path sounds better to you: spending 6-8 years in school and residency to make $85k as a hospital pharmacist with $200k in loans to pay back, or spend 1 year in school to make at least that much and likely more as a dental hygienist with less than $5k in loans to pay back?

I'll take my >$100k informatics job over the dental hygienist job any day. The pure dollar:time ratio is insane for dental hygiene right now, but ask yourself how long a job that takes one year of school will remain in that sort of demand? If you are aware of the demand, you can only assume everyone else is as well. I imagine that a surplus will happen in that field far quicker than it did in pharmacy.

 

[PAtoPharm]

I'll take my >$100k informatics job over the dental hygienist job any day. The pure dollar:time ratio is insane for dental hygiene right now, but ask yourself how long a job that takes one year of school will remain in that sort of demand? If you are aware of the demand, you can only assume everyone else is as well. I imagine that a surplus will happen in that field far quicker than it did in pharmacy.

Maybe so, but I think the saturation issues will also be regional. For example, even though my city is considered to generally be a highly undesirable place to live, there are 5 pharmacy schools within a 2 hour radius, so there are almost no pharmacy jobs here anymore because new grads as well as experienced pharmacists have no choice but to take them if they want a job in the region. On the other hand, there is only one dental hygiene program here, so unless more programs are started or the existing one adds more seats, the job market here (not speaking for anywhere else) should be fine.

Nuclear medicine technologist is another program a local DOP told me to look into (even after I had started pharmacy school) since it's another example of a field with relatively low entry requirements compared to pay ($80k+), but it actually is saturated based on what I've read.

 

[lord999]

There's only a couple of exceptions to the "PharmD is meant for practice", and they are both very esoteric. One of them is historically graduate work in Pharmacology, Medicinal Chemistry, or Pharmaceutics, where having a pharmacy background really does help (even more than chemical engineering). The other case is industry work, but it's not the career field it used to be. My class sent ~40% of the non-LDS females under 30 into industry, but those positions have dried up like their...(don't want to get kicked off SDN).

You need to think about what you really want to do and not just get a degree (PharmD or otherwise) unless you intend to work in it. Each of those fields have a more direct path, and Pfizer and GSK require athletic backgrounds for most of their reps:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/gimme-an-rx-cheerleaders-pep-up-drug-sales.html

Track and volleyball as well but apparently not weightlifting, if you're wondering.

 

[beautifulrobot]

If you are looking for a "versatile" degree, there are much more cost-effective ones than a PharmD. Plus, a PharmD definitely pigeon holes you into pharmacy-related careers - whether that's retail, hospital, academia, regulatory affairs, or industry - the focus will be pharmaceuticals / drug knowledge. If you don't mind focusing your career on pharmacy/pharmaceuticals, regardless of setting, go for it. Just know that if it isn't somehow drug related, and even sometimes if it is drug-related but is significant enough to be interesting to physicians, you might not have a seat at the table if you're just a PharmD. Keep in mind that pharmacists are almost always in a supportive role within the world of healthcare and medicine.

 

[PAtoPharm]

There's only a couple of exceptions to the "PharmD is meant for practice", and they are both very esoteric. One of them is historically graduate work in Pharmacology, Medicinal Chemistry, or Pharmaceutics, where having a pharmacy background really does help (even more than chemical engineering). The other case is industry work, but it's not the career field it used to be. My class sent ~40% of the non-LDS females under 30 into industry, but those positions have dried up like their...(don't want to get kicked off SDN).

You need to think about what you really want to do and not just get a degree (PharmD or otherwise) unless you intend to work in it. Each of those fields have a more direct path, and Pfizer and GSK require athletic backgrounds for most of their reps:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/gimme-an-rx-cheerleaders-pep-up-drug-sales.html

Track and volleyball as well but apparently not weightlifting, if you're wondering.

On the topic of industry careers, are jobs like MSL going away too? Do you have to be a cologne model to qualify to be one?

 

[PAtoPharm]

I guess (maybe naively) I want to believe the best for this line of work.

I'm not necessarily with you on the dental hygienist path. Sure it's minimal debt, and
Maybe your region is an exception but the average starting salary for DH is around 45k, and the average mid career is around 70. Also if
You get bored with your job 8-10 years down the line what options do you have for upward mobility besides going back to school (which will negate some of the credibility from
The debt disparity argument).

Pharmacists start around 90k so the difference in salary alone the first four years could cover the cost of pharmacy school plus you would have a doctorate to your name, which has to count for something if you wanted to move to business and academics.

