Be a Pharmacist! (2 Viewers)

[xclusv2bhung]

Alright, as promised, here's my rundown of what you can do with a pharmacy degree:

- Community pharmacy--both normal and compounding. The compounding pharmacist said she gets to fiddle around with a lot of funky equipment. Compounding looks like a chem lab to me, but eh.
- Hospital pharmacy--run around the wards, consult with other healthcare professionals (as the patient will usually be very sick and so requires the services of a lot of healthcare professionals), also work on aseptic preparations, check medication charts.
- Work in a professional organisation, e.g. pharm association for NSW, or pharm guild of Australia. Basically a lot of reports and officework--you really are dictating the future of the profession
- Corporate pharmacy--you work in a corporate pharmacy, e.g. Boots in London, where it's really commercialised and you're really about generating profit and is therefore quite cutthroat in terms of pace.
- Rural pharmacy--hmmm I guess it's kinda under community pharmacy but because you're probably one of, if not the only, pharmacist in that area, you're really running the entire place yourself. More intimate pharmacist-patient interactions apparently.
- Locum--it's really interesting--you get to run around the country filling in for vacancies. So you get metro and rural and suburban and everything experience. Of course, it means a lot of jetting in and driving out but the freedom is that you choose when you want to work (usually you have a list of opportunities available and you just click or contact which one you want) and because the pharmacy is indebted to you for filling in, there is extra pay (kinda like how a casual gets overloading when called in)
- Marketing and up there peoples in pharmaceutical industries and companies--there was this Irish lady who had been working in marketing and up there, quite managerial sort of role in a pharmaceutical company. She said that, with a pharmacy degree, you have an edge over the common commerce graduate because you can develop marketing and advertising strategies quite specific to that product because you'll actually know about it, e.g. salbutamol is a beta 2 agonist and it's long lasting, so you can develop a campaign for its effectiveness in treating asthma. She's currently completing an MBA, and said that quite a few pharm graduates have also done MBAs or other commercy sort of degrees so that they also get the commerce perspective.
- Academia--lecturing, researching, etc. The lecturer was a nice old guy--he gets to go on quite a few (research-related) conferences and besides the reward of imparting knowledge onto us youngies the conferences are a great way to travel and try a few different perspectives on life.

Hmmm, because it's been at least a month since the careers night and my brain was overloaded with exam info in between, I probably missed out on a lot of stuff but yeah, these were definitely the highlights of the night.

Thanks for that , lala2 it helped. !

 

[jannny]

Hey, I did not get to do STAT, but I want to do Pharmacy. Can I still be "in"? (checked CSU, and apparently it shows no STAT only the UAI - does this mean they dont care about STAT?)

 

[xclusv2bhung]

Hey, I did not get to do STAT, but I want to do Pharmacy. Can I still be "in"? (checked CSU, and apparently it shows no STAT only the UAI - does this mean they dont care about STAT?)

I know that CSU doesn't consider STAT ... or , they haven't in the past - as opposed to USYD , where its mandatory for entrance into the course [CSP]
Still , if you do it , they`ll consider it with your application.
Not sure if theyve changed the rules this year though , BUT , to be on the safe side , you should do it anyway ! =D !
good luck !

 

[billy_slater]

man, I just love chemistry so much and wanna have a $$$$$$ job .

hate to burst your bubble mate, but pharmacy is not high paying at all. I guess it depends on what you mean high paying, i mean an average pharmacist would not be getting paid more than 60 grand...unless he/she starts their own business or something.

Also to even get to that salary you would need to complete your masters in Pharmacy, so not just the undergrad degree.

High paying jobs are available in pharmacy on the industrial side of things, say for e.g if you get hired by some hotshot pharmaceutical company in the US and if your the Chief pharmacist you'd be raking in the cash, maybe 150 or 200 g. But that would require years of experience and quite a lot of dicksucking.

But if your like half the people doing pharmacy, that is to eventually to get into med, then i reckon it's the best option to take. A lot of the subjects can be tallied off with eventual post grad med... and it woul dhelp you a lot with the GAMSAT exam.

I'm probably going to do pharmacy this year.. I deferred a Physio place i got at Usyd last year.. i only found out you needed to write the STAT to get into pharmacy when the offers came out haha. Does anybody know the expected UAI cutoff for pharmacy this year? or even last year.. i didn't check it out

 

[sydneyphoenix]

hate to burst your bubble mate, but pharmacy is not high paying at all. I guess it depends on what you mean high paying, i mean an average pharmacist would not be getting paid more than 60 grand...unless he/she starts their own business or something.

Also to even get to that salary you would need to complete your masters in Pharmacy, so not just the undergrad degree.

High paying jobs are available in pharmacy on the industrial side of things, say for e.g if you get hired by some hotshot pharmaceutical company in the US and if your the Chief pharmacist you'd be raking in the cash, maybe 150 or 200 g. But that would require years of experience and quite a lot of dicksucking.

But if your like half the people doing pharmacy, that is to eventually to get into med, then i reckon it's the best option to take. A lot of the subjects can be tallied off with eventual post grad med... and it woul dhelp you a lot with the GAMSAT exam.

