Questions about CA pharmacy

[supersomebody]

I'm new to this board and I'm a prepharm student in California. Seems for whatever reason people mention CA as an exception to a bunch of stuff. Something about unions? What's going on there?

Also, are the prospects in SoCal near LA as doom and gloom as this board makes pharm out to be?

Last thing I want to ask is about whether or not residency would be worth it in my state. Seems like a lot of people are having a hard time getting consistent hours and schedules. Is that a retail problem? If I work in a hospital setting or something more specialized, will I find more 9-5 type stuff? Would the pay be lower than retail?

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[Pharmacy is a Scam]

I'm new to this board and I'm a prepharm student in California. Seems for whatever reason people mention CA as an exception to a bunch of stuff. Something about unions? What's going on there?

Also, are the prospects in SoCal near LA as doom and gloom as this board makes pharm out to be?

Last thing I want to ask is about whether or not residency would be worth it in my state. Seems like a lot of people are having a hard time getting consistent hours and schedules. Is that a retail problem? If I work in a hospital setting or something more specialized, will I find more 9-5 type stuff? Would the pay be lower than retail?

You’re in a position that all of us envy: young, malleable and most importantly NOT committed to pharmacy school yet. Do NOT apply to pharmacy school, you will thank all of us down the road.

 

[supersomebody]

You’re in a position that all of us envy: young, malleable and most importantly NOT committed to pharmacy school yet. Do NOT apply to pharmacy school, you will thank all of us down the road.

Why? Also do you have any input regarding my specific situation? Have you struggled in the field after graduating?

 

[PharmtoCS]

Also, are the prospects in SoCal near LA as doom and gloom as this board makes pharm out to be?

SoCal was already saturated BEFORE West Coast University, Keck Graduate Institute, Chapman, and (soon) Ketchum graduated their first classes.

 

[supersomebody]

SoCal was already saturated BEFORE West Coast University, Keck Graduate Institute, Chapman, and (soon) Ketchum graduated their first classes.

Is it saturated across all professions in pharmacy or is it specifically bad in retail or hospital or something

 

[PharmtoCS]

Is it saturated across all professions in pharmacy or is it specifically bad in retail or hospital or something

Pretty much all areas of pharmacy. Hospitals in SoCal will toss out your resume if you didn’t complete a residency. Even some residency grads have to settle for retail jobs.

 

[supersomebody]

Pretty much all areas of pharmacy. Hospitals in SoCal will toss out your resume if you didn’t complete a residency. Even some residency grads have to settle for retail jobs.

Does going to a better school have any impact on prospects? What are the benefits of going to ucsf vs keck

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

Is it saturated across all professions in pharmacy or is it specifically bad in retail or hospital or something

All subdisciplines in pharmacy are massively saturated. Every pre-pharm goes into pharmacy school thinking that they will become a unicorn “clinical pharmacist” but the reality is that it is easier said than done. There are many things that have to go your way before you even hit the job market such as getting enough experiences during pharmacy school to be competitive for residencies and matching for a residency. Then you have to outcompete all the other 5,000+ new residency grads and 15,000 overall grads for around 3,000 positions each year, the majority of which are in the retail setting. There can be books about why not to go into pharmacy but I’ll cut it short and just say that this is the only forum on SDN with a “job market” subforum and that’s all you need to know about this profession.

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

Does going to a better school have any impact on prospects? What are the benefits of going to ucsf vs keck

What do you call a valedictorian from UCSF? A pharmacist. What do you call a 2.0 student from Keck? A pharmacist.

Consumers will pay top dollar to see a good doctor or hire a good lawyer but they don’t give a crap about or even care who their pharmacist is. They just care about how fast their meds are filled. From an employer’s standpoint then, who will you hire? The pharmacist willing to work for the least pay, not the pharmacist who is the “most qualified.”

 

[PharmtoCS]

Does going to a better school have any impact on prospects? What are the benefits of going to ucsf vs keck

Only marginally. Residency is incredibly competitive. Many of the top students this year with top GPAs, work experience, extracurriculars, etc. from top schools didn’t match.

 

[supersomebody]

Only marginally. Residency is incredibly competitive. Many of the top students this year with top GPAs, work experience, extracurriculars, etc. from top schools didn’t match.

