USF COP Class of 2022

[Phytea]

Just got accepted a week ago, looking for my cohort!

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Members don't see this ad.

 

[handsomedoctor]

Letter to the Student:
I really like what you say. Please elaborate more on anything in life and pharmacy. I could learn a lot.
Speaking as a PY4 student on their last rotation, I think your cohorts are too busy "studying for exams." LOL. It's a thing here (studying for exams), the excuse I get most tired of hearing from students in general who attend here (professional college admission notwithstanding). Another possibility is that students are too busy with the CS/CS/HG 679: Telepharmacy bill. For pharmacy in general, an appropriate promotional slogan would be: "Trying to keep our jobs and find value for a dying profession since 2008!" (when the oversaturation started with no involvement from pharmacy professional organizations). The slogan: “The future of pharmacy is here“ was borrowed from the American Society of Health systems Pharmacists (ASHP). All the school had to do was add the ellipses and the word "Today" after the word "here," find some faculty desperate for jobs, find an agency (or two) to justify accreditation with naysayers not included as part of the process, write policies and procedures based on a former established pharmacy school, put it in a blender and hit frappe. The schools and the administration will not act unless the public stops enrolling in pharmacy schools, which is not likely to happen for long due to aggressive promotion of each school on its own. ACCP is already mobilizing "education" strategies to let students know of the "many things pharmacists can do," but only few are allowed to do. It's like a Dr. Seuss book, only without the witty rhymes. Only the benefits are illustrated, not the risks, the pitfalls, or the "depressing" stories people normally see on forums like these. Another analogy to fit the same situation: It's like paying for a used car without the buyback guarantee (of paying your student loans); mine are $425,000 not including interest.

Pro-Tip: Watch for aggressive school promotion (as if my previous information was not clear); you may be seeing it already. If you decide to leave the pharmacy school at any time (or decide to transfer to a more prominent pharmacy school), do not tell student services or the ASDAA. Notification to the ASDAA of your transfer will only provide them the opportunity to "encourage" you to stay; this action is done to keep the pharmacy college's enrollment numbers above threshold for educational and accreditation purposes. The ASDAA, the school, the faculty, or the Student Delegates (yes they do get paid to recruit students among other duties) will tell you that you will experience the same challenges wherever you go. The students may also tell you not to say "bad things like that" or some other ad-hominem argument to redirect the conversation at you, even though you were merely speaking the truth. All of these circumstances have happened to me during my time there (2014-2018). This was all done in a position to make me feel vulnerable and less capable as a pharmacist.

It may be the case that employment was gained by students, but the data regarding employment via the Bureau of Labor Statistics (6% job growth between the years of 2016 and 2026 with a 17,400 job increase over that 10-year period) and pharmacy residency match statistics (10-20% match per pharmacy program) suggest otherwise. At our institution, over 50% of our graduates are lost-to-follow-up, much like most poorly-designed clinical trials written by many academic journals (the latter manuscripts I call "JUNK DATA"). The rest the school cannot gain data on alumni job prospects due to lack of response from alumni. From the information you have here, you can form your own conclusion as to why. To proceed, student enrollment management is key to maintaining the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) accreditation standards not only for our school, but also for all colleges of pharmacy pursuing or keeping accreditation. The school will market its strategies based on the intangible concepts of "hope," "trust," and "comfort with uncertainty" rather than justify the institution's own errors via objective data. Pharmacy school enrollees are demanding objective data; therefore, the school must provide such data.

PLRP is THE major research project you are required to finish for graduation (whether working by yourself or with a team of "colleagues," what we call our pharmacy students). If you decide to stick with pharmacy (SDN posts regarding oversaturation, data regarding lack of jobs, etcetera notwithstanding), you are in for a long haul (10-20 years), longer if your credentials are out-of-date. From my pharmacy school experience (and life experience in general) the baby-boomers are not retiring; they are working beyond retirement. I experienced this when I worked as a Pharmacy Technician in 2009-2011 when the oversaturation was peaking. Five of those pharmacists were baby-boomers (and are still working) and the other three were of much older generations and STILL WORKING, which refutes the theory for the demand for pharmacists as opposed to accentuating the "need" for them. The need is there, the demand is not. The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) does not want to tell us that or the pitfall involved in S. 109 (formerly H.R. 592) Provider Status bill along with the fact that once Provider Status is approved, we as pharmacists will be under the same reimbursement criteria as PHYSICIANS. So we will get paid in the same way they do; in other words, hospitals get "dinged" or "fined" for healthcare mistakes involving CMS criteria. If a medical error is determined by CMS under their criteria, you see a decrease in your paycheck along with the doctors that are part of your practice or collaborative practice agreement or health system. This is the "shared responsibility" constantly being referred to, "encouraging" us as healthcare professionals to be part of a team. Not all pharmacists, especially in the community setting, will be able to obtain that kind of training once the bill passes.

