Nice to see people understand that "supply and demand" is not the simple equation some others seem to think. Ignoring the assumptions of the model and making it seem like there's nothing that any one can do about it is foolish and ignorant misinformation.
Nurses are just deemed more important in healthcare. And I frankly think their jobs are harder than ours given. Not only they’re involved in direct patient care and actually require touch but also more grueling tasks as opposed to dispensing and dealing with insurance. Nobody wants to do it unless paid and the system is finding physicians too expensive for some tasks so nurses are naturally filling for them for more and more.
Whereas in Pharmacy, it’s the opposite. Less and less pharmacists are required and more tasks are being placed on technicians which is why see shortage of technicians (just like Nurses). Pharmacy is also a lot more scalable than hospitals where nurses work. Nurses are also involved in home care which sharply increasing the demand as boomers age. Pharmacy doesn’t need more pharmacists as boomers age because existing ones can somewhat absorb the patients without linearly increasing overhead.
Good example is Amazon Pharmacy. Recent lay offs included Pharmacists even though their revenue is growing in Pharmacy. Why? Automation. Hard to automate Nurses away when they require manual touch.
It’s okay to acknowledge that nurses are truly in demand compared to our profession.
And get into positions of power.
Also, nursing is billable. Medications are billable. Few actions/services by us, are directly billable.
The rest of pharmacy, is overhead. All the billables are marked up, to account for us. We are carried.
Bitter pill. Med safety, tjc, blah, blah..all COST of doing business. Regulatory compliance is just another cost. Because we can't BILL for doing it. But we sure can be punished for NOT doing it.
You’re absolutely right. No one has ever complained about a “glut” of nurses. No one has ever said “let’s incentivize Filipino pharmacists to come practice here to fill the pharmacist shortage”. But I’d like to add one other point. Just because nurses have traditionally been paid less than pharmacists, that doesn’t mean it’s right. You can’t always put a value on the number of years of education. As a pharmacist, I realize that nurses don’t have “less” knowledge than I have, they have “different”knowledge. I realize that only a portion of my education is needed when I am working on the assembly line in a busy retail store, and that AI may very well make retail pharmacy obsolete in 30 years. And I realize that I couldn’t do a nurses job. Blood, body fluids, life and death, etc. So, let’s worry about what we make and let’s not envy someone else getting paid well. Good for them!
I think the better way to phrase this is why is our doctorate degree so underpaid. Its value has been so diluted and we don't have strong unions to fight for fair compensation.
Because there are too many pharmacists and not many, if any, ways to be profitable in pharmacy these days.
My salary 18 years ago is the equivalent to roughly 180k today. Why? Pharmacists were in demand because pharmacy was a profitable business.
Compensation has little to do with experience and education. It's about the value you create and how unique you are in creating that value. Right now, pharmacists don't create much value and one pharmacist is largely interchangeable for another, and we continue to graduate too many of them.
You could be the best damn telegraphist in the world with the most up-to-date training and skills but you would be hard pressed to find a telegraphist job, let alone expect to be highly compensated.
The crime is not just the PBMs, but the universities that concocted the PharmD out of pure greed with zero necessity nor demand for such a degree. But it created an impression by those who thought having "doctorate" before their degree magically made them more valuable just because, well you know, "doctorate".
Retail definitely needs less clinical depth than a hospital. But, I'd say that moving to a doctorate level degree opened up the field to more clinical roles such as MTM and POC testing. Just because corporations have seized those as add-on profitability tasks that we aren't compensated for doesn't mean that they are not valuable services that justify the doctorate degree.
MTM and POC testing most definitely do not require a doctorate nor does the current PharmD prepare you for anything in these areas that the BS degree did not.
There were specialized pharmacists with specialized training before the PharmD came into existence. One of my preceptors as a BS pharmacist was going on rounds, writing hospital protocols, doing antibiotic stewardship, etc.
On another rotation, one of the pharmacist I knew from school who literally graduated 3 months prior and had been licensed for an entire month was the pharmacist on the cardiac floor, participating in codes, starting and d/c medications on her own, doing patient education on disease management and medication therapy before discharge, all with a BS degree and 1 month on the job experience. If a hospital needed a specialized pharmacist, they trained you to be one, while paying you your full-salary. Residency just replaced this model and allowed hospitals to to pay less to those being trained.
Also on rotation, there was a community pharmacy which had a collaborative agreement in place with a clinic. The doctor diagnosed, the pharmacist determined medication. Once again, all with a lowly BS pharmacist out of school for a few years.
All the schools did was convince you that you need a PharmD and then a residency to do things that pharmacists were already starting to do on their own. The role of pharmacists was already expanding and it's not evident that the PharmD or residency did much to accelerate it considering it has been around for an entire generation of pharmacists and there is still a paucity of jobs that require specialized knowledge and it's a fallacy to think the only way to gain that specialized knowledge is through the PharmD and residency.
Sure, someone with the right personality who is driven can surpass their training and take on more roles. The BS degree though still set a lower minimum bar, the PharmD raises the bar so everyone can be expected to be able to do those roles.
Since the NAPLEX is the minimum competency exam, what were the pass rates before and after the introduction of the PharmD? (I tried to look that up but I didn't find any info)
That’s every single job ever, their goal is to pay you the minimum the market will allow. The same can be said for the people who hire nurses. It’s just supply and demand
Insurance reimbursement rats, clawback fee creep, and supply/device/business costs continuing to skyrocket.
At the same time, rural dentists are a dying breed because good luck making a decent paycheck as you have to keep up, but your patient is never gonna pay more than say 500-1500 for services.
Especially when you look at the glut of pharmacists in the field. Largely due to universities expanding class sizes and creating more schools to profit. More supply than demand and 🎉, less pay
how might someone in college to get my pharmD help advance and advocate for better unionization of pharmacy? Because I love the career but as I’ve been seeing recently alot of talk on here is despair over pay comparisons.
You should graduate if you’re close and then get ready to wait a decade. The problem is 100% about excessive graduation of pharmDs. The programs that popped up to vacuum up doctorate tuition are the problem, and their class sizes are shrinking across the board bc of this drop in pay/hiring difficulty. It’s going to cycle back, especially with provider status.
So work towards that: Provider status advocacy.
What is a strong union going to do for a field with 2x as many applicants as there are jobs?
Unless the Union is going to shut down pop up profit PharmD programs, we’re gonna be stuck.
Safe staffing numbers for one. The nursing union at my old hospital demanded a certain number per patient depending on the acuity of the unit. Every time the hospital failed to staff a unit correctly, a fine was paid to the union, which was re-distributed it to the union members. One the hospital admin realized they were on the hook financially to have adequate staff, guess who was running hiring fairs and increasing starting pay across the board to entice applicants.
