Why Pharmacy And Not Medicine?

[brady23]

For those of you who have the grades to get in Medicine (I know Med is not just grades), why do you want to pursue pharmacy and not medicine (or dentistry or optometry for that matter). 

 

A lot of people say because they don't want to be on-call as a doctor, but there's still doctors that work on their own schedule such as a family doctor.

 

I'm considering both, however, I just don't know if it's worth trying at something that I have pretty slim odds in and where having good extracurriculars and a good GPA might not cut it. 

 

[Tacrolimus]

First of all (and most importantly), Pharmacy and Medicine are not exclusive fields. There is quite a bit of overlap, especially in the treatment phase of patient care. Dentistry and Optometry are more specialized fields that concentrate on a specific area only; that is also a reason why I never considered them as viable options. 

 

As for why people go into Pharmacy instead of Medicine, some people do not like the invasive procedures that physicians often have to perform. The "ick" factor, you can say. Other reasons include: (1) less time in undergrad as you can apply after two years (2) less time in total training as Pharmacy school is 4 years afterwards or 5, if you do a residency. Time can be pretty influential in someone's decision to pursue one or the other. You are working as Pharmacist at the age of 24 vs. ~30 for a physician.  

 

For me, I wanted to do Pharmacy since high school, but there was definitely one practice area (i.e. community pharmacy) that made me re-think my decision. Some people enjoy it and others don't. Having said that, there are definitely other areas you can work in, and hence, if I never get into medical school, I would be totally content with practicing Pharmacy. It also helps living in a province that is so progressive in pharmacy practice. 

[brady23]

First of all (and most importantly), Pharmacy and Medicine are not exclusive fields. There is quite a bit of overlap, especially in the treatment phase of patient care. Dentistry and Optometry are more specialized fields that concentrate on a specific area only; that is also a reason why I never considered them as viable options. 

 

As for why people go into Pharmacy instead of Medicine, some people do not like the invasive procedures that physicians often have to perform. The "ick" factor, you can say. Other reasons include: (1) less time in undergrad as you can apply after two years (2) less time in total training as Pharmacy school is 4 years afterwards or 5, if you do a residency. Time can be pretty influential in someone's decision to pursue one or the other. You are working as Pharmacist at the age of 24 vs. ~30 for a physician.  

 

For me, I wanted to do Pharmacy since high school, but there was definitely one practice area (i.e. community pharmacy) that made me re-think my decision. Some people enjoy it and others don't. Having said that, there are definitely other areas you can work in, and hence, if I never get into medical school, I would be totally content with practicing Pharmacy. It also helps living in a province that is so progressive in pharmacy practice. 

 

 

I love your answer, and I have the exact same reason why I never considered Dentistry or Optometry. I also think that being a dentist or optometrist would be boring, because there probably wouldn't be a lot of variation in the job over time. At least with pharmacy, you can meet new patients, you have to keep up on drug information and it's not like you are prescribing the same medication everyday. I am also looking forward to the unique knowledge I'll learn in pharmacy school and even on the job. Drugs are so interesting, and having to constantly be up to date on them would definitely keep me interested. I also would love to work in a hospital pharmacy but would also be fine with a community pharmacy as well.

 

The only thing that makes me hesitant is I've heard how bad the job market is in Ontario, I'm hoping if I'm flexible to commute to rural areas, I will be able to find a job :/ I really don't want to move to another province for a job.  

 

Medicine seems appealing to, but like you said, the biggest con is it takes too much time (especially if you spend 3 years applying to get in like most applicants), and I'm not sure if I could deal with being rejected 2-3 times in a row when I could be doing something else in those 2-3 years. And I just don't like the odds of getting into medical school, since so many competitive applicants don't get in at the end which must be so disappointing.  

[adaptability]

I'll give this a shot. Been reading the responses and meaning to contribute.

For me, ending up in pharmacy was a last minute decision - I had always considered it as an option, but didn't think I had the grades to get in because I had heard that it was all about grades and I didn't have close to a near-perfect GPA. I applied to a whole variety of health care fields in my last year of sciences, and had already decided to enter another field when I received the admission notification from U of A Pharmacy (they release it so late!) The reason why I ended up choosing pharmacy over other health care fields in the end was because I liked how there was a wide range of jobs available after graduation such as community pharmacy, institutional pharmacy, academia, research, pharmaceutical companies - and you can also do a lot with a BScPharm such as combining it with a MBA if you are interested in business, PharmD if you are interested in clinical work, even using your pharmacy knowledge to further your education in terms of medical school or law school, the list goes on.