I'm probably going to do pharmacy this year.. I deferred a Physio place i got at Usyd last year.. i only found out you needed to write the STAT to get into pharmacy when the offers came out haha. Does anybody know the expected UAI cutoff for pharmacy this year? or even last year.. i didn't check it out

I think around 95 for USYD and 90-91 for CSU (Wagga's slightly higher than Orange). CSU doesn't require you to have done STAT, not that it's hard to get required grade.

And I agree with you that Pharmacy is not such a high-paying job. You can land a job paying between $55,000 to $65,000 without too much trouble once you become registered.

But didn't know that half the pharmacy students aim to get into Medicine eventually. Wouldn't you need to fork out your own money as HECS won't cover the 8th year in university? And most medical school won't allow you to have pharmacy subjects (or any other for that matter) credited towards their degree as medical subjects are all very specific and not strongly related to subjects from other discipline.

 

[+Po1ntDeXt3r+]

not realli..

re: the pharm credit..

the 8th yr for medicine is usually available under CSP they give u an extension

 

[Dr.Dan]

i was lookin at pharmacy as something to aim towards but i was turned off from an experienced pharmacist. He is now a doctor , he said that begin a pharmacist is like being a clerk- just handing medicine over the cashier all the time.

 

[+Po1ntDeXt3r+]

i was lookin at pharmacy as something to aim towards but i was turned off from an experienced pharmacist. He is now a doctor , he said that begin a pharmacist is like being a clerk- just handing medicine over the cashier all the time.

being a doctor is similar.. u fill in forms.. and u write thousand of entries..

now and then u make a decision or two

 

[sev90]

how bout pharmacology? Thats different to pharmacy right?
like isnt pharmacy more of the distributing of drugs and pharmacology is the experimenting and creation of drugs...the practical stuff taht mainly takes place in the labs?

Whats a good course/career that mainly focuses on biology and i mean job prospects and $$...like i wanna do a biology focused occupation where you use your hands most of the time

well if you ask me.. dis is wat im planning to do.. it mite help

im gna study Bachelor of Pharmaceutical sciences .. 1st year uni for me is dis year.. .

im planning to finish that with honours to do clinical pharmacology trying to cure diseases thru drugs and medicines to patients in order to improve human health. As an example, work for heart disease associations or medical research professional pharmaceuticals. its got very good money in it as well. You can also work at pharmacies at hospitals , pharmaceutical industries like cosmetics, anything.. pharmacology is a fantastic career if you like biology, chemistry and of course researching and drugs.

 

[loser101]

if you do Pharmaceutical Sciences, if you want to be a registered Pharmacist, then you need to do an additional 1.5 year Masters Course to get all the Parmacy subjects done.

 

[+Po1ntDeXt3r+]

. salbutamol is a beta 2 agonist and it's long lasting, so you can develop a campaign for its effectiveness in treating asthma.

isnt that salmeterol? salbutalmol is short acting... just read tat post :\

 

[sev90]

if you do Pharmaceutical Sciences, if you want to be a registered Pharmacist, then you need to do an additional 1.5 year Masters Course to get all the Parmacy subjects done.

wat do you mean by that.. i didnt understand.
how exactly can you transfer to pharmacy? or even after completing it. Can you give some information please

 

[Wooz]

wat do you mean by that.. i didnt understand.
how exactly can you transfer to pharmacy? or even after completing it. Can you give some information please

No this is the back door entry route for those who have completed a science degree with a pharmacy major and have missed out on B Pharm or transferring into it during the course of their science degree.

People who have done a science degree(with pharm major)/pharmaceutical science and credit relevant pharm units and may do a Masters of Pharmacy (note this if full fee, for 1.5-2 years) and be subsequently licensed to dispense meds as a pharmacist instead of doing B Pharm, this method will give the student the equivalency of a B Pharm if not higher.

 

[ordnaiv]

being a doctor is similar.. u fill in forms.. and u write thousand of entries..

now and then u make a decision or two

I work at RPAH Emergency as an Admin Clerk and this is so true...some of the doctors there spend hours just sitting in front of computers writing discharge letters, making online orders, talking on the phone, writing endless patient notes, history, diagnosis etc - the nurses/physios actually have more patient contact than most doctors so essentially pharmacists and doctors are similar as you pointed out...

 

[xclusv2bhung]

Um I only know what it's like for Pharmaceutical Science kids @Griffith : they complete the three year degree and have either a choice of ending (but their jobs are only limited to research and such) or continuing to a Masters of Pharmacy (which is automatic entry for kids who've done Pharmacetical Science @the uni) which then qualifies them to be a registered Pharmacist.

I'm not sure what it's like @RMIT .. but I hope that helps a lil lol

 

[lala2]

isnt that salmeterol? salbutalmol is short acting... just read tat post :\

I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote that, thanks pointdexter. And another note: be prepared to remember thousands of drug names. You'll learn tricks though, like -sartan is A2 antagonist, -prost is prostaglandin analogue, -pril is ACEI, -cillin is penicillin family, -one is a corticosteroid, etc.

 

[+Po1ntDeXt3r+]

lala2: my fave is that -ximab, -zumab, -momab

-xi =chimeric
-zu= humanised
-mo = murine.. (mouse)

-mab= monoclonal antibodies..