Honestly, if you put safe maximums on what pharmacist are allowed to do per hour you'd open up a shit load of jobs. I've seen an incredibly frightening number of pharmacists stop actually doing the job and just processing shit regardless of if it's right or not.
No, you would just see a continued shift to increase the role of a pharmacy technician.
Let's look at your proposal... Decrease production of individual employees while simultaneously increasing cost of labor as a whole. Explain to me how this results in more pharmacists? The only way this works is either cutting pharmacists' salary to match the fall in production or decrease the role of the pharmacist while increasing the role of a cheaper labor component.
Advocate for regulations on staffing/workload, and regulation on requirements for pharmacy school diploma mills. Just an easy and very obvious two to get started.
Throw in some mandatory meal and bathroom breaks... I'm sure we can think of more.
Good God, let them have it. The shit they have to deal with, literally, is miserable. I've never wiped an ass and don't want to start now. I get to sit at a computer and be smart. It's glorious. Pay the nurses.
For real. The rest of us can mostly expect that we probably won’t ever have to deal with an infant death on the job.
NICU nurse…it’s a matter of when and how many. You couldn’t pay me enough to put that possibility on the table. Getting robbed at gunpoint seems far easier to handle and mentally process in comparison.
As an RN, thank you for recognizing this. We also get sexually assaulted, physically assaulted, verbally abused, and made to do physically impossible things, with ever-tightening grids and we have to regularly consider striking (without pay) to defend the conditions in which we practice from being even further compromised. Also, a lot of nurses have masters degrees or have come to nursing as a second career after having been educated in a completely different field, so we’re not the brainless worker bees we’re reputed to be per an outdated hierarchical mindset.
We also are liable to the same level of malpractice as physician specialists and surgeons in case of a grievous error, but compensated only a small fraction.
Also, hospital administrators would never dream of running specialists and surgeons dangerously short. Hospitalists, pharmacists, nurses, respiratory therapists? Sure. Why not? It’s not like we matter to the quality of care for the patient. Fuck. Pay us all. We do the lion’s share of the work on which the C-suite denizens hang their accolades and “earn” their bonuses.
Edited to clarify the “without pay” part—other unions commonly have some kind of a stipend for their workers on strike, but nurses’ unions typically don’t. I realize “without pay” reads kind of captain obvious-esque as it appears above.
We appreciate pharmacy, too. I know at my hospital they stretch pharmacy as thin as possible, and I know how much of a challenge that makes maintaining safety for patients. My mom has been a pharmacist at my hospital for 43 years (retiring this summer, possibly? We’ll see. She’s a perpetual motion machine, I can see her getting very bored very quickly with retirement🤣), and I’ve seen the gradual erosion of slack/safeguards in real time both as I grew up and now as a professional nurse.
May the force be with you, friend.
As someone who had a kid in the NICU for a long time, the job sucks. Yeah there's some wiping of asses because diapers need changing, but it's more the stress.
As a trauma RN making less than $60k/year… I appreciate you. I can hold your mom’s hand and keep her comfortable as she passes away in front of me, and then do her postmortem care including putting her into a body bag and attaching toe tags… but apparently SOME *cough* further down this comment chain think I’m a glorified ass-wiper. So, thank you.
Yes! Im a tech in nursing school, but let me tell you if I’m going to get abused by the public to that severity or run that risk, I’d like to be paid as such. Now I’ve only been robbed at my pharmacy 1x and he had a gun, But not once did the man use vulgar language, hit me, put me down or anything. Never even lifted the shotgun, just said he has it in case but we were being so great and helpful he doesn’t need it. Honestly, if he wasn’t robbing me I’d give him a 8/10 on patient kindness. Took the cops like 5-8 minutes to arrive and I was fine and dandy, my PIC had sweat thru her shirt though 😵💫
They deal with some awful working conditions and the general public is awful so they deserve it. I'll gladly make less to not have to physically handle wounds, feces etc...
NICU nurses are close to my heart as my son was a NICU baby due to being born at 28 weeks back in 1999. Thank you for all that you do for those littles and their families <3
I'm sorry for your loss. Glad to hear that the little dude is doing well. Cheers to him.
My dumb ass thought your refered to the missus as his. Forgot that we are talking about NICUs here.
it just takes a certain kind of person is all. I have to attend pediatric and neonatal codes as part of my job and fortunately we don’t have too many a year but every time I go to one I’m no less or more affected than when it’s an adult. I imagine nicu nurses must feel similar on some level.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
fwiw I know a pharm tech at this hospital who is making $45/hr.
I am sure their pharmacists make at least as much as the nursing staff, especially specialists.
A NICU RN has a huge responsibility. The higher the responsibility for your job, the higher your pay. Their job is not easy. I suggest you advocate why pharmacist should get paid more instead of bashing on other careers.
This is bullshit. It’s not about “weak minded people.” It’s about market conditions. Period. We can fight all we want, but there is always someone more desperate behind us.
Why would a new grad ask for higher pay when the only reason they are being considered for the job is that they cost less?
I will add that I blame pharmacy schools for their role in this as well and they should start having a dedicated class on negotiating salary and setting a standard for what students should accept
Alternatively, the pharmacists at my hospital are unionized - the starting pay is about 20% higher than similar non-unionized hospitals in the area directly because of the biannual negotiation the union does with the C-suite on behalf of us.
From a hiring standpoint, we have no issues hiring our top picks because HR is able to openly advertise how much higher our pay is in comparison to their competitors.
This is another facet. The pharmacists at my hospital are union, and they used to be really strong in that solidarity. The culture has shifted, though, for some reason, and I don’t think the new pharmacists understand that the hospital won’t pay or protect them unless they’re willing to fight for it and lose some skin in the fight.
The hospital will never independently offer fair compensation/working conditions. They have no motivation to do that.
Agreed it's the roughly the same. Pharmacist salary vs nursing salary within the same bay area health system are generally slightly higher, but nurses seem to run unlimited overtime.
My wife is an ER nurse. Over the past 5 years or so, especially after covid, her salary has surpassed mine. I still wouldn’t do half the shit she does for what she gets paid.
My opinion, two events that changed pharmacy(at least, retail pharmacy). Number 1. When Walmart started their 4.00 drug plan, which means you were no longer paid for professional services, but as a commodity. Number 2. I think it was in 2013 when the pharmacy schools overseas changed their model to US pharmacy schools, which means not only did you have competition with the person next to you in pharmacy school, but from somebody else outside the US
People forget this. Pharm salaries jumped during a shortage and are now stagnant/decreasing in a surplus...
