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Monster spoke with Crystal Wright, vice president of media relations for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS), about job prospects for pharmacy graduates.
Monster: If someone is interested in pharmacy as a career, what does the job market look like right now?
Crystal Wright: It's really good. There are about 83 pharmacy schools to choose from right now, and in addition to that starting salaries average around $80,000 per year. Many of our chains like Walgreens, CVS, Eckerd, Albertsons and RiteAid, have scholarship and tuition reimbursement programs. A lot of this information you can get on our Web site. You can also go to the Web sites of the individual chains and [look at the career resouces on] the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy [AACP] site.
M: In an environment where there's a demand for the degree you're graduating with, it's easy to get a job, but not necessarily easy to get the right job. If someone is coming out of pharmacy school, what steps should he take to make sure the position he takes is a good fit?
CW: Since 1998, the program has switched to a doctorate. It's a PharmD program, so it's six years instead of five. The last year is devoted to rotations where students get practical pharmacy experience, hands-on in various pharmacy settings, whether that's a hospital or a chain drugstore, or a community pharmacy. Under the supervision of pharmacists, they get to see and experience different work environments. So in that sixth year, where you get to do an average of eight rotations -- sometimes as many as 10 -- you're going to get a good feeling about the kind of environment you want to work in -- whether you want to be a teacher in a university setting or you want to work in a laboratory or if you want to work in a hospital, a nursing home or a chain drugstore environment.
Really take advantage of that sixth year of your program and as you go through each rotation, think long and hard, do I like this? What do I like about this? What don't I like about this setting? I think through that practical hands-on experience, most students know what work environment they want to go into.
I also think the AACP site is useful because they provide interviews with pharmacists in different areas that students can read. Pharmacy is no different than when you go to medical school or you want to be a nurse. The best way is asking people who are in the profession the pros and cons of different work environments. And then you have to decide for yourself where you think you're going to be happiest. But, the good news is there's a demand, and students now are in a position where they can pick and choose where they want to work.
M: People generally think of the pharmacist as the person who's in the drugstore behind the counter filling their prescription. What other non-traditional roles are pharmacists working in today?
CW: Obviously we have pharmacists who work in hospitals and nursing homes. I think people forget that. Especially in nursing homes a lot of elderly patients are medicated and it's the pharmacist's job to make sure they get the right dose of medication and they're taking it correctly.
Another area is in the patient-care field. CVS has set up programs where they help people with diabetes and asthma manage their diseases in a chain pharmacy setting. So they have clinics set up where patients make weekly appointments to visit their pharmacists, like they visit their doctor, to make sure that their medication is working properly, to make sure that they're taking their medication the right way. These programs are really keeping people on top of their medication; they're not skipping doses because they have this weekly appointment with their pharmacist. And then if there's something wrong, the pharmacist calls the doctor and the medication is changed, or the patient goes in and they get the patient back on balance. This is exciting for a lot of young graduates who crave a clinical setting and crave that face-to-face interaction with patients.
M: Can you recommend some resources to people who are considering a pharmacy career but need assistance getting the education?
CW: The AACP Web site [is great] as far as seeing what you need to do in high school and then your pre-pharmacy courses.
You can also go to the NACDS site and click on the pharmacy section, and then the student section. We have an internship section that has a contact name for every one of our chain members that has an internship program.
