<p>Pharmacists make a great deal of money, and deserve it. Those guys bust their balls. I know PharmD’s who sit in the library until 3am every weekend, giving up their studies long after us engineering students filter out at 10 to go party.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t underestimate the pharmacy curriculum or demand. All medical degrees are fairly rigorous. It also seems that pharmacy had alot of PhDs as opposed to M.D.s. Maybe it’s a licensing thing, I don’t know. Pharmacist salaries will likely be higher than engineer’s forever - it’s a medical degree.</p>
<p>However, someone was pointing at careerbuilder for pharmacist and engineer salaires - this is an unreliable source; no white-collar professional goes on career builder to find a job. Pharmacists, engineers, and lawyers are only three examples out of many professions where the only way to get a job is through networking. Those posts for senior engineer (which generally means the engineer has worked at least 4 years, btw) are rarely answered.</p>
<p>There are alot of pharmacy students who seem to plan on doing a masters in ChemE. Is this referring to chemical engineering? I find it difficult to believe you can jump straight into a master’s in ChemE. Alot of remedial coursework would be required if so. There is a whole laundry list of prerequisites to understand the fundamental basics that all engineering students learn. Perhaps the masters requirements are different? I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Also, engineers must have a bachelor’s degree to be licensed as an engineer. You can’t skip the BS and obtain your Professional Engineering license. Also, a fairly difficult (but doable) test is required to obtain engineering licensing, as well as three years experience as an engineer. I just can’t see a pharmacist jumping into ChemE through part time studies. It would take upwards of 6-7 years to become a fully licensed chemical engineer after the pharm degree (4-5 years school - 1 year gen eds + 3 years work as engineer).</p>
<p>I say get your PharmD, maybe a chem minor or something. A full blown ChemE MS degree would just be a pain in the ass that you don’t want to deal with.</p>
<p>That program1 guy was quite a card. I have never seen such bitterness. I am thankful I switched my major from Engineering to Pharmacy, man I hate arrogance. You think you are special because you take higher calculus and program in c++? What a silly person that guy is. Anyway, I have worked at Walgreens for almost 5 years and I love it, I really enjoy retail and I am very excited to start my new major. Right now I am majoring for a Bachelors in Arts in Chemistry, I switched from Computer Science. I cannot wait to start my chemistry classes, so fun^^!!</p>
<p>Oh and program1, if you ever come back and wonder why pharmacists get paid more than computer science grads - When you make a mistake in a program its called a bug and can be fixed in a patch, but you can’t fix death, you can’t recompile a wrong prescription, and you certainly can’t patch a loss because of a wrong prescription…</p>
<p>TheodoreGrey is mistaken. Few engineers outside of civil actually ever become PE certified; most engineers work under industrial exemptions to licensing laws. Also, you don’t need a degree of any type for PE certification if you have enough years experience; you just have to take the license exams in California or New York after meeting the experience requirements and then apply for license by comity. </p>
<p>The PharmD degree would likely count as a science degree, making it possible to get licensed in many many states. Once you’re licensed in one state, there’s very little another state can do to stop you from working if you’re work is interstate commerce(all ChemE is) because the federal government has ruled in favor of the industrial exemption.</p>
That is because a PharmD depends largely on a person’s ability to memorize. It’s simple rote memorization. Less of it is “talent” and more of it is the ability to emulate a human hard drive. That’s it. It’s a health profession; chances are they don’t want you to go “engineering” your own solution.