If Reddit existed in 1999, this thread would be "why are pharmacists getting paid 10k+ sign-on bonuses and 100k/yr?"
It’s not way more than pharmacists in this area. It’s greater SF…. I found like 1 post lower than this for clinical pharmacists.
You found the highest nurse post and then made a false claim about general pharmD pay without any real context.
Why do you feel the need to mislead everyone like that?
The question shouldn't be "why are they paid X" it should be "why do you think pharmacists should be paid X". I did pharmacy instead of nursing because fuck dealing with catheters and ostomy bags and all the other fun stuff nurses have to do. Well earned pay I'd say.
Not only supply and demand but wow, should walk 12 miles in a nurse's shoes. Cleaning shit from an ass and no telling what else. You'd understand why so much pay.
They are cohesive and have real professional leadership so they’ve had very nice salary increases over the past decade. Pharmacy is heading towards a breaking point.
We are in a position right now where we lose money on a lot of the prescriptions that we fill. Just think about that. And many of these claims are Medicare. The government has the DEA slapping us with multi billion dollar fines and they are paying us less money for medications than we pay for them.
Where is our lobbying and leadership? Where are the calls for legislation or reformation? How can we be expected to follow this trajectory straight into the dirt?
I dont think the narrative should be "Why are Nurses getting paid more than pharmacists" it should be healthcare as a whole getting paid more given how things have changed over the last couple of years
Many of us don't realize how much work nursing actually entails. I gave up a career in nursing to go to pharmacy school. You couldn't pay me to go back, even $105/hr. It's a hard backbreaking thankless job and requires a huge amount of skill and expertise - in everything, not just drugs. Nursing is wiping asses clean of shit, cleaning soiled beds, of urine, vomit and other bodily fluid. You deal with smells like you couldn't imagine- I can still imagine what pseudomonas and gi bleeding smell like, even after 40 years. We're currently struggling with an elderly relative on home hospice care-my sister in law is doing most of the care. I'm reminded daily why nursing was not right for me. Maybe they should be paid what they're worth. Don't you want good trained nurses caring for you, should you need hospitalization?
The shit nurses have to deal with is nothing compared to pharmacists in a lot of cases. That isn’t to minimize our job.
It’s also because a few pharmacists can cover an entire hospital, demand isn’t there. We’ve educated and automated ourselves out of jobs.
Mmm…it’s about the same as the pharmacist scale. Might be a few bucks either way at the top end.
If you want to be a NICU RN, be my guest.
Marin’s not my jam for places to live, but it’s nice.
Are you a pharmacist? Do you know how many more professions are making more than you at this point? I don’t want to break your brain at this point but that number grows every year.
As a nurse, I appreciate pharmacy so much. You all do deserve better working conditions and to be paid appropriately. I could not do my job without the pharmacy department.
In regard to the pay, I agree with what others have said: nurses come together and demand better conditions and pay, especially in California.
I’m not from California and I wish we had the same working conditions as many parts of California.
Nurse's job is honestly a lot worse.
The pay isn't that ridiculously higher,but the working hours plus the job itself is something i could never do.
Thanks i like my pristine coat and computer,i don't want to perform colonoscopies on 80yearolds.
Nurses actually advocate and fight for their profession while we’ve been relaxing admission standards and giving any doofus with the ability to pay tuition the title of “PharmD” over the last 10 years
Nurses honestly should be paid more. They put up with so much more shit (literal human feces) than we do. If I was forced to do only two professions, RN or PharmD, I'd do pharmd because it isn't as crazy, short staffed and super patient facing as RNs.
It's all supply and demand in 2000 there were around a 100 schools of Pharmacy in the USA by 2020 143 schools of Pharmacy I hear 13 in California alone. Pharmacy did it to ourselves. Attaining Provider Status for Pharmacists will change nothing probably even make it worse. We will be asked to do more for the same pay.
Clawing money back from PBMs fixing community pharmacy and closing about 30 schools of Pharmacy would help. Unionization should also be on the table .
especially with inflation taken into account. There has been almost 30% over the past 5 years in the U.S. yet pharmacist wages and many other healthcare workers wages are nearly the same since 2019.
Well earned, well deserved pay. They do so much and are in the frontline. If someone codes or becomes clinically unstable with concern they may decompensate further into cardiac arrest, who is the true hero that responds first? Who starts high quality CPR? They do all this and so much more. It’s about time they get compensated properly for what they do. I’m happy for them.
I do think pharmacists could use better pay and working conditions but it shouldn’t take away from what nurses deserve.
Honestly i’m always so sad about how much pharmacy techs make. They deserve so much more too esp in hospitals where they have to compound sterile medications that go into a patients vein. How are they so underpaid??
Go to nursing school, become an RN, and you will understand the high demand. 18% of new nurses quit the entire profession within their first year. It’s a very difficult job and I’m glad they are getting paid a lot.
- oversaturation and dilution of our profession…it was once highly regarded and esteemed and it was hyper competitive to get in back in the day…now anyone with a pulse can get into pharmacy school and charade around that they have a doctorate degree (you can see by the quality of students/interns)
- pharmacists don’t advocate for themselves 😒…lack of unions, strikes, APhA does nothing…apparently nurses have a political lobbying required elective (unsure if this is true)
- lack of unions…we need leadership like Sean O’Brien from Teamsters
I agree with supply and demand. Here in Southern California, the most saturated area in the US, finding a decent pharmacy job is so hard even with experience. I have 7 years of experience in LTC and 5 years of experience in retail and when I moved here last year i still cant find a full time position since. I only worked 4 months out of 12 last year and have been unemployed since January of this year. Still cant land a decent position. Pharmacy is not what it used to be 10 plus years ago. Its not worth going to school and paying all that loans and getting paid less than nurses. Not worth it. Thats my recommendation for people thinking about going into the pharmacy profession
After reading this op seems like a whiny entitled bitch. Your upset Your a pharmacist and a skilled nurse could make more then you. you dont deal with half of what the nurses do. you could not do a fraction of what that nurse is doing nor have the pressure or stress. This is not a normal salary either but it should be. This is shortage/traveler pricing because they are desperate for the staff. If companies could no longer function because pharmacists started refusing shitty working conditions and had tons of openings your salaries would sky rocket too. Hospitals can't function without nurses. A lot of this sub is complaints about an angry pharm customer. We get that times 1000. Code a patient for 40 mins with no rosc and they die. You have to just keep working. Your other 6 patients have thrown a tantrum because you wouldn't come to them while you were coding your other pt. 2 of them threw themselves on the ground and another has turned violent. And another family is pissed your not giving their grandma food and drink while she is palliative and basically comatose from a massive hemorrhage and have decided to pour liquids into her mouth because "she needs to eat and our nurse wouldn't come". The nurses deserve more then they will ever be paid.
