Pharmacy

caroline1111

Hi, im starting pharmacy in Trinity in September and have a few questions for any pharmacists out there. First off, I understand things are looking pretty bleak for retail pharmacy at the moment but how are the other areas doing? Are there much opportunities in research for pharmacists here or with any of the big drug making companies? Any info much appreciated!

locum-motion

Community Pharmacy is bleak indeed.
Can't help you on the other areas as I've never workrd in them.

bleg

Retail indeed is bleak enough at the moment and there is huge uncertainty in the sector due to the introduction of reference pricing in January.

Hospital pharmacy recruitment is being hampered by the HSE moratorium, though some private hospitals have taken on pharmacists over the past year.

Industry is slow at the moment as well with some of the biggest firms going through mergers in the past year leading to rationalisation in some companies. Ireland doesn't have much of a history in R&D so opportunities are very limited in that area.

crazy dude

caroline1111 wrote: »

Hi, im starting pharmacy in Trinity in September and have a few questions for any pharmacists out there. First off, I understand things are looking pretty bleak for retail pharmacy at the moment but how are the other areas doing? Are there much opportunities in research for pharmacists here or with any of the big drug making companies? Any info much appreciated!

Try and spend your summers getting jobs in industry for your cv. We're still a good manufacturing country for pharmaceuticals and if you read the newspapers you'll see that our "export led recovery" is largely composed of pharmaceutical manufacturing. This is basically your pharmaceutics part of the course and its quite interesting if you focus on it: how to formulate drugs into creams, injections, tablets etc...how to set up a process and idiot proof it.
For example, say a new inotrope (circulation supporting drug used to keep up blood pressure in critical care) is discovered how would you formulate it into a solution for intravenous use, would you give it as an infusion or a stat dosed injection, would you infuse through a peripheral vein or would it require central infusion because its such an irritant. What if the patient population it will be used in have requirements for low volumes of infused fluids e.g. acute failure of kidneys...how low a volume could you dilute it in, could you work out on a ternary diagram the effects of a cosolvent in increasing solubility...that kind of stuff.
This is really a major area the government should have invested in as part of the knowledge economy idea but they were fairly clueless about what could be achieved given our standards of secondary and third level education. Instead, their model of world class science research in biology is what we got which will never employ the masses beyond the university gates.
Lucky you doing pharmacy. Go for the industry option and go out there and work in the field and learn from those who do:)The retail option was once the pinnacle of what you could realise as a professional but nowadays there has been a shocking upgrading of the governance to the point where the pharmacist does little in the way of problem solving for the customer but has become a technician ticking the boxes of the various protocols and regulations imposed from 18 Shrewsbury Road from those what practise for 6 months, find dealing with real life problems stressful and find vocation in the Society imposing order on the rest of us so we may one day be like a page from some pharmacy practise book they read in college.
Go do industry!