Am I wrong??
I'm truly not trying to be argumentative, just attempting to discern facts about the state of the field from people's horror stories and sour grapes

I guess it's a regional thing; where I live, there aren't many dental hygiene programs (just one that I know of), and the average starting salary here actually is around $80k. The points about the lack of upward mobility and the possibility of getting bored with the job are good ones, but considering the brevity and affordability of hygiene school, you wouldn't really be sacrificing much in the way of time/money (at least in terms of loan debt) to leave the career to pursue something else.

However, I don't see how the statement you made regarding the salary difference between a pharmacist's and a hygienist's income making up for the cost of pharmacy school could accurate since pharmacy school is so much more expensive and takes much longer to complete than hygienist school. Like I said, hygienists might start out at $45k where you live, but in my area, they pull around $80k to start. But even if a hygienist's salary did only start out at $45k, a hospital pharmacist making $85k-$95k still wouldn't be able to "catch up" as quickly to the hygienist's earnings scenario thanks to the excessive loans (plus interest) and minimum 3-5 years of lost income that the pharmacist spent in undergrad and pharmacy school (add an additional 1-2 years if they completed a residency). Think about it like this -- let's say you have 2 recent high school graduates who are both about to begin college. One of them wants to go to pharmacy school and the other one wants to be a dental hygienist. Even if the future pharmacist takes the quickest possible route to becoming a pharmacist, it still means spending a minimum of 2 years in undergrad and 3 years in pharmacy school for a total of 5 years (and that's if they do an accelerated 3-year pharm program -- they'll have 6 more years of school if they complete a standard 4-year pharmacy program. On the other hand, the future dental hygienist has, at most, 1-2 more years of school to complete in order to become a hygienist. So while the hygienist enjoys a 5-year headstart on the productive portion of their life, the pharmacist will be toiling away in school for at least as many years while they amass a six-figure student loan debt.

 

[mentos]

Software engineers and investment bankers can easily start out with a pharmacist salary or much more without the $200k+ in loans and 4 years of lost earnings opportunity cost.

Yeah but let's be real, how many people have the skills to be software engineers or investment bankers? Pharmacy school is hard but practically anyone can get a PharmD, just look at all the diploma mills out there. Look at the pre-pharm forums where students with terrible grades get accepted into pharmacy schools. They don't hand out degrees like that for comp sci. A freshman comp sci class at a state university starts off with 150+ students, but only 20-30 make it to graduation. Whereas a pharmacy class with 150+ would graduate at least 130.

 

[gwarm01]

Nuclear medicine technologist is another program a local DOP told me to look into (even after I had started pharmacy school) since it's another example of a field with relatively low entry requirements compared to pay ($80k+), but it actually is saturated based on what I've read.

That's actually a good career to consider. All of the nuke techs I know have been very happy with their jobs. It's pretty low stress as far as healthcare goes. I did some shadowing back in my nuclear days and found it all very interesting. I don't know about saturation in the field, but if it's anything like nuclear pharmacy then it's probably seen better days.

 

[PAtoPharm]

That's actually a good career to consider. All of the nuke techs I know have been very happy with their jobs. It's pretty low stress as far as healthcare goes. I did some shadowing back in my nuclear days and found it all very interesting. I don't know about saturation in the field, but if it's anything like nuclear pharmacy then it's probably seen better days.

I was kinda thinking the same thing (in terms of the comparison to the nuclear pharmacy job market); however, I don't actually know if the nuclear medicine technologist job market is associated with the nuclear pharmacy job market (I.e., if there are similar "trends" for both job markets). But if the actual work lifestyle of a nuclear med tech is similar to that of a nuclear pharmacist, then I agree that it's a great job. In fact, if I was offered a pre-employment contract by one of the local hospitals here to have a guaranteed job "reserved" for me after graduation, I would seriously consider quitting pharmacy school to do the extra 1-1.5 years of schooling I'd have to complete to become a nuclear med tech.

Can you believe that? An established, veteran DOP (she's been one since the mid-1980s) telling someone, "I mean, I'm not telling you to drop-out of pharmacy school, but I would consider the nuclear medicine technologist program, and I would also maybe think about applying to the new DO schools they've opened over the last few years." And then a few weeks later, I run into her out in public and she tells me, "I still wouldn't write-off the nuclear program." Even DOPs are coyly telling students to drop-out of pharmacy school before they've gotten substantially invested in the profession and to attend community college programs instead.

 

[ldiot]

I'm not saying it's not possible to land one of these jobs because pharmacists do fill these positions but going into 6 figure debt without the intention of ever dispensing a prescription would be a big mistake. In a way pharmacists are employed because of their pharmacy license and their ability to practice pharmacy, not because of their degree. What I mean by this is that if you really want to be a hospital admin or land a job in business/finance there are better ways to get there than through pharmacy school.