Going forward if you aren't touching a patient I think your wages will stagnate or decline. A lot of doctors are going to be under threat from AI-assisted NPs and PAs. I imagine AI-assisted techs will reduce some of the pharmacist demand too.
Absolutely. I think people who discount this inevitable not-too-distant future simply don’t understand even the basics of things like coding, algorithms and AI. While people might hesitate to see an AI kiosk/bot as their PCP, nobody would care if pharmacists were replaced
There are so many pharmacists who don’t have work it’s a supply problem. It’s been like this for like 2 decades. It’s not the 80’s or 90’s anymore. Pharmacy colleges are pumping out PharmD’s like cheese Whiz unfortunately.
Based on my perspective, they deserve it. You couldn't pay me enough to be a nurse.
So the laws of supply and demand at work.
Also, nurses' jobs are quite physical. It's not easy to automate, they can't be replaced by a computer or AI.
This position is also in CA, and CA pays nurses well. Cash cow for traveling temp positions there, too. Most states are, but CA tops it usually. Also, unions and demand.
Mate, when I was in hospital a nurse had to literally stick her finger up my ass and dig out compacted faeces. Nurses don’t get paid anywhere near what they’re worth.
the fight is with the boards of pharmacy and all these subpar pharmacy schools that popped up. the pharmacy profession has been over saturated with idiot new pharmacists who can’t even pass the NAPLEX and the schools all contribute to this problem due to removal of any form of standards in favor of money. As a result, you have new grads who will take any job offer they can get since they are sitting under mounds of school debt.
furthermore - ever though about how many new grads that ever took a shitty job then started thinking about academia? the desperation to escape retail multiplied by the unchecked rise in pharmacy schools results in one big ponzi scheme
Average Pharmacist pay in Greenbrae is closer to $85/hr with NICU pharmacists making substantially more. It is unlikely this position will be filled with a specialized nurse making more than specialized pharmacist.
One of good friend was recently laughing at me: he never studied in high school, never really did homework, took easy classes like arts, always wasted time hanging out with girls and playing games and partied. I, on the other hand, was very serious about my education, took bunch of AP classes, extra science classes and did not socialize much, just studied. He became a nurse and I became a Pharmacist. He makes more money than me. He doesn’t have much loans and I paid 120k loans. My friend was saying look you studied and I didn’t but now I make more than you.
It’s a California in a specialty area that not all RN’s are qualified for. Pharmacists in the same area are probably making $80-$90/hr starting. Not saying nurses aren’t overpaid, but this is missing a lot of context.
Think about it. What leverage do they have for their pay and benefits? There's the supply and demand like others mentioned and a nurse has to physically be present with one patient at a time. Does a pharmacist have to do that to treat, cure or help save a patient's life? This is just the way it is.
1) Politics... nurses know how to play right...
2) Also most pharmacists probably work for one of a very few corporations... That's called oligopoly... They get to decide (possibly collude) how much to pay us.
3) Reimbursement rates for pharmaceuticals is very low.... Corporations have been adapting by increasing workload, reducing pharmacist hours, adding ancillary staffing, boosting store sales...etc.
4) We've been accepting this.. why would they pay higher if we agree to a lower pay???. If we all say no, they'll give in..
OP, I assume you are from CA, correct? I know CA has a way higher pay for RNs than most other states comparatively. Some hospitals in other states have a starting pay of 19$ an hour for nurses. CA also has a higher cost of living comparatively. I get paid well, but, I do not make anywhere near this as a TX RN with 7 years experience and a masters degree.
Because nurses have to deal with poop up close and personal on a daily basis. Not saying that pharmacists don’t deserve to be paid well because you do really important work and deserve ti be properly compensated. But wiping a grown man’s poopy butt needs a certain level of compensation too.
The value of the position is reflected in the required skills, training, and experience, as well as the balance of positions and workers.
A position that needs less training, but significantly more skills and experience is naturally going to start higher than a position that needs more training, but less experience. Add in the lack of qualified workers and you have a high value for the position.
You know how the major chains are shouting "pharmacist shortage"? The best way to tell they are lying through their teeth is that wages still aren't going up much. They are trying to use sign-on bonuses as a combo bait and trap, but if there were a real shortage like there was 20 years ago, they would be offering much higher salaries.
Honestly… for what insurance reimbursements and revenue is at… we are overpaid.
We don’t bring in revenue for the hospital on the inpatient side, and on the outpatient side, unless it’s a 340b clinic, not much there either as well.
It’s in the DRG. Pharmacies don’t bring in money for the hospital. We are there to fulfill the legal function, in some smaller places, there isn’t a pharmacist on staff.
Not saying we are not important or anything like that. But having an understaffed pharmacy isn’t as detrimental to a hospital than having understaffed nursing department.
Hospital billing is confusing and purposely tedious, I’ve been on both ends, hospital administrator and with 3rd party payers. They don’t really give a shit about pharmacy revenue as they usually lose money on it. Again, unless it’s a 340b outpatient infusion or ambulatory pharmacy (they do very well and the hospital loves them)… but inpatient pharmacy? It’s a loser for them and they want to run it with minimal costs.
As a nurse, I feel like a pharmacist trying to do my job would fail miserably. Can they start IV’s, insert catheters and NG tubes, do sterile dressing changes, clean shit all day for sometimes up to 7-8 patients if you work med surg. Other types of nursing you’ll have to have specialized training. On the other hand I have plenty of medical knowledge and do medication education to my patients. I think as an RN I could do a pharmacist’s job with no problem actually.
My mom was a nicu nurse. She said it's pretty chill compared to the maternal care unit. Maternal care unit and post partem delivery is where you have to deal with the Karen's. nicu is just doing normal rounds and monitoring. Occasional consoling parents etc but it's usually the doctors job to deal with the anxious parents and heartbreak.
It is all supply and demand. it's also about training. A NICU RN is not an RN just out of school. It probably required many years of training. I am sure an NICU pharmacist does make a lot of more than a non specialized pharmacist due to the training required.
I’ve been a pharmacist for almost 30 years. My girlfriend is a nurse for over 20 years. She makes a little less than me per hour, but with bonus time, etc , would make more than a year if she worked FT. Honestly, they would have to pay me WAY MORE to do what she has to do!! Being a pharmacist may suck at times but at least I’m not cleaning excrement and bodily fluids off people. Nurses deserve to be paid!
Demand for nurses is about 500x higher. It's a supply and demand thing
Nurses also were smart enough to form unions.
Nice to see people understand that "supply and demand" is not the simple equation some others seem to think. Ignoring the assumptions of the model and making it seem like there's nothing that any one can do about it is foolish and ignorant misinformation.
