<p>When making a decision of whether to choose the path leading towards a Pharm.D. versus a BSN/RN what should the relevant factors be? If the main objective is to find a career that would allow one to help others, how can pharmacy be seen as fitting that characteristic? Also, what is the current job market and salary for each (especially earning power)?</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>In pharmacy your job is to make sure for one thing the doctor isn’t prescribing a lethal dose/cocktail of medicines and to provide information to patients to be sure they understand the directions and possible affects of the medications.</p>
<p>I’ve heard anecdotal stories from bother nursing and pharm grads have difficulty finding employment out of school. It may be necessary to relocate to rural areas where there is less competition for positions.</p>
<p>Pharmacy has significantly better earning potential than nursing but pharmacy is 4 years of professional school where as nursing is just a BS possibly even an AS.</p>
<p>If you want to help people, that is leaning more towards nursing. As sschoe said the pharmacy route will have better earning potential, however a nurse’s salary is nothing to scoff at either. I’ve seen nurses get paid close to six figures in major cities. A pharmacists working hours may be more normal than a nurses, but that really depends where you work. A small physician’s office will usually be 9-5 Monday-Friday and maybe Saturdays, but like 9-2 or something like that. However at a large hospital, you can expect to work rotational shifts. So you may end up working from 10 p.m. til like 7 or 8 a.m., however the benefits may be better.</p>
<p>Nursing can be better than pharmacy if you can get into a specialty like anesthesiology. CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist) can even make more than some doctors. However it is competitive to get into to.</p>
<p>Also Nursing Phd’s are a raising thing. They might be the future of primary care if they keep fighting for the same rights as doctors.</p>
<p>The thing is that the nursing field will be improving, while pharmacy is going downhill. </p>
<p>Besides earning potential, I think the most crucial thing to consider is the environment you will be working in.</p>
<p>Nursing will be more hands on and dirty work. </p>
<p>Pharmacy will be more clean.</p>