To be honest, I didn't know that much about the field or practice of pharmacy when I first entered pharmacy school. But I've grown to love the profession and I really enjoy what I do on a day to day basis. I think what excites me the most is seeing the profession grow so much over the last few years, and how pharmacists are embracing the clinical side of pharmacy - it's not just about counting drugs and checking the accuracy of the prescription being filled, but pharmacists are getting more proactive about being involved in their patients' health, in terms of comprehensive medication reviews (not just 'are you taking this? yeah, look good, next' but making sure there's an indication for each medication, that the dose is correct, the therapies make sense, patients are adherent, any drug interactions, any drug related problems), having in-depth conversations with their patients about their health and medications, doing follow ups, adapting prescriptions when they find drug-related problems such as dosing oversights by prescribers (antibiotics are a common one), renewing prescriptions for continuity of care, even prescribing in emergencies - AGAIN, the list goes on. Community pharmacy gets a bad reputation (have any of you seen the CBC marketplace segment a few weeks ago on pharmacy errors?) but I think with some more time and more pharmacists who aren't afraid to embrace a more clinical side of pharmacy, pharmacists can show that they are an integral part of the health care system.

Anyways, in terms of answering your question of why pharmacy vs. medicine, I can't really speak to that as I am happy with pharmacy and the question of whether I would choose it over medicine is a no-brainer for me. I like to think of pharmacy as a specialty in itself, just like how we have specialities in medicine (family, GI, psych, etc), pharmacy is really a subspecialty of medicine in that pharmacists specialize in drugs. If you think you'd be happy with a career that looks exclusively at medications (a broad field) and you enjoy patient interactions, then pharmacy is a good option (and you also save a lot of time and money as it is a 4 year degree, you enter the working field much sooner than medicine and start making money sooner); if you want to be the diagnostician and/or you also enjoy hands-on procedures i.e. surgeries, then medical school is probably the way to go.

[keinjuan]

Why not both?

[ploughboy]

Why not both?

Clin pharm and clin tox are pretty cool. 

[keinjuan]

Joke aside, medicine is a diverse field and is hard to compare to pharmacy directly. To answer OP's question, I think trying for medical school is definitely worth it if you are torn btw medicine and pharmacy. There are some good points laid out already, so I'm gonna add my 2 cents.

 

One cent - Admission process for medical school is daunting, but there are a lot of things you learn from it as well. Even if you do not get into medical school, you will be well-prepared for pharmacy school. You may feel like you are wasting 2, maybe even 3 years, but in the grand scheme of things, it is a challenge worth taking.

 

The other cent - If you like pharmacy because of early graduation and lifestyle... I strongly advise you to think again. There are many specialties within medicine that have better working condition and lifestyle factors than pharmacy. Also, extra 2-5 years of residency is not too bad considering you are still making income during that time (after tax, a resident makes about 20% less than a pharmacist) Needless to say, the income difference later in much greater.

 

Personally, I was dead set on being a pharmacist since I was a kid. The truth is, I actually never shadowed a pharmacist until I got into pharmacy school. That being said, know what you are signing up for, first-and-foremost. The best way to do so is to find an honest mentor... not always easy to find, but you never know when you will come across them!

[CharmingHedgehog]

A lot of pharmacist-turned-MDs! I guess I'll add my two cents haha.

When I applied for pharmacy at UT, I could do it after one year of undergrad, so I did it kind of as a shot in the dark. Had I not been accepted, I was going to try for dentistry. Med was something I specifically didn't want to do due to lifestyle, and I was pretty certain I could help people and use the sciences in other health care fields. I didn't know what a pharmacist was when I applied.... Luckily, UT's entrance exam didn't require me to know about pharmacy! After getting into pharmacy, I really enjoyed working with the people I went to school with, and was very optimistic about my future colleagues. I also took the time to explore facets of potential pharmacy jobs. I worked in community, hospital dispensing, and hospital Med rec/clinical as a pharmacy student. I think by the start of third year, I decided that I didn't enjoy the work I was doing as I was doing it, because I wasn't making an observable difference. Therefore, I was going to go into medicine, because in certain specialties, I could - and I will, as an anesthesiologist. By observable difference, I mean fast results. I was making a different in my patients lives as a pharmacy team member, but more in their chronic illness management or minor ailments. I wanted something where I could make a decision, have it implemented, and see results within a short period of time. (In hind sight, dentistry would probably worked out better) But, had I not gotten into med school, I would've enjoyed working as a pharmacist anyway, and I did work as a part time community pharmacist for 3.5 years during med school. Funny enough, the decision to switch into med was also the reason that I went into anesthesia instead of family medicine. I would have been happy doing family med, but the procedural aspect and rapid cause effect get me very excited in anesthesia.

 

So, if you had asked me to choose at the beginning of first year what I'd apply for, I'd say pharmacy, simply because I didn't know enough about either specialty, and pharmacy sounded a lot more attractive for what I wanted in life.

 

With regards to job market in pharmacy: almost all of my pharmacy friends had full time equivalents by the end of a year, and after 4 years, I can say that all of them are located where they wanted to be.