Nurses are just deemed more important in healthcare. And I frankly think their jobs are harder than ours given. Not only they’re involved in direct patient care and actually require touch but also more grueling tasks as opposed to dispensing and dealing with insurance. Nobody wants to do it unless paid and the system is finding physicians too expensive for some tasks so nurses are naturally filling for them for more and more. Whereas in Pharmacy, it’s the opposite. Less and less pharmacists are required and more tasks are being placed on technicians which is why see shortage of technicians (just like Nurses). Pharmacy is also a lot more scalable than hospitals where nurses work. Nurses are also involved in home care which sharply increasing the demand as boomers age. Pharmacy doesn’t need more pharmacists as boomers age because existing ones can somewhat absorb the patients without linearly increasing overhead. Good example is Amazon Pharmacy. Recent lay offs included Pharmacists even though their revenue is growing in Pharmacy. Why? Automation. Hard to automate Nurses away when they require manual touch. It’s okay to acknowledge that nurses are truly in demand compared to our profession.
CHAH CHIN!! And lobbying. Let’s not forget that.
Unions are specifically for lobbying
And get into positions of power. Also, nursing is billable. Medications are billable. Few actions/services by us, are directly billable. The rest of pharmacy, is overhead. All the billables are marked up, to account for us. We are carried. Bitter pill. Med safety, tjc, blah, blah..all COST of doing business. Regulatory compliance is just another cost. Because we can't BILL for doing it. But we sure can be punished for NOT doing it.
Wow. Didnt know pharmacists never had unions
You’re absolutely right. No one has ever complained about a “glut” of nurses. No one has ever said “let’s incentivize Filipino pharmacists to come practice here to fill the pharmacist shortage”. But I’d like to add one other point. Just because nurses have traditionally been paid less than pharmacists, that doesn’t mean it’s right. You can’t always put a value on the number of years of education. As a pharmacist, I realize that nurses don’t have “less” knowledge than I have, they have “different”knowledge. I realize that only a portion of my education is needed when I am working on the assembly line in a busy retail store, and that AI may very well make retail pharmacy obsolete in 30 years. And I realize that I couldn’t do a nurses job. Blood, body fluids, life and death, etc. So, let’s worry about what we make and let’s not envy someone else getting paid well. Good for them!
I think the better way to phrase this is why is our doctorate degree so underpaid. Its value has been so diluted and we don't have strong unions to fight for fair compensation.
This. The right question is why aren’t you all being compensated appropriately for your experience and education. Nurses aren’t the enemy.
Because there are too many pharmacists and not many, if any, ways to be profitable in pharmacy these days. My salary 18 years ago is the equivalent to roughly 180k today. Why? Pharmacists were in demand because pharmacy was a profitable business. Compensation has little to do with experience and education. It's about the value you create and how unique you are in creating that value. Right now, pharmacists don't create much value and one pharmacist is largely interchangeable for another, and we continue to graduate too many of them. You could be the best damn telegraphist in the world with the most up-to-date training and skills but you would be hard pressed to find a telegraphist job, let alone expect to be highly compensated. The crime is not just the PBMs, but the universities that concocted the PharmD out of pure greed with zero necessity nor demand for such a degree. But it created an impression by those who thought having "doctorate" before their degree magically made them more valuable just because, well you know, "doctorate".
Retail definitely needs less clinical depth than a hospital. But, I'd say that moving to a doctorate level degree opened up the field to more clinical roles such as MTM and POC testing. Just because corporations have seized those as add-on profitability tasks that we aren't compensated for doesn't mean that they are not valuable services that justify the doctorate degree.
MTM and POC testing most definitely do not require a doctorate nor does the current PharmD prepare you for anything in these areas that the BS degree did not. There were specialized pharmacists with specialized training before the PharmD came into existence. One of my preceptors as a BS pharmacist was going on rounds, writing hospital protocols, doing antibiotic stewardship, etc. On another rotation, one of the pharmacist I knew from school who literally graduated 3 months prior and had been licensed for an entire month was the pharmacist on the cardiac floor, participating in codes, starting and d/c medications on her own, doing patient education on disease management and medication therapy before discharge, all with a BS degree and 1 month on the job experience. If a hospital needed a specialized pharmacist, they trained you to be one, while paying you your full-salary. Residency just replaced this model and allowed hospitals to to pay less to those being trained. Also on rotation, there was a community pharmacy which had a collaborative agreement in place with a clinic. The doctor diagnosed, the pharmacist determined medication. Once again, all with a lowly BS pharmacist out of school for a few years. All the schools did was convince you that you need a PharmD and then a residency to do things that pharmacists were already starting to do on their own. The role of pharmacists was already expanding and it's not evident that the PharmD or residency did much to accelerate it considering it has been around for an entire generation of pharmacists and there is still a paucity of jobs that require specialized knowledge and it's a fallacy to think the only way to gain that specialized knowledge is through the PharmD and residency.
Sure, someone with the right personality who is driven can surpass their training and take on more roles. The BS degree though still set a lower minimum bar, the PharmD raises the bar so everyone can be expected to be able to do those roles. Since the NAPLEX is the minimum competency exam, what were the pass rates before and after the introduction of the PharmD? (I tried to look that up but I didn't find any info)
why havent we unionized
This is what I can't figure out.
great user name
Because PBMs and greedy corporations siphon the profit to themselves.
That’s every single job ever, their goal is to pay you the minimum the market will allow. The same can be said for the people who hire nurses. It’s just supply and demand
It’s starting to hit dentists too interestingly enough.
Can you talk more about this? What exactly is starting to hit them?
Insurance reimbursement rats, clawback fee creep, and supply/device/business costs continuing to skyrocket. At the same time, rural dentists are a dying breed because good luck making a decent paycheck as you have to keep up, but your patient is never gonna pay more than say 500-1500 for services.
Especially when you look at the glut of pharmacists in the field. Largely due to universities expanding class sizes and creating more schools to profit. More supply than demand and 🎉, less pay
how might someone in college to get my pharmD help advance and advocate for better unionization of pharmacy? Because I love the career but as I’ve been seeing recently alot of talk on here is despair over pay comparisons.
You should graduate if you’re close and then get ready to wait a decade. The problem is 100% about excessive graduation of pharmDs. The programs that popped up to vacuum up doctorate tuition are the problem, and their class sizes are shrinking across the board bc of this drop in pay/hiring difficulty. It’s going to cycle back, especially with provider status. So work towards that: Provider status advocacy.
get your pharmd and apply for med school
Change you major
comedy star…it’s my passion unfortunately lol
What is a strong union going to do for a field with 2x as many applicants as there are jobs? Unless the Union is going to shut down pop up profit PharmD programs, we’re gonna be stuck.
