Compare pharmacy to other professions.  Yes you can always get a job
(somewhere that is) and pharmacy is well suited as a part-time job.
I worked both retail and hospital pharmacy.  I worked eighteen years in a
hospital.  As far as retail pharmacy goes the working conditions are bad.
First unless the store is real busy they will not hire you anyway.  Any
place that I worked in retail I was always constantly busy and I was darn
lucky to get caught up.  There was no scheduled lunch time or breaks.
Usually there was no time off from work.  If you missed a day due to
sickness, you had to make up the hours.

Then the pharmacy schools go about creating two classes of pharmacists.  The
regular working all hours and weekends pill counting guys and a clinical
pharmacist who only wants to do "professional work" like advising
physicians.

I read that today the average pharmacist spends one-third of his/her time
just doing paperwork and calling insurance companies.  In a profession like
medicine or law clerks are hired to do the paperwork.  When lunch time
arrives, the doctor or lawyer just takes off and goes out to eat.  That is
really a lot better than trying to count pills with one hand and handle
greasy chicken with the other!  There should not be a lot of job stress in
pharmacy but there is because of the lack of help and organization.  Its not
like we are actors in the TV show ER where we are busy doing CPR.  We are
basically taking the medicine out of stock bottles and putting them into
smaller labeled containers. The counseling part of our job isn't done very
well as we are too busy doing all the manual dispensing ourselves and don't
have time to spend with our patients.

I respectfully disagree. If almost 2/3 of the pharmacy graduates were NOT
women we would have an even greater shortage of pharmacists. It seems that
more men are being counseled to go into other fields. The pharmacist
shortage is due to several factors: (1) lack of pharmacy school space (2)
burn-out of current pharmacists
(3) poor working conditions - no breaks or lunch most places (4) too much
job stress (5) too heavy an RX load due to pharmacist shortage, etc.

How many of you REALLY recommend pharmacy as a career choice today with all
that is going on in the industry?

Pau

Almost 2/3 of current graduates are female. The majority of
Pharmacists work in retail, they don't seem to care for it very much.
I have noticed that women who dislike their field of endeavor often
choose to retire or work part time when and if they have children.
There is the possiblity that this could be a major factor in the
Pharmacist shortage.

Dave

A brief item in the latest issue of "Pharmacy Times" said that the
pharmacist shortage continues unabated. The article estimated that, for
example, the US chain drug industry is short 5500 pharmacists. The cause, it
was suggested, is the lenghtening of the pharmacy program by one academic
year to make the Pharm.D. degree.

What else is contributing to the shortage, and to what degree do you think
it is? Lack of secondary school training, interest, and/or ability in
science? Tuition costs? I know that there was a Congressional study on the
issue in the late 1990s, but I'd like to hear from the field. What do you
think?

Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
3609 Caldera Boulevard Apartment 122
Midland TX 79707-2872 USA
432-694-6208
ptrusten@cox.net

"There are two cardinal sins, from which
all the others spring: impatience and laziness."

                                         ---Franz Kafka