FYI: If all goes "well," by well I mean you are inducted into Phi Lambda Sigma, have a high GPA, astounding credentials, and phenomenal references (or just by dumb luck, i.e. Phase II or the Scramble), you may achieve a pharmacy residency (PGY1, PGY2, or both), pharmacy fellowship or research fellowship (most likely through Personnel Placement Services also called PPS, which you have to pay for admission into the ASHP MidYear Clinical Meeting before accessing PPS applications), certificates and certifications (Medication Therapy Management, Certified Diabetes Educator, Certified Geriatric Pharmacist, Board Certified Specialties, Pharmacy Consulting License, and many others), Continuing Education Credits (what we call CEs), and so many others. Even after these achievements, you may still not get A job or THE job you want for that matter. I have seen PGY2s work at Walgreens because they needed employment due to overspecialization (May 2016 was when I met with them); CVS would be a godsend for employment nowadays (with or without the Aetna merge). You can find PGY1s that had to take a position to pay the bills on LinkedIn if you look hard enough; one from our institution, in fact, was accepted into Florida Hospital as a PGY 1 in Pharmacy Practice and floats Part-Time at Publix. Another became a stay-at-home mom after dropping out of a PGY1 pharmacy residency program. Even the recruiters for Walgreens were former PGY1 residents at hospitals because a clinical position was not available or the skills did not match the employer's qualifications (for some arbitrary reason not disclosed to the individual in question). Yes, the Walgreen's recruiter did complete the PGY 1 residency. I would not be surprised if chain stores, independent pharmacies, and Master of Science (MS), Master of Business Administration (MBA), or Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree candidates took up those graduates "'cause they needed a job." You will also be paying credits to keep your job, too (and your license current).

Residency programs (and fellowships) will hire their own, but you have to be the best of the pack in order to get the job, a pack of 2-5 other people with similar credentials (GPA, Leadership Positions, References, etcetera) employed in the same program as you and hundreds of others that are not internal candidates with similar if not higher credentials. With regard to pharmacy residencies for example, a faculty member of ours also had to work at Walgreens for 10 months after completing an Ambulatory Care PGY1 Pharmacy Residency, then achieved a Teaching Certificate in April 2007; this (Walgreens) position was "granted" in July of 2006, around the same month their PGY 1 residency was completed. The induction into Phi Lambda Sigma to "pad your CV" is also by the numbers: the more leadership positions you have, the more regarded you are by your peers. You must have a certain number of leadership positions to be inducted within a year of time; that is also a thing. Also, people have to like you not necessarily respect you in order to "earn" such a title. Some research fellows may have a PhD or higher and may also be gunning for the same job as you. Others have worked in fellowships through Medical Affairs and/or Marketing after working at Walgreens and/or CVS for 5-10 years. Many variables (controlled and uncontrolled) are at work.

If you have made your decision to leave or stay, whether based on your own observations or based on the posts you have seen (including this one), stick with it. If leaving, take the test for your chosen program and don't talk about leaving the PharmD program regardless of the reason or about the oversaturation of graduates and/or lack of jobs; your peers will only ostracize you and not work with you on your PLRP project (or with you in general on team-based projects and class assignments which are team-based as well). Your faculty may send you to the disciplinary committee during your years if such "catastrophizing behavior" continues, even though with blatant irony our profession (inadvertently or not) created the catastrophe in the first place.

Just a few nuggets of information from a "PharmD Candidate" who currently attends the college. That is what we call ourselves, unless the social dynamic has changed without my knowledge. Things change here every year, but some things also stay the same and will never change. Attitude alone does not guarantee jobs, but the school (and our culture) seems to think otherwise, regardless of the level of self-discipline.

My biggest regret is not doing what my heart told me to do, which was to leave Pharmacy School and pursue DO school after USF's (Florida's) MSP3 program, which is the first 2-years of medical school material crammed into one year; FYI it does include Pharmacology. I listened to administration and my preceptors too much rather than too little. I’m not sure how I’m going to play the game long enough to keep a job for the next 10 years to pay this debt off and rectify my own bad decision. I am also ineligible for degree programs as I have overextended my Federal loan eligibility and I am forced to stick it out and pay it all back.

Good luck to you. Now that you embarked on this journey, I hope employment is in your future; it may or may not be the case with me. Given the title of this post, it should be no surprise which college of pharmacy I currently attend. I will be ready for hate comments, silence, and "change your attitude" speeches at the same time. I have more than anecdotal evidence to support my claims. I feel school employment data should be reported within 1-2 years after graduation in addition to graduation data in order to make students feel like the job prospects do exist in addition to the names of ALL graduating PharmD students and where they are employed. This would increase my confidence (and that of so many others) in promoting such a broken profession.