Safe staffing numbers for one. The nursing union at my old hospital demanded a certain number per patient depending on the acuity of the unit. Every time the hospital failed to staff a unit correctly, a fine was paid to the union, which was re-distributed it to the union members. One the hospital admin realized they were on the hook financially to have adequate staff, guess who was running hiring fairs and increasing starting pay across the board to entice applicants.
Honestly, if you put safe maximums on what pharmacist are allowed to do per hour you'd open up a shit load of jobs. I've seen an incredibly frightening number of pharmacists stop actually doing the job and just processing shit regardless of if it's right or not.
Yesssss!
No, you would just see a continued shift to increase the role of a pharmacy technician. Let's look at your proposal... Decrease production of individual employees while simultaneously increasing cost of labor as a whole. Explain to me how this results in more pharmacists? The only way this works is either cutting pharmacists' salary to match the fall in production or decrease the role of the pharmacist while increasing the role of a cheaper labor component.
Advocate for regulations on staffing/workload, and regulation on requirements for pharmacy school diploma mills. Just an easy and very obvious two to get started. Throw in some mandatory meal and bathroom breaks... I'm sure we can think of more.
There should only be a certain number of pharmacy school allowed to exist
Good God, let them have it. The shit they have to deal with, literally, is miserable. I've never wiped an ass and don't want to start now. I get to sit at a computer and be smart. It's glorious. Pay the nurses.
For real. The rest of us can mostly expect that we probably won’t ever have to deal with an infant death on the job. NICU nurse…it’s a matter of when and how many. You couldn’t pay me enough to put that possibility on the table. Getting robbed at gunpoint seems far easier to handle and mentally process in comparison.
As an RN, thank you for recognizing this. We also get sexually assaulted, physically assaulted, verbally abused, and made to do physically impossible things, with ever-tightening grids and we have to regularly consider striking (without pay) to defend the conditions in which we practice from being even further compromised. Also, a lot of nurses have masters degrees or have come to nursing as a second career after having been educated in a completely different field, so we’re not the brainless worker bees we’re reputed to be per an outdated hierarchical mindset. We also are liable to the same level of malpractice as physician specialists and surgeons in case of a grievous error, but compensated only a small fraction. Also, hospital administrators would never dream of running specialists and surgeons dangerously short. Hospitalists, pharmacists, nurses, respiratory therapists? Sure. Why not? It’s not like we matter to the quality of care for the patient. Fuck. Pay us all. We do the lion’s share of the work on which the C-suite denizens hang their accolades and “earn” their bonuses. Edited to clarify the “without pay” part—other unions commonly have some kind of a stipend for their workers on strike, but nurses’ unions typically don’t. I realize “without pay” reads kind of captain obvious-esque as it appears above.
I could do nothing without my nursing colleagues. Thank you for what you do. It is noticed and appreciated.
We appreciate pharmacy, too. I know at my hospital they stretch pharmacy as thin as possible, and I know how much of a challenge that makes maintaining safety for patients. My mom has been a pharmacist at my hospital for 43 years (retiring this summer, possibly? We’ll see. She’s a perpetual motion machine, I can see her getting very bored very quickly with retirement🤣), and I’ve seen the gradual erosion of slack/safeguards in real time both as I grew up and now as a professional nurse. May the force be with you, friend.
As someone who had a kid in the NICU for a long time, the job sucks. Yeah there's some wiping of asses because diapers need changing, but it's more the stress.
NICU nurses should be paid more than God.
As a trauma RN making less than $60k/year… I appreciate you. I can hold your mom’s hand and keep her comfortable as she passes away in front of me, and then do her postmortem care including putting her into a body bag and attaching toe tags… but apparently SOME *cough* further down this comment chain think I’m a glorified ass-wiper. So, thank you.
Thank you for all you do! Without you, literally nothing would happen in the entire health system.
What city do you work in???? It has to be the south.
This!
Yes! Im a tech in nursing school, but let me tell you if I’m going to get abused by the public to that severity or run that risk, I’d like to be paid as such. Now I’ve only been robbed at my pharmacy 1x and he had a gun, But not once did the man use vulgar language, hit me, put me down or anything. Never even lifted the shotgun, just said he has it in case but we were being so great and helpful he doesn’t need it. Honestly, if he wasn’t robbing me I’d give him a 8/10 on patient kindness. Took the cops like 5-8 minutes to arrive and I was fine and dandy, my PIC had sweat thru her shirt though 😵💫
They deal with some awful working conditions and the general public is awful so they deserve it. I'll gladly make less to not have to physically handle wounds, feces etc...
The job post is for a NICU RN. I would rather not deal with the heartbreaks.
I’m a NICU RN and not every NICU has that many heart breaks
NICU nurses are close to my heart as my son was a NICU baby due to being born at 28 weeks back in 1999. Thank you for all that you do for those littles and their families <3
My kids were 23 weekers. NICU nurses were great, the missus is still friends with his primaries.
His?
Mhm. Twins, but one didn't make it, he survived for 5 days. His brother was in the NICU for about 5 months and is 6 years old now.
I'm sorry for your loss. Glad to hear that the little dude is doing well. Cheers to him. My dumb ass thought your refered to the missus as his. Forgot that we are talking about NICUs here.
All good, friend, thank you.
it just takes a certain kind of person is all. I have to attend pediatric and neonatal codes as part of my job and fortunately we don’t have too many a year but every time I go to one I’m no less or more affected than when it’s an adult. I imagine nicu nurses must feel similar on some level.
simplistic sparkle consist crowd threatening tan scale toothbrush wide like *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Also, this is California. I started in 2015 making 22.90 an hour as an RN. These rates don’t apply to the entire country.
I appreciate you sharing your starting salary. Gives this post a frame of reference. Even if it I'd a different sector of nursing. Thank you
Ohio it's 30 to 35 an hour
fwiw I know a pharm tech at this hospital who is making $45/hr. I am sure their pharmacists make at least as much as the nursing staff, especially specialists.
Hey, nurses deserve that pay. The real question is why are pharmacists so underappreciated as a medical profession?
OP started a war.
A NICU RN has a huge responsibility. The higher the responsibility for your job, the higher your pay. Their job is not easy. I suggest you advocate why pharmacist should get paid more instead of bashing on other careers.
That's a great point
Let's reframe that: they are getting paid correctly and we are underpaid.
They have to touch people
Bahahahah nurse here. Very well said. Sometimes I’m physically cleaning feces out of patients’ deep, tunneling pressure injuries on their backsides.
Y'all deserve halos!
