Various Queries

[placebo.affected]

Hi all,

I'm a 3rd year student who, like many, is STILL stuck between choosing community or hospital pharmacy for pre-reg and beyond.

I have tried weighing the pros and cons of each, but the line is still too fine for me to decide which is the best career path for me. First and foremost, my priority lies of course in job satisfaction and enjoyment, then comes salary which is playing a heavy role in my decision making.

In terms of pay, if I understand correctly, that a chain e.g. Boots offers starting salaries of around £32,000 (London), which is pretty good. However, I haven't read anywhere about how this changes over time. I'd be pretty pissed if I was still stuck around the 30-40K mark after 10-20 years experience, so I wanted to ask firstly how this changes over time, when working for a larger store e.g. Boots, Lloyds.

Secondly, I've heard from several community pharmacists that if they could do one thing differently, it's that they would have opted for hospital pharmacy in pre-reg. This scares me slightly, as pay in hospital doesn't seem anywhere near as appealing as in community, but I'm heavily drawn toward it because it seems more clinical, and still does gradually increase up to consultant level (band 8 or so, around 70K I believe.

Help is so greatly appreciated, as I'm currently applying for summer placements so any adivce would greatly help!

I wanted to seek the views of others here who may have experience in either fields and what led them to their career paths + the benefits/cons of each that they thought existed.


EDIT:

I also wanted to ask, once qualified as a community pharmacist, how else can I step up through the career ladder? Management? specialization? I'm much more familiar with how it works in hospital pharmacy, but community seems so varied that I'm not very sure

[Nik]

Pay in hospital pre-reg is actually more competitive - I'm earning a couple of grand more than my friends in community - the bit that causes a pain for hospitals comes after pre-reg, i.e retaining them.

70k for a band 8 position is overly ambitious. Infact it's probably around half that.

[crit care]

yes. 70k is very ambitious....wish i was on that as a band 8...sadly i'm not!

money isn't and shouldn't be your final answer, as good as it may feel to go straight from uni and earning £30+k. you need to find where you will enjoy it the most...

all sectors of pharmacy will have their good and bad bits...i can't really comment on community, but from what i have seen hospital gives you more variety and probably enables you to utilise more of the clinical aspects of the pharmacy degree, but doesn't prepare you for management and business running of shops/chains etc.


the best thing to do is to try and get some experience in both hospital and community then decide from there!

[placebo.affected]

Pay in hospital pre-reg is actually more competitive - I'm earning a couple of grand more than my friends in community - the bit that causes a pain for hospitals comes after pre-reg, i.e retaining them.

70k for a band 8 position is overly ambitious. Infact it's probably around half that.

thanks for the response, I thought that the figure seemed way too high

yes. 70k is very ambitious....wish i was on that as a band 8...sadly i'm not!

money isn't and shouldn't be your final answer, as good as it may feel to go straight from uni and earning £30+k. you need to find where you will enjoy it the most...

all sectors of pharmacy will have their good and bad bits...i can't really comment on community, but from what i have seen hospital gives you more variety and probably enables you to utilise more of the clinical aspects of the pharmacy degree, but doesn't prepare you for management and business running of shops/chains etc.


the best thing to do is to try and get some experience in both hospital and community then decide from there!

I definitely don't see money as the final deciding factor, though it might seem like that from my post. It's because I've reviewed over and over the cons and pros, and money is one of a few factors that would tip the scales for me.


Does anyone know how salary changes with experience? I don't mind too much about not coming out of pre-reg with a great salary, but I'm more concerned with how salaries over time, say in both hospital and community after 5,10,20 years experience.

Definitely going to get more experience in both however,

[johnep]

In community, no progression because all they want is your RP notice on the wall. Hospital and Industry, a rise every year.
I was earning far more in industry than community. When I had to return to community because of redundancy, had to take a 33% pay cut.
johnep

[culchie82]

In terms of community, you may want to look at this thread (to gauge job satisfaction in community).

Wanting to change career

With Hospital or Industry there's very much a career progression path in place. With community the most you can progress to is an area manager's role, a position where there's a high turnover of staff due the the stress of the position. Locuming in the community, you are very much at the ceiling (ie there is no career progression).

My opinion - do 6 months community, 6 months hospital and then decide on hospital.
6 or 7 grand extra a year isn't worth being miserable over.

[placebo.affected]

thanks for the above, I'll have a read through tomorrow!

[Defblade]

I'll agree with most of the above re. career progression.

I'd just add that it's a LOT simpler to move from hospital to community than vice versa (not that community is "easier" or anything (it's not, it's just different) - mainly that progression in hospital requires further clinical work/diplomas etc you will just never do in community, so to change means going right to the bottom of the hospital ladder).

[Nimrec]

There's a few interesting points here. I wouldn't necessarily agree that its easier to move from hospital to community than vice-versa. I have seen a lot of hospital pharmacists struggle with the massively increased workloads in community and an awful lot of community pharmacists struggle with the increased application of clinical knowledge required for hospital. Fortunately any decent healthcare trust will give you at least two weeks to find your feet and get you thinking straight again although hospital pharmacists certainly don't recieve the same courtesy when moving to community as its straight into the lovely target driven culture.

In essence if you like a bit of pressure to make your day go faster and the opportunity to interact with an awful lot more patients for a much shorter time each, choose community. It also comes with a lot more responsibility from the get go as you are pretty much on your own as you are generally the only pharmacist there.

If you want to apply your clinical knowledge more and get to help patients by in-depth study of their medication along with a very sociable workplace atmosphere with a number of fellow pharmacists, the ability to specialise and aim at additional education pick hospital.

Future salary is all about ambition. If you have a drive to progress in any area of pharmacy you'll do it. If you don't you'll stay on basic which isn't a bad living all things considered.

Good luck with your decision.