Graduation Rate and Graduate Performance

Graduation rate Post-graduate plans American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) residency match NAPLEX results for first-time takers # of students in entering class % graduated in 4 years (transformed 3-year curriculum*) % graduated in > 4 years ( > 3 years in transformed...

pharmd.ucsf.edu

Do the match rates on their site mean much? Do match rates vary greatly from school to school? What do residency programs look at when accepting new hires?

 

[TellingTruth]

Graduation Rate and Graduate Performance

Graduation rate Post-graduate plans American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) residency match NAPLEX results for first-time takers # of students in entering class % graduated in 4 years (transformed 3-year curriculum*) % graduated in > 4 years ( > 3 years in transformed...

pharmd.ucsf.edu

Do the match rates on their site mean much? Do match rates vary greatly from school to school? What do residency programs look at when accepting new hires?

I don't think you understand what a residency is. A residency is essentially 1 year of on the job training for various clinical areas that pays between 1/3 to 1/2 of a full pharmacist salary. A residency does not guarantee a job, especially with 13 pharmacy schools in California graduating between 50 and 200 students each. Their match rates just means X% of their students scored a residency and doesn't say much about their job prospects. Match rates will vary greatly from school to school, ASHP stated around 60% of applicants match last year (I believe) and its likely many who didn't match didn't have backup plans. Let me repeat: There are 13 pharmacy schools in California. You will likely not get a job in a decent city in the next 3 or 4 years if you were to enter pharmacy school now. Some of these schools just started graduating students this year so we haven't even seen the full effect of the mad expansion yet.

 

[supersomebody]

I don't think you understand what a residency is.

I know what a residency is, I'm responding to a guy who was specifically saying that getting a residency is competitive and that top students don't match.

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

I know what a residency is, I'm responding to a guy who was specifically saying that getting a residency is competitive and that top students don't match.

The way you talk about it is already a dead giveaway that you don’t know as much as you think you do.

Residency does not give you a leg up for jobs anymore compared to no residency training. If anything, it provides you an avenue to NETWORK with pharmacists at the health system you match with and that’s pretty much it, because as I mentioned residency-trained grads are a dime a dozen now. Similar to how someone who went to a “top” pharmacy school has no advantage compared to someone who went to a diploma mill, someone who did a “prestigious/competitive” residency has no advantage compared to someone who did a run of the mill residency. If there were any “advantage” it would be primarily geographic and has nothing to do with the quality of the program.

 

[AM77]

I'm currently pharmacist working at a retail pharmacy in California. By the time I graduated from pharmacy school in 2011, I contacted the pharmacy supervisor of Walgreens for the district that I was interning at in LA County. He told me that all pharmacist positions have been filled. Keep in mind that this was back in 2011. I had to look for jobs outside of LA County. When I was an intern pharmacist for Walgreens during the summer of 2008, my year was the very last year that Walgreen offered the summer internship program in Southern California. This goes for all Walgreens districts in Southern California for all intern pharmacy students (who were currently students at pharmacy school), and this was all the way back in 2008. Does that give you a better picture of how the pharmacy climate was back then? Do you think the situation has improved several years down the road? I would have to say, "No." The pharmacy job market has gotten far, far worse. (Don't even consider looking into the OC. That region was saturated way before I attended pharmacy school.) The only thing that's different today is that we only had 7 pharmacy schools back. Today we have 13 and growing. The number of pharmacists have already exceeded the number of jobs in California. Even the rural areas such as Central Valley are getting quite bad as well. New grads are lucky if they could even find per diem or part-time hours anywhere.
CVS and Walgreens have already been closing stores, and they make up the bulk of working pharmacists. If you think that's bad, hospitals are even worse. Hospitals make up only a small fraction of working pharmacists. Hospital and independent retail pharmacy don't pay nearly as much as retail chain pharmacy. If you're looking for a cushy 9-5pm job, you'll never find that in hospital. I have friends who work in hospital and they're overworked and understaffed. A typical workday is 12 hours in the hospital. If you're lucky enough to be a new hiree, you'll most likely end up getting a nighttime shift or a graveyard shift.