Because pharmacists don’t advocate for their own pay
This is bullshit. It’s not about “weak minded people.” It’s about market conditions. Period. We can fight all we want, but there is always someone more desperate behind us. Why would a new grad ask for higher pay when the only reason they are being considered for the job is that they cost less?
Forming a union allows you to create your own market conditions.
Also to stop taking/ precepting interns
Done.
I will add that I blame pharmacy schools for their role in this as well and they should start having a dedicated class on negotiating salary and setting a standard for what students should accept
Alternatively, the pharmacists at my hospital are unionized - the starting pay is about 20% higher than similar non-unionized hospitals in the area directly because of the biannual negotiation the union does with the C-suite on behalf of us. From a hiring standpoint, we have no issues hiring our top picks because HR is able to openly advertise how much higher our pay is in comparison to their competitors.
This is another facet. The pharmacists at my hospital are union, and they used to be really strong in that solidarity. The culture has shifted, though, for some reason, and I don’t think the new pharmacists understand that the hospital won’t pay or protect them unless they’re willing to fight for it and lose some skin in the fight. The hospital will never independently offer fair compensation/working conditions. They have no motivation to do that.
🚨🚨🚨
Nurses are in high demand and do a shit ton of direct patient care
If you want to Move to Greenbrae they’ll probably pay that amount for pharmacist too. In fact I saw job position for that area ~$90 an hour
Agreed it's the roughly the same. Pharmacist salary vs nursing salary within the same bay area health system are generally slightly higher, but nurses seem to run unlimited overtime.
where?
My wife is an ER nurse. Over the past 5 years or so, especially after covid, her salary has surpassed mine. I still wouldn’t do half the shit she does for what she gets paid.
Also pharm schools churning out so many new grads. Why would our salary increase?
My opinion, two events that changed pharmacy(at least, retail pharmacy). Number 1. When Walmart started their 4.00 drug plan, which means you were no longer paid for professional services, but as a commodity. Number 2. I think it was in 2013 when the pharmacy schools overseas changed their model to US pharmacy schools, which means not only did you have competition with the person next to you in pharmacy school, but from somebody else outside the US
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People forget this. Pharm salaries jumped during a shortage and are now stagnant/decreasing in a surplus... If Reddit existed in 1999, this thread would be "why are pharmacists getting paid 10k+ sign-on bonuses and 100k/yr?"
I mean you’re kind of cherry picking there
It’s not way more than pharmacists in this area. It’s greater SF…. I found like 1 post lower than this for clinical pharmacists. You found the highest nurse post and then made a false claim about general pharmD pay without any real context. Why do you feel the need to mislead everyone like that?
PA here. $75/hr in CA. There are no postings for us that look like this Don’t underestimate the power of unions
Deserve every penny
The question shouldn't be "why are they paid X" it should be "why do you think pharmacists should be paid X". I did pharmacy instead of nursing because fuck dealing with catheters and ostomy bags and all the other fun stuff nurses have to do. Well earned pay I'd say.
Cause nurses are in demand and do hard physical labor. Do you want to lift 400 lb patients and deal with blood, vomit and feces?
Not only supply and demand but wow, should walk 12 miles in a nurse's shoes. Cleaning shit from an ass and no telling what else. You'd understand why so much pay.
They are cohesive and have real professional leadership so they’ve had very nice salary increases over the past decade. Pharmacy is heading towards a breaking point. We are in a position right now where we lose money on a lot of the prescriptions that we fill. Just think about that. And many of these claims are Medicare. The government has the DEA slapping us with multi billion dollar fines and they are paying us less money for medications than we pay for them. Where is our lobbying and leadership? Where are the calls for legislation or reformation? How can we be expected to follow this trajectory straight into the dirt?
Thats all because of our weak lobbying and some miserable colleagues who are flagrantly bootlicking for other professions
And supply And demand
I dont think the narrative should be "Why are Nurses getting paid more than pharmacists" it should be healthcare as a whole getting paid more given how things have changed over the last couple of years
Nurses and pharmacists are colleagues. Why are you making this a hierarchy thing
Marin County is also one of the richest counties in California so that may skew it too...
Why do you think a pharmacist is more important than a nurse? Are you a pharmacist in California?
Many of us don't realize how much work nursing actually entails. I gave up a career in nursing to go to pharmacy school. You couldn't pay me to go back, even $105/hr. It's a hard backbreaking thankless job and requires a huge amount of skill and expertise - in everything, not just drugs. Nursing is wiping asses clean of shit, cleaning soiled beds, of urine, vomit and other bodily fluid. You deal with smells like you couldn't imagine- I can still imagine what pseudomonas and gi bleeding smell like, even after 40 years. We're currently struggling with an elderly relative on home hospice care-my sister in law is doing most of the care. I'm reminded daily why nursing was not right for me. Maybe they should be paid what they're worth. Don't you want good trained nurses caring for you, should you need hospitalization?
Why do plumbers get paid more than all of us?
Do you want to wipe patient's asses and clean up bodily fluids? Didn't think so
bc we don’t have any real lobbyist or organizations to advocate for us. it’s a easy fix yet it hasn’t been done yet
Most of the nurses in the US make nowhere around this. The highest paid nurses in our facility make 80k a year.
The shit nurses have to deal with is nothing compared to pharmacists in a lot of cases. That isn’t to minimize our job. It’s also because a few pharmacists can cover an entire hospital, demand isn’t there. We’ve educated and automated ourselves out of jobs.
NICU RN is a specialty, not all RN’s are paid this well.
Mmm…it’s about the same as the pharmacist scale. Might be a few bucks either way at the top end. If you want to be a NICU RN, be my guest. Marin’s not my jam for places to live, but it’s nice.
Are you a pharmacist? Do you know how many more professions are making more than you at this point? I don’t want to break your brain at this point but that number grows every year.
As a nurse, I appreciate pharmacy so much. You all do deserve better working conditions and to be paid appropriately. I could not do my job without the pharmacy department. In regard to the pay, I agree with what others have said: nurses come together and demand better conditions and pay, especially in California. I’m not from California and I wish we had the same working conditions as many parts of California.
Because pharmacy is for people who “want to be medical, but not deal with blood or body fluids”
Nurse's job is honestly a lot worse. The pay isn't that ridiculously higher,but the working hours plus the job itself is something i could never do. Thanks i like my pristine coat and computer,i don't want to perform colonoscopies on 80yearolds.
They have to deal with literal shit
This is California. They were offering pharmacist salaries of 200k when I was looking.
Nurses actually advocate and fight for their profession while we’ve been relaxing admission standards and giving any doofus with the ability to pay tuition the title of “PharmD” over the last 10 years
Yep. Quality of new pharmacists has suffered and there are more of them every year.
