Can you pharmacists answer a question for me about your education?

Question

What was the toughest part of pharmacy school?
Do you enjoy your job? What is the most difficult part of your job?
What Pharm school takes the least time to complete?
I am 40...do you think it is too late to get into it?

Answer 1

The toughest part today is just getting accepted. The class that most people struggle with (in my opinion) is pharmacokinetics.

I enjoy my job sufficiently. There are other things I'd rather do such as teaching, driving a truck, or pizza delivery. But the money is much better in Pharmacy.

The most difficult part of the job, is not making mistakes and managing those that are.

There are some 'year round' programs that take three years, all others take 4.

The oldest in my graduating class was 51, the second oldest was my brother, and he was 37. It's not too late.

Answer 2

I was 20 y.o. when I started, so my perspective might be a bit skewed. For myself, the hardest part was trying to keep focused studying. I attended in a major metropolitan city, so there were quite a few distractions. I would say about 1/2 my class was about the same age as myself. Another 1/4 of the class had just finished their 4 year degree (so a few years older). The remaining were coming back to start a new career. This group was a bit older (ranging from 30 to ~50 y.o.). Actually, when I graduated, there was a mother-daughter tandem at school (daughter was 3rd year and mother was just starting).

My first pharmacy tech out of school actually went back. She's about 35 now with two children. She's made it so far, with only one year remaining.

So 40 isn't too old (isn't it actually the new 30 nowadays)? You just have to figure out your personal priorities and evaulate if the investment (time, tuition, loss of income from current job) is worth it.

Through my seven year career, I've gone through retail, LTC, and now the PBM world. Currently, I have a office job and haven't dispensed for quite some time. I wish in pharmacy school, there were more classes orientated towards the business aspect of the pharm world. Would have made current life a bit easier. Since I have more of a financial/analytical duty now, it does make it a bit harder to stay on top of my clinical knowledge.

I think all pharm schools have switched over to a Pharm D. program. Pharmacy schoold I think will still take about 4 years to complete. For myself, including undergrad, it took me six years total for my Pharm D.

Answer 3

In the USA pharmacy schools require four years of professional study. They award a degree Doctor of Pharmacy. (Some years ago they used to award Bachelors, but that has been abandoned)

Competition for admittance to pharmacy schools has gotten very selective in recent years. There is a shortage and the salaries are very high. Also, the kinds of work pharmacists do has been expanding and getting more complex, so it is attracting higher level students than years ago when it was basically just running community pharmacies.

There are only about 50 or 60 pharmacy schools in the USA. Most are public schools so they are not expensive, but they are competitive and you have to be a top student in your prerequisites to get in. Mostly they require chemistry, organic chemistry, sometimes physical chemistry, biology and calculus - unlike a lot of programs that require calculus as a prereq. in pharmacy you might actually have to use the calculus in working with complicated patient dosages for patients with multiple diseases!

At our local school where I have some connections, the pharmacy students are the best students on campus, with top GPAs and high SAT scores at entry. They are better than the premeds.

So, you have your work cut out for you.