Is it interesting?
Depends on the individual. The course is interesting if you like a mix of science and healthcare. As with most courses it's your own perspective of it.
What is the salary like (I've heard it's good but is that only when you open up your own pharmacy)
Depends on the individual. Salary for what kind of pharmacist and at which level of experience varies so much that it's hard to give any fixed number.
Before you're a registered pharmacist with the pharmacy board, you have to go through a
preregistration year. This usually occurs when you've graduated with the BPharm. You get paid for prereg. You'll be working full time, learning and trying to pass your registration exams. You can complete prereg at a community or hospital pharmacy, and you could also do an industrial hybrid with hospitals (i.e. Royal Children's has a program with CSL and the Alfred has one with Glaxo Smith-Kline (GSK)). They all have different "programs" of teaching and lol a common pharmacy student perception is that everyone hates Chemist Warehouse. I'll avoid the defaming.
Quote the
SHPA:
"
Salaries and employment conditions for intern pharmacists are detailed in the Hospital Pharmacist Award and Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. The base annual salary for a 38-hour week in 2010 will be approximately $38,000... ...Some hospitals also provide the opportunity to earn overtime with rostered weekend, public holiday and on-call work. Weekend work is usually paid at double time."
38K probably doesn't seem super awesome but remember you won't be
registered yet and you're still pretty much a student with an empty degree just learning on the job. Everything you do would be supervised by a pharmacist so that no one dies from a medication error. After you're registered you'll earn a lot more.
Quote
SHPA:
"
Salaries for pharmacists in hospitals are often negotiable. The following are the approximate base annual salaries for a 38-hour week according to the local Hospital Pharmacist Award and Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. This information is provided as a guide.
Base Salaries as at January 2010
Grade 1 $47,600 - $63,800
Grade 2 $63,800 - $74,600
Grade 3 $76,100 - $86,100
Grade 4 $89,200 - $103,500"
The above is all for hospital pharmacists. Retail varies a bit - some say it's a bit more, but you might be able to look up the award by Googling. As to what the grades mean, I'm not completely sure. My idea of it is that grades correspond to the type of work you do (i.e. director of the dept. in a hospital, managing a large pharmacy...) - and also your experience.
You'd need to have quite a lot of money already available to
open up your own retail pharmacy which not only includes buying the shop area but for stock, registration, staff and a range of other factors. Hard to start up but once you do the cash rolls in. It's also heavily regulated so you can't just open up anywhere. This is lucrative, but how "good" it is depends on whether you'd enjoy the community pharmacy type work. What the pharmacy course tries to emphasise is that pharmacists should do more than standing in their room out the back preparing prescriptions and get out onto the floor and talk to patients/customers more. Counselling occurs in most cases but usually not enough goes on and some places tend to delegate this task to the pharmacy assistant/technicians. Counselling is usually compulsory for people at risk such as the elderly, people with a history of non-compliance, children, people from non-English speaking backgrounds etc, you get what I'm saying.
I've heard people say that it's quite boring for a job, all you do is sit in a room and mix up drugs, without applying most of what you've learnt. Is this true?
Depends on the individual and path you're taking. Most of what you learn in
any course isn't always used.
If you go into pharmacy, just go in knowing that the pharm system isn't perfect and what the pharmacist profession tries to do is get more "roles" to play to outlast the prospect of a dispensing machine.
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