going back to school for a PharmD...

[iphetamine]

This is definitely the unpopular opinion/route. I graduated with a bpharm many years ago and I have a hard time finding ANYTHING out of the community setting. Not even casual/part time position at smaller community hospitals due to the lack of "clinical" experience. Hence, I've decided to undergo a post bachelor (non-traditional) PharmD program (while they last), hoping to broaden my expertise and widen my options. FYI: this is in Canada, so market varies from US/others.

1. Is that a good step forward?
2. What can I do to prepare before hand, in terms of pharmacotherapy and kinetics courses since that'll be the main focus. Books? Online courses?

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[DrVader]

I think that most people would agree with me on here by saying that is a pretty horrible idea. You might get a PharmD, but if you want to do anything in a clinical setting, you must have a PharmD plus an ever-growing list of certifications plus at least PY1 or PY2. You are sacrificing 50k on at least another year of pharmacy school plus at least one year of reduced income if not two. How much debt do you have now?

You might as well as take that 50k and learn to program or get a business degree and go into the healthcare business. But don't spend 50k to start late in a race that everyone is already losing.

 

[rxkrafted]

1. Nooooooooooooooooooo
2. Just no.

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

You won't get a clinical job without a residency today, let alone 5 years from now which is when you would graduate pharmacy school. Matter of fact 5 years from now a PGY-2 or PGY-3 will probably become the new standard for clinical jobs so the real question you have to ask yourself is "do I want to risk wasting 4 years of my life and $200k in debt to have a CHANCE of getting a residency, after which I will need to be lucky to get a CHANCE at getting a second year/specialty residency, after which you will need to be lucky to have a CHANCE of finding a real job posting for a clinical job" if the market hasn't gone from 99.9% saturated to 100.0% saturated by then. All this assuming that ageism doesn't work against you when applying for residency because older candidates are typically seen as "not teachable/malleable" by residency programs. Just stating the cold hard truth.

 

[DrVader]

You won't get a clinical job without a residency today, let alone 5 years from now which is when you would graduate pharmacy school. Matter of fact 5 years from now a PGY-2 or PGY-3 will probably become the new standard for clinical jobs so the real question you have to ask yourself is "do I want to risk wasting 4 years of my life and $200k in debt to have a CHANCE of getting a residency, after which I will need to be lucky to get a CHANCE at getting a second year/specialty residency, after which you will need to be lucky to have a CHANCE of finding a real job posting for a clinical job if the market hasn't gone from 99.9% saturated to 100.0% saturated by then. All this assuming that ageism doesn't work against you when applying for residency because older candidates are typically seen as "not teachable/malleable" by residency programs. Just stating the cold hard truth.

Ageism is rife in all of pharmacy, most of the pharmacists I have seen in CVS are basically between 25-40. No career for old people.

 

[mentos]

I don't know about Canada but in the US a PharmD doesn't differentiate you from the other 15,000 new grads that have one.

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

I don't know about Canada but in the US a PharmD doesn't differentiate you from the other 15,000 new grads that have one.

Let alone the 60,000 new PharmDs that will be pumped out on the market while you're going through school.

 

[VictorOfHungerGames]

This is definitely the unpopular opinion/route. I graduated with a bpharm many years ago and I have a hard time finding ANYTHING out of the community setting. Not even casual/part time position at smaller community hospitals due to the lack of "clinical" experience. Hence, I've decided to undergo a post bachelor (non-traditional) PharmD program (while they last), hoping to broaden my expertise and widen my options. FYI: this is in Canada, so market varies from US/others.

1. Is that a good step forward?
2. What can I do to prepare before hand, in terms of pharmacotherapy and kinetics courses since that'll be the main focus. Books? Online courses?

Hospital jobs don't require "clinical" experience haha they require "hospital" experience. The probable reason you can't find anything in hospital isn't b/c of lack of your clinical experience but lack of openings.

 

[lord999]

Even in the province’s rural areas, too little too late unless you are bilingual French. You had plenty of opportunities to convert earlier, and even with the credential, you are far less competitive than a new graduate and would be viewed as desperate.

 

[TateThePharmacist]

Yeah, the only real reason to go back and get a PharmD is if you already worked in a hospital and you were looking into transferring to another hospital. Might be hard to transfer with only a bachelor's in pharmacy, but as others have mentioned having that PharmD won't really differentiate you from all the other new grads that also have that PharmD.

 

[Hapten]

This is definitely the unpopular opinion/route. I graduated with a bpharm many years ago and I have a hard time finding ANYTHING out of the community setting. Not even casual/part time position at smaller community hospitals due to the lack of "clinical" experience. Hence, I've decided to undergo a post bachelor (non-traditional) PharmD program (while they last), hoping to broaden my expertise and widen my options. FYI: this is in Canada, so market varies from US/others.

1. Is that a good step forward?
2. What can I do to prepare before hand, in terms of pharmacotherapy and kinetics courses since that'll be the main focus. Books? Online courses?

How is community pharmacy in Canada? Why do you want to go into hospital? Do you like it or just trying to get out of retail?

Even in the province’s rural areas, too little too late unless you are bilingual French. You had plenty of opportunities to convert earlier, and even with the credential, you are far less competitive than a new graduate and would be viewed as desperate.

What's about people who are working for like 10 years in retail and want to go back to do a PGY1 clinical residency? Is it an even worse idea than a BS Pharm getting a PharmD? This is for American market.

 

[lord999]

How is community pharmacy in Canada? Why do you want to go into hospital? Do you like it or just trying to get out of retail?




What's about people who are working for like 10 years in retail and want to go back to do a PGY1 clinical residency? Is it an even worse idea than a BS Pharm getting a PharmD? This is for American market.

No, if you look at my other posts, I also have a Manitoba (MN to MB through the interchange and have the MB French proficiency endorsement if I choose to attempt Quebec's someday which will be never) which I did have the "pleasure" of doing the PEBC for though I am a US citizen. It was a challenge between my Canadian classmates and the US contingent on graduate school on which process was harder, and it is definitely the Canadian process (and this is the English) I was commenting specifically on the Canadian market when I wrote that.

In the American market, the statistics are grimmer. Most pharmacy directors and chiefs would not hire a non-experienced pharmacist to any institutional practice unless there were specific factors such as undesirability of the job or exceptional relationships involved. There are just too many new graduates that are well-trained and more importantly, impressionable, that we can teach "our" way to in a way that older pharmacists do not acclimate (and this is with me being one of them). This was definitely talked about in pharmacy training in the era that the OP went to school in, to undertake the challenge at this point has a high failure risk for a significant commitment. The OP would be viewed as someone more wanting a job than this particular job at any institutional interview and would be at a significant disadvantage and insurmountable in competitive areas of the country (both Canada or the US). If I were Canadian, I would get the bilingual endorsement and get into the Quebec monopoly as it is a closed market like California in the US.

 

[mentos]

How is community pharmacy in Canada? Why do you want to go into hospital? Do you like it or just trying to get out of retail?




What's about people who are working for like 10 years in retail and want to go back to do a PGY1 clinical residency? Is it an even worse idea than a BS Pharm getting a PharmD? This is for American market.

I doubt any Americans who have been in retail for 10 years want to quit their job to take a huge paycut and do a residency. They have bills to pay and kids to raise. If they quit their retail job, they'll lose their high salary and vacation time. There is a high chance that they would never get their old job back. If they do, it would be a huge paycut and their vacation time would reset. If they complete residency, there is a high chance they wouldn't get a hospital job. They might not even get hired back for retail. There is absolutely no reason to do this. If these people wanted to do residency, they should have done it 10 years ago.