Also, I don’t think pharmacists make a decent amount of money. That figure could be matched by some ■■■■■■ in the Army that makes Captain in 42-48 months with a BAH for a high cost region. All that guy needs is a heartbeat and not to have committed a felony. That ■■■■■■ will probably make Lieutenant Colonel as long as he doesn’t mess up epically. Seen this happen far too many times…</p>
<p>Pharmacists make more or less 100k, depending on experience, practice setting (retail, hospital, etc), negotiation skills, etc. Managers and directors could make in the range of 115-150k, again depending on experience, setting, and the responsibilities. Salaries trended upwards from the 90’s to the past decade along with inflation. However, due to the increased number of pharmacy schools opening, and existing schools opening satellite campuses and allowing more seats in their classrooms, the demand for pharmacists do not seem to be as high as it was maybe 5 years ago. This decrease in demand is lowering salaries for competitive spots in practice settings in some areas. </p>
<p>Pharmacists usually start out high, and make maybe a little more over time. However, programmers and engineers usually start out low after college and could move up higher with experience.</p>
<p>If you ever worked in a retail pharmacy or hospital pharmacy, you will know why they are paid ‘decently.’ In the retail setting, they are paid to sell medications (many of which are expensive) by charging customers out of pocket or their insurance companies with prescription claims. Needless to say, retail pharmacies make a lot of money, so the money given to pharmacists isn’t all that much in comparison to the net profits that they generate. A retail pharmacy could probably break even paying a pharmacist’s salary with benefits in a week or two depending on its volume. They are also paid to be nice when customers are yelling at them to hurry up and count those pills and get someone else (insurance) to pay for it =)</p>
<p>Hospitals pharmacies could be busy. Pharmacists are paid well to transcribe illegible scribbles written by prescribers on medical charts into their computer systems in order to generate a label and slap it on a medication. Sound easy? Well they have to do it correctly and maybe hundreds to thousands of them. Not only that, in hospitals, they also order TPN’s, intravenous piggybacks, chemotherapy, investigational medications. Knowing how to properly check compatibility and stability of IV admixtures, review proper IV infusion rates and administration routes, and drug-drug/drug-lab/drug-allergy/dose range/therapeutic duplication issues require much knowledge and experience. Many people who go to hospitals may have many meds on their profile that could range from 1 med to 30 meds. A nurse, doctor, and surgeon may call the pharmacist for questions related to medication administration such as “the patient has only 2 lines running, but has 6 different IV’s to give around the clock including TPN, and just had a blood transfusion an hour ago. How should the antibiotic be administered with only 2 lines and is it okay to give after the transfusion?”</p>
<p>Pharmacists’ high salaries are becoming a thing of the past. No other country pays pharmacists anything remotely close to what they get paid in the US relative to their per capita income and new graduates are expected to find about 20% unemployment soon. This could climb to 30% by 2015. The harsh reality is that the pharmacy schools are teaching students more than they need to be since only a few pharmacists work in clinical capacities.</p>
<p>The aggregate demand for pharmacists is currently about 3.2. It’s projected to hit about 3.0 next year indicating equilibrium between supply and demand. In 2015, there will be a 50% increase in supply resulting in massive unemployment. It’ll get as bad as law.</p>
<p>The intellect involved in my engineering corses was 3 times higher than that involved in my pharmacy degree. I first got my BS/MS in structural engineering, worked for a few months, came to the realization engineers get no respect when it comes to salary and decided to go back to school for something easy that pays well. Pharmacy school was a breeze compared to engineering. In pharmacy school there was never a time when I had to pull an all nighter, whereas, in engineering school it was te norm. Now, working as a pharmacist, I make 2-3 times as much as an engineer and work half as much. I have great respect for engineers because the education involved is of higher intellect than pharmacy and engineers work a minimum of 60+ hours a week for a disrespectfully minuscule salary. Engineers do have a great deal more to keep up with than pharmacists and I am speaking through experience. Engineers never ever have the freedom to design what they want how they want! There is absolutely no justice in a pharmacist getting paid more than an engineer but since that’s how it is…might as well join them.</p>
<p>I am wondering how you can make statements about Engineers and Pharmacist and compare the fields based on your general classifications of each. For engineers, there are many fields and titles which have many pay structures. As an example, there are network engineers, senior NE’s, architectual engineers, engineers of knowledge with certain networks or products (i.e. Cisco, Juniper, 3M), there are engineers that monitor networks, security engineers. The point is funny how many here talk about engineers without defining the true roles so that pay and education are understood. Many engineers can be given large salaries without 4 yeardegrees, they can do it with certification and 2 year associate degrees. Some engineers designing products and buildings of course need higher degrees, but please be more clear. </p>
<p>As for Pharmicist, again, many are vague here. We have pharmicist that do research, retail, sale for pharmaceutical companies, etc. </p>
<p>I just believe that their is too much testerostrone running here about who is better. I think that if you can sacrifice your life for years to get a degree at what you love to do, be proud and passionate, and do it well. </p>