 

[steveysmith54]

I'm not saying it's not possible to land one of these jobs because pharmacists do fill these positions but going into 6 figure debt without the intention of ever dispensing a prescription would be a big mistake. In a way pharmacists are employed because of their pharmacy license and their ability to practice pharmacy, not because of their degree. What I mean by this is that if you really want to be a hospital admin or land a job in business/finance there are better ways to get there than through pharmacy school.

Been seeing and hearing this a lot. Pharmacy draws a lot of people bc IMO it's the easiest doctorate degree to get out of all of the health care professions. low 3.0's GPA, bachelors isn't required, no entrance exam to study for in most schools, a gazillion schools with low admission standards. Oh yeah and having a doctorate in drug sciences makes one seem kind of sort of smartish... To answer the original question, no pharmacy is proly one of the least versatile degrees out there. 2/3 of my classmates started their careers at a chain. You wanna know what a typical pharmacist does, go work at a CVS, or at least hang out there for couple of hours when it's peak time. Try doing this for 30-40 yrs lol.. Yeah hospital jobs exist and so do ambcare and managed care, but look around how many hospitals are there and how many pharmacy schools are there? If you are going into pharmacy to work in academia, industry, clinical... you are going to have HUGE mountain to climb and I wouldn't really bet on you getting to the other side of it.

 

[Emb327]

Been seeing and hearing this a lot. Pharmacy draws a lot of people bc IMO it's the easiest doctorate degree to get out of all of the health care professions. low 3.0's GPA, bachelors isn't required, no entrance exam to study for in most schools, a gazillion schools with low admission standards. Oh yeah and having a doctorate in drug sciences makes one seem kind of sort of smartish... To answer the original question, no pharmacy is proly one of the least versatile degrees out there. 2/3 of my classmates started their careers at a chain. You wanna know what a typical pharmacist does, go work at a CVS, or at least hang out there for couple of hours when it's peak time. Try doing this for 30-40 yrs lol.. Yeah hospital jobs exist and so do ambcare and managed care, but look around how many hospitals are there and how many pharmacy schools are there? If you are going into pharmacy to work in academia, industry, clinical... you are going to have HUGE mountain to climb and I wouldn't really bet on you getting to the other side of it.

I think most people think I have no interest in actually practicing pharmacy, which isn't the case. But like you mentioned 30-40 years at CVS would be a drag. So my question wasn't necessarily asking if you can go straight into business or hospital admin etc. Obviously there are degrees that would allow you to break into those fields without such a financial burden. I was more wondering if there were options to advance your career by moving out of retail eventually.

When I made my initial comment about the versatility of the degree, in my head I was comparing it to a field like optometry or dentistry. In a field like one of those there is not business sector equivalent to the Pharma industry, and there are more pharmacy programs than either of those so I thought maybe there would be more opportunity to advance into academics for that reason.

You mentioned that 2/3 of your class went into retail, but what percentage of them wanted something else right off the bat? My top state school graduated 175 last year and 5oish applied for a residency . That's less than a third that even tried to advance in a different direction. So is it a matter of the jobs not being there beyond retail, or people not actively seeking them out?

 

[steveysmith54]

I think most people think I have no interest in actually practicing pharmacy, which isn't the case. But like you mentioned 30-40 years at CVS would be a drag. So my question wasn't necessarily asking if you can go straight into business or hospital admin etc. Obviously there are degrees that would allow you to break into those fields without such a financial burden. I was more wondering if there were options to advance your career by moving out of retail eventually.

When I made my initial comment about the versatility of the degree, in my head I was comparing it to a field like optometry or dentistry. In a field like one of those there is not business sector equivalent to the Pharma industry, and there are more pharmacy programs than either of those so I thought maybe there would be more opportunity to advance into academics for that reason.

You mentioned that 2/3 of your class went into retail, but what percentage of them wanted something else right off the bat? My top state school graduated 175 last year and 5oish applied for a residency . That's less than a third that even tried to advance in a different direction. So is it a matter of the jobs not being there beyond retail, or people not actively seeking them out?

Hmm, so if you recognize that CVS is a drag, why would you think that people would want to stick around other than just a necessity? Maybe half of my class applied for a residency, doesn't mean that they were accepted... As I stated in my previous post, look around and do your research just from a superficial POV, how many hospitals and jobs outside of retail exist? You stated yourself that your local graduating class is 175 people, how many pharmacists do you think an average hospital needs? There are 20 previous posters who basically told you the same thing as I did, which is essentially in short the answer to your question is: NO. Is there really a need to ask the same questions again?