Schools are only as good as their data. Not all that glitters is Green and Gold, more like a muddled sparkly brown color.

RDT, MS
PharmD Candidate 2018

I’ve

Letter to the Student:

Speaking as a PY4 student on their last rotation, I think your cohorts are too busy "studying for exams." LOL. It's a thing here (studying for exams), the excuse I get most tired of hearing from students in general who attend here (professional college admission notwithstanding). Another possibility is that students are too busy with the CS/CS/HG 679: Telepharmacy bill. For pharmacy in general, an appropriate promotional slogan would be: "Trying to keep our jobs and find value for a dying profession since 2008!" (when the oversaturation started with no involvement from pharmacy professional organizations). The slogan: “The future of pharmacy is here“ was borrowed from the American Society of Health systems Pharmacists (ASHP). All the school had to do was add the ellipses and the word "Today" after the word "here," find some faculty desperate for jobs, find an agency (or two) to justify accreditation with naysayers not included as part of the process, write policies and procedures based on a former established pharmacy school, put it in a blender and hit frappe. The schools and the administration will not act unless the public stops enrolling in pharmacy schools, which is not likely to happen for long due to aggressive promotion of each school on its own. ACCP is already mobilizing "education" strategies to let students know of the "many things pharmacists can do," but only few are allowed to do. It's like a Dr. Seuss book, only without the witty rhymes. Only the benefits are illustrated, not the risks, the pitfalls, or the "depressing" stories people normally see on forums like these. Another analogy to fit the same situation: It's like paying for a used car without the buyback guarantee (of paying your student loans); mine are $425,000 not including interest.

Pro-Tip: Watch for aggressive school promotion (as if my previous information was not clear); you may be seeing it already. If you decide to leave the pharmacy school at any time (or decide to transfer to a more prominent pharmacy school), do not tell student services or the ASDAA. Notification to the ASDAA of your transfer will only provide them the opportunity to "encourage" you to stay; this action is done to keep the pharmacy college's enrollment numbers above threshold for educational and accreditation purposes. The ASDAA, the school, the faculty, or the Student Delegates (yes they do get paid to recruit students among other duties) will tell you that you will experience the same challenges wherever you go. The students may also tell you not to say "bad things like that" or some other ad-hominem argument to redirect the conversation at you, even though you were merely speaking the truth. All of these circumstances have happened to me during my time there (2014-2018). This was all done in a position to make me feel vulnerable and less capable as a pharmacist.

It may be the case that employment was gained by students, but the data regarding employment via the Bureau of Labor Statistics (6% job growth between the years of 2016 and 2026 with a 17,400 job increase over that 10-year period) and pharmacy residency match statistics (10-20% match per pharmacy program) suggest otherwise. At our institution, over 50% of our graduates are lost-to-follow-up, much like most poorly-designed clinical trials written by many academic journals (the latter manuscripts I call "JUNK DATA"). The rest the school cannot gain data on alumni job prospects due to lack of response from alumni. From the information you have here, you can form your own conclusion as to why. To proceed, student enrollment management is key to maintaining the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) accreditation standards not only for our school, but also for all colleges of pharmacy pursuing or keeping accreditation. The school will market its strategies based on the intangible concepts of "hope," "trust," and "comfort with uncertainty" rather than justify the institution's own errors via objective data. Pharmacy school enrollees are demanding objective data; therefore, the school must provide such data.

PLRP is THE major research project you are required to finish for graduation (whether working by yourself or with a team of "colleagues," what we call our pharmacy students). If you decide to stick with pharmacy (SDN posts regarding oversaturation, data regarding lack of jobs, etcetera notwithstanding), you are in for a long haul (10-20 years), longer if your credentials are out-of-date. From my pharmacy school experience (and life experience in general) the baby-boomers are not retiring; they are working beyond retirement. I experienced this when I worked as a Pharmacy Technician in 2009-2011 when the oversaturation was peaking. Five of those pharmacists were baby-boomers (and are still working) and the other three were of much older generations and STILL WORKING, which refutes the theory for the demand for pharmacists as opposed to accentuating the "need" for them. The need is there, the demand is not. The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) does not want to tell us that or the pitfall involved in S. 109 (formerly H.R. 592) Provider Status bill along with the fact that once Provider Status is approved, we as pharmacists will be under the same reimbursement criteria as PHYSICIANS. So we will get paid in the same way they do; in other words, hospitals get "dinged" or "fined" for healthcare mistakes involving CMS criteria. If a medical error is determined by CMS under their criteria, you see a decrease in your paycheck along with the doctors that are part of your practice or collaborative practice agreement or health system. This is the "shared responsibility" constantly being referred to, "encouraging" us as healthcare professionals to be part of a team. Not all pharmacists, especially in the community setting, will be able to obtain that kind of training once the bill passes.