<p>I am thrilled because I have worked with many top engineers in the technology industry, and now have my wife going to Pharmacy school to do great things in medicine</p>
<p>My experience is quite the opposite. Perhaps you majored in the wrong type of engineering? Were you a sanitation engineer?</p>
<p>I was originally in a PharmD program straight from high school. I hated the rote memorization aspect of it and it was all quite boring. I switched majors to Computer Science early on and, boy, it was the right choice.</p>
<p>I now work as a software engineer for a smaller telecom defense contractor. We pay entry level software engineers with a BS Computer Science 80-120k/year starting (this is NOT in a high cost area of living either). I work 4 days a week and I wear flip flips, board shorts, and a t-shirt to work. Plus, my employer is incredibly Reserve friendly so I am able to easily fulfill my reserve military obligation and rack up my federal military retirement benefits on top of my private sector pay.</p>
<p>I would consider myself an average CS major in terms of the class distribution as well.</p>
<p>For a minimum of 6 years for a PharmD (from high school), it’s not that great of a deal.</p>
<p>How tough is it to become a pharm tech (or as CVS likes to call it, pharmacy service associate) during preprofessional year 1 (0-6 pharm school)? I know Pharm techs get slave wages, but I can use the experience and a bit of pocket cash.</p>
<p>I had a couple of roommates who were PharmDs and they were always complaining about how tough the job market is now. Plus, for that many years of schooling and presumably a ton in student loans, 100k is not that high of a salary. </p>
<p>I have heard bad things about Pharm and Dentistry and both seem like bad professions to pursue right now.</p>
<p>Hmm… Let’s see. I am a firm believer than anyone who’s job can easily be replaced by machinery will eventually be cut out one way or another. and honestly, most of the retail pharmacist’s jobs sound like they could, quite easily…</p>
<p>When we are paying so much for medical services, its ridiculous to be paying such high salaries to pharmacists. Eventually, one greedy pharmacist and a techie from silicon valley are going to team up to sell drugs online effectively with just one pharmacist to a very broad audience. I’m betting they will be able to undercut the current industry by half or something - resulting in a collapse of the industry. Its not the only industry this will happen to - I think it will happen to many eventually. Especially those that are overpaid for silly work.</p>
<p>Um do you even know what the responsibilities of a pharmacist are?</p>
<p>Pharmacists do manage dispensing drugs to people. But they are also there to answer questions that people have about their medications and to make sure that they are getting the correct dosage. They also have to verify things with the insurance company. I’d love to see a machine do that!</p>
<p>Claims processing is mostly automated and handled by the large PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Management) networks in many cases. I have never talk with a pharmacist about a prescription - how would you do that? Discuss it over the counter while the other customers overhear your medical problems? Plus it’s the doc that writes the script and the pharmacist fills it.</p>
<p>When pharmacist were independent, that was different. Now they’ve mostly all sold-out to big chains which has destroyed the profession - great for those who cashed out - not so great for new people coming into the field.</p>
<p>I actually had a chat with a pharmacist this summer about a sleep remedy - but it was in Switzerland where they still have real pharmacist.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Why do they make so much? And will it continue through year 2012 when I graduate college?
~ 200K of student loans with a ten year payment plan equating to a little over 400K. My friends who graduated with the same BS chose to pursue a masters earns just as much minus the student loans. It’s a tough market saturated right now, so do it for the passion & the differences you can make.</p></li>
<li><p>People say that pharmacists’ role will evolve. What do they mean by this as in will their routine change or what?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There’s so many subspecialties just like for MDs, and it’s constantly being pushed. The role as a dispenser will likely be less with improvements in technology, perhaps for the better. Doing ~200 scripts a day/pharmacist, I’m not sure what time is there left to do what we went into the profession for. </p>
<ol>
<li>How long does it take after high school to become one?
Some take 6 with really perfect GPAs (y not just go for MD as it’s the same prereqs?), but as the profession changes demanding a more clinical role, it seems that 8 years is the average then some more for residency.</li>
</ol>
<p>My experience, went into pharmacy not understanding what it was really about, graduated still unsure after all those years of schooling and interning, and found myself in a completely different situation than I had ever imagined. I worked in retail as an intern and tried retail out for a month after graduation (wasn’t bad or good, just really drained by the end of the day but loved the people interaction) and luckily landed a clinical position that still had the patient interaction plus other healthcare professionals that I learn as I go from. Love my job because it’s challenging, constantly makes me look up things and learning as I teach others, and being the drug expert keeping patients safe and advocating for them makes me glad I went into this profession. Income wise, sounds like a lot of money but factor in loans and years of schooling (when you could be working), it all comes out to be the same. Passing on my dads advice " chose the profession you are passionate about because spending 8-9 hours a day can seem like an eternity if you don’t enjoy it". And my own experience, don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and more doors will open up.</p>