Pharmacy - Help Needed

yoyojc

I really need help from someone studying pharmacy or who has studied it or knows about the world of pharmacy...
So I kind of decided I want to study Pharmacy but recent experiences have been overwhelmingly negative. I worked in a Pharmacy and enjoyed it alot but the pharmacists were bluntly pessimistic about the salary? Same was said by an Aunt of mine who is a technician in a pharmacy? This is really worrying as I work extremely hard in school and to be quite honest one of the reasons I'd like to be a pharmacist is that they are well paid (amongst others obviously)..

Is the industry dying or are they just hit by the recession like everyone else? Will pay rise? I'd really like some help with these questions as I'm really getting worried

Thanks alot

brandom

I am a pharmacist, qualified about 10 years ago, and I would have to say that the future does not look all that bright, I think that if you are going into the profession with the expectation of a high salary you may well be sadly disappointed. Since the new schools of pharmacy opened and the numbers of graduates have increased the starting salaries have dropped accordingly, and unless there is a dramatic change in our economy I do not see that trend reversing. Also there have been round after round of cuts in payments from the HSE and an ever increasing amount of paperwork and red tape to deal with it, and this is coming from somebody who actually likes their job, many of the people from my graduating class who went into it for the money have left the business and retrained elsewhere.

Cleite

brandom wrote: »

many of the people from my graduating class who went into it for the money have left the business and retrained elsewhere.

Hi, don't want to hijack the thread, but would dearly like to know what people have retrained as? I ask for a friend who qualified about 20 years ago in the UK (community pharmacy I think? - I'm not a pharmacist so not sure!!). She has been working as a pharmacist in France for about 15 years but the future is looking bleak for pharmacists here too!! She would like to move to Ireland or the UK (with 2 teenagers) but feels she would need to retrain in order to have a secure job. She would have loved to do speech therapy, but feels there aren't enough jobs to count on getting a decent position. So, any thoughts on what her options are?? She's not interested in business - she loves the contact with patients. She's prepared to do a completely new degree, but it would be a shame, wouldn't it? If there were MA's or PhDs that she could do based on her qualifications and that would keep her in contact with the public, it would be ideal...

brandom

Most went back to study medicine, one became a teacher and a couple more did business degrees, so probably not a whole lot to help your friend there, I hope she does figure something out .

yoyojc

brandom wrote: »

I am a pharmacist, qualified about 10 years ago, and I would have to say that the future does not look all that bright, I think that if you are going into the profession with the expectation of a high salary you may well be sadly disappointed. Since the new schools of pharmacy opened and the numbers of graduates have increased the starting salaries have dropped accordingly, and unless there is a dramatic change in our economy I do not see that trend reversing. Also there have been round after round of cuts in payments from the HSE and an ever increasing amount of paperwork and red tape to deal with it, and this is coming from somebody who actually likes their job, many of the people from my graduating class who went into it for the money have left the business and retrained elsewhere.

Thanks for your help. Obviously it's the same story with 90 percent of professions nowadays, do you think it could pick up again? I am really unsure as to whether I should study Pharmacy... is it like the construction industry in that things will do a three sixty and go back to good salaries?

partyatmygaff

Construction suffered from a nose dive in demand that could reverse just as quick (though it probably won't).

Demand for healthcare doesn't change according to the economy and pharmacists are still needed and will be needed for long to come. I'm only a 4th year student (Trinity) so I only have a vague idea of what the job situation is like and salaries are almost always a closely-guarded secret (for some reason). What I hear is that graduate pharmacists entering a full-time role get paid a salary of roughly €38-40k. Locums at roughly €25/hour. This is all for community pharmacy. Hospital pharmacists in Ireland get paid less and there's the small problem of actually finding a job in hospital pharmacy. All in all, for a graduate job, it's not exactly terrible as salaries go but it's nowhere near as good as it was a few years ago.

Outside of practice however, the sky's the limit. It's the road less taken and career paths are nowhere near as linear and convenient but the end results can be good with enough effort to make them so.

yoyojc

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Construction suffered from a nose dive in demand that could reverse just as quick (though it probably won't).

Demand for healthcare doesn't change according to the economy and pharmacists are still needed and will be needed for long to come. I'm only a 4th year student (Trinity) so I only have a vague idea of what the job situation is like and salaries are almost always a closely-guarded secret (for some reason). What I hear is that graduate pharmacists entering a full-time role get paid a salary of roughly €38-40k. Locums at roughly €25/hour. This is all for community pharmacy. Hospital pharmacists in Ireland get paid less and there's the small problem of actually finding a job in hospital pharmacy. All in all, for a graduate job, it's not exactly terrible as salaries go but it's nowhere near as good as it was a few years ago.

Outside of practice however, the sky's the limit. It's the road less taken and career paths are nowhere near as linear and convenient but the end results can be good with enough effort to make them so.

By 'outside of practice' are you referring to working in Industry? Another question I have is - are there many jobs for Pharmacists in pharmaceutical companies... there are so many pharmaceutical companies in Ireland surely Pharmacists are employed for health and safety etc? The money there looks good?

SeaDaily

partyatmygaff wrote: »

What I hear is that graduate pharmacists entering a full-time role get paid a salary of roughly €38-40k. Locums at roughly €25/hour. This is all for community pharmacy.

Is this for pharmacists coming straight out of college and into a job? And if it is, what sort of percentage of graduates have you heard are getting jobs straight after graduating?

All sounds pretty low. I'm only lowly band 6 in the UK though.