FYI: If all goes "well," by well I mean you are inducted into Phi Lambda Sigma, have a high GPA, astounding credentials, and phenomenal references (or just by dumb luck, i.e. Phase II or the Scramble), you may achieve a pharmacy residency (PGY1, PGY2, or both), pharmacy fellowship or research fellowship (most likely through Personnel Placement Services also called PPS, which you have to pay for admission into the ASHP MidYear Clinical Meeting before accessing PPS applications), certificates and certifications (Medication Therapy Management, Certified Diabetes Educator, Certified Geriatric Pharmacist, Board Certified Specialties, Pharmacy Consulting License, and many others), Continuing Education Credits (what we call CEs), and so many others. Even after these achievements, you may still not get A job or THE job you want for that matter. I have seen PGY2s work at Walgreens because they needed employment due to overspecialization (May 2016 was when I met with them); CVS would be a godsend for employment nowadays (with or without the Aetna merge). You can find PGY1s that had to take a position to pay the bills on LinkedIn if you look hard enough; one from our institution, in fact, was accepted into Florida Hospital as a PGY 1 in Pharmacy Practice and floats Part-Time at Publix. Another became a stay-at-home mom after dropping out of a PGY1 pharmacy residency program. Even the recruiters for Walgreens were former PGY1 residents at hospitals because a clinical position was not available or the skills did not match the employer's qualifications (for some arbitrary reason not disclosed to the individual in question). Yes, the Walgreen's recruiter did complete the PGY 1 residency. I would not be surprised if chain stores, independent pharmacies, and Master of Science (MS), Master of Business Administration (MBA), or Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree candidates took up those graduates "'cause they needed a job." You will also be paying credits to keep your job, too (and your license current).

Residency programs (and fellowships) will hire their own, but you have to be the best of the pack in order to get the job, a pack of 2-5 other people with similar credentials (GPA, Leadership Positions, References, etcetera) employed in the same program as you and hundreds of others that are not internal candidates with similar if not higher credentials. With regard to pharmacy residencies for example, a faculty member of ours also had to work at Walgreens for 10 months after completing an Ambulatory Care PGY1 Pharmacy Residency, then achieved a Teaching Certificate in April 2007; this (Walgreens) position was "granted" in July of 2006, around the same month their PGY 1 residency was completed. The induction into Phi Lambda Sigma to "pad your CV" is also by the numbers: the more leadership positions you have, the more regarded you are by your peers. You must have a certain number of leadership positions to be inducted within a year of time; that is also a thing. Also, people have to like you not necessarily respect you in order to "earn" such a title. Some research fellows may have a PhD or higher and may also be gunning for the same job as you. Others have worked in fellowships through Medical Affairs and/or Marketing after working at Walgreens and/or CVS for 5-10 years. Many variables (controlled and uncontrolled) are at work.

If you have made your decision to leave or stay, whether based on your own observations or based on the posts you have seen (including this one), stick with it. If leaving, take the test for your chosen program and don't talk about leaving the PharmD program regardless of the reason or about the oversaturation of graduates and/or lack of jobs; your peers will only ostracize you and not work with you on your PLRP project (or with you in general on team-based projects and class assignments which are team-based as well). Your faculty may send you to the disciplinary committee during your years if such "catastrophizing behavior" continues, even though with blatant irony our profession (inadvertently or not) created the catastrophe in the first place.

Just a few nuggets of information from a "PharmD Candidate" who currently attends the college. That is what we call ourselves, unless the social dynamic has changed without my knowledge. Things change here every year, but some things also stay the same and will never change. Attitude alone does not guarantee jobs, but the school (and our culture) seems to think otherwise, regardless of the level of self-discipline.

My biggest regret is not doing what my heart told me to do, which was to leave Pharmacy School and pursue DO school after USF's (Florida's) MSP3 program, which is the first 2-years of medical school material crammed into one year; FYI it does include Pharmacology. I listened to administration and my preceptors too much rather than too little. I’m not sure how I’m going to play the game long enough to keep a job for the next 10 years to pay this debt off and rectify my own bad decision. I am also ineligible for degree programs as I have overextended my Federal loan eligibility and I am forced to stick it out and pay it all back.

Good luck to you. Now that you embarked on this journey, I hope employment is in your future; it may or may not be the case with me. Given the title of this post, it should be no surprise which college of pharmacy I currently attend. I will be ready for hate comments, silence, and "change your attitude" speeches at the same time. I have more than anecdotal evidence to support my claims. I feel school employment data should be reported within 1-2 years after graduation in addition to graduation data in order to make students feel like the job prospects do exist in addition to the names of ALL graduating PharmD students and where they are employed. This would increase my confidence (and that of so many others) in promoting such a broken profession.

Schools are only as good as their data. Not all that glitters is Green and Gold, more like a muddled sparkly brown color.

RDT, MS
PharmD Candidate 2018

I really