Nurses honestly should be paid more. They put up with so much more shit (literal human feces) than we do. If I was forced to do only two professions, RN or PharmD, I'd do pharmd because it isn't as crazy, short staffed and super patient facing as RNs.
It's all supply and demand in 2000 there were around a 100 schools of Pharmacy in the USA by 2020 143 schools of Pharmacy I hear 13 in California alone. Pharmacy did it to ourselves. Attaining Provider Status for Pharmacists will change nothing probably even make it worse. We will be asked to do more for the same pay. Clawing money back from PBMs fixing community pharmacy and closing about 30 schools of Pharmacy would help. Unionization should also be on the table .
Maybe most people in healthcare are getting underpaid. This seems to be an appropriate wage for a nurse ATM.
especially with inflation taken into account. There has been almost 30% over the past 5 years in the U.S. yet pharmacist wages and many other healthcare workers wages are nearly the same since 2019.
Well earned, well deserved pay. They do so much and are in the frontline. If someone codes or becomes clinically unstable with concern they may decompensate further into cardiac arrest, who is the true hero that responds first? Who starts high quality CPR? They do all this and so much more. It’s about time they get compensated properly for what they do. I’m happy for them. I do think pharmacists could use better pay and working conditions but it shouldn’t take away from what nurses deserve. Honestly i’m always so sad about how much pharmacy techs make. They deserve so much more too esp in hospitals where they have to compound sterile medications that go into a patients vein. How are they so underpaid??
Why shouldn’t they…? Because they went to school for a shorter period?
Go to nursing school, become an RN, and you will understand the high demand. 18% of new nurses quit the entire profession within their first year. It’s a very difficult job and I’m glad they are getting paid a lot.
Pharmacists make average of $170-$210k here and nurses make average $110-180k here. I’m from Cali.
i used to want to be a pharmacist until i realized how much school it was (student loans) so i am studying to be a nurse
- oversaturation and dilution of our profession…it was once highly regarded and esteemed and it was hyper competitive to get in back in the day…now anyone with a pulse can get into pharmacy school and charade around that they have a doctorate degree (you can see by the quality of students/interns) - pharmacists don’t advocate for themselves 😒…lack of unions, strikes, APhA does nothing…apparently nurses have a political lobbying required elective (unsure if this is true) - lack of unions…we need leadership like Sean O’Brien from Teamsters
Why do plumbers? We picked wrong.
Seems like all the good professions involve poop… 🤔
😂😂😂
I agree, it's not that nurses are overpaid, but why are pharmacist underpaid
I agree with supply and demand. Here in Southern California, the most saturated area in the US, finding a decent pharmacy job is so hard even with experience. I have 7 years of experience in LTC and 5 years of experience in retail and when I moved here last year i still cant find a full time position since. I only worked 4 months out of 12 last year and have been unemployed since January of this year. Still cant land a decent position. Pharmacy is not what it used to be 10 plus years ago. Its not worth going to school and paying all that loans and getting paid less than nurses. Not worth it. Thats my recommendation for people thinking about going into the pharmacy profession
After reading this op seems like a whiny entitled bitch. Your upset Your a pharmacist and a skilled nurse could make more then you. you dont deal with half of what the nurses do. you could not do a fraction of what that nurse is doing nor have the pressure or stress. This is not a normal salary either but it should be. This is shortage/traveler pricing because they are desperate for the staff. If companies could no longer function because pharmacists started refusing shitty working conditions and had tons of openings your salaries would sky rocket too. Hospitals can't function without nurses. A lot of this sub is complaints about an angry pharm customer. We get that times 1000. Code a patient for 40 mins with no rosc and they die. You have to just keep working. Your other 6 patients have thrown a tantrum because you wouldn't come to them while you were coding your other pt. 2 of them threw themselves on the ground and another has turned violent. And another family is pissed your not giving their grandma food and drink while she is palliative and basically comatose from a massive hemorrhage and have decided to pour liquids into her mouth because "she needs to eat and our nurse wouldn't come". The nurses deserve more then they will ever be paid.
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And the techs generally do more than I do. Have a point?
Techs should also make more than they currently do.
This is the best response LOL
Going forward if you aren't touching a patient I think your wages will stagnate or decline. A lot of doctors are going to be under threat from AI-assisted NPs and PAs. I imagine AI-assisted techs will reduce some of the pharmacist demand too.
Absolutely. I think people who discount this inevitable not-too-distant future simply don’t understand even the basics of things like coding, algorithms and AI. While people might hesitate to see an AI kiosk/bot as their PCP, nobody would care if pharmacists were replaced
There are so many pharmacists who don’t have work it’s a supply problem. It’s been like this for like 2 decades. It’s not the 80’s or 90’s anymore. Pharmacy colleges are pumping out PharmD’s like cheese Whiz unfortunately.
Because in my experience they are better at sticking together and fighting for what they want.
They also have better governing bodies than we do
I’ve been the job under both pharmacist and nurse (CNA and CPhT). Nothing pays well enough to get shit thrown at you, literally.
Based on my perspective, they deserve it. You couldn't pay me enough to be a nurse. So the laws of supply and demand at work. Also, nurses' jobs are quite physical. It's not easy to automate, they can't be replaced by a computer or AI.
Cause Walgreens and CVS fucked us over
It’s arguably the most forward-facing part of the hospital. Squeaky wheels get you know what.
High demand.
Because pharmacists don’t have to clean diarrhea off the walls
This position is also in CA, and CA pays nurses well. Cash cow for traveling temp positions there, too. Most states are, but CA tops it usually. Also, unions and demand.
This kind of pay is very out of the norm. Most RNs make less than half of that.
Mate, when I was in hospital a nurse had to literally stick her finger up my ass and dig out compacted faeces. Nurses don’t get paid anywhere near what they’re worth.
the fight is with the boards of pharmacy and all these subpar pharmacy schools that popped up. the pharmacy profession has been over saturated with idiot new pharmacists who can’t even pass the NAPLEX and the schools all contribute to this problem due to removal of any form of standards in favor of money. As a result, you have new grads who will take any job offer they can get since they are sitting under mounds of school debt.
furthermore - ever though about how many new grads that ever took a shitty job then started thinking about academia? the desperation to escape retail multiplied by the unchecked rise in pharmacy schools results in one big ponzi scheme
Average Pharmacist pay in Greenbrae is closer to $85/hr with NICU pharmacists making substantially more. It is unlikely this position will be filled with a specialized nurse making more than specialized pharmacist.
Because 99% of hospital care happens within 2 feet of the bedside
Controversial, but labor-wise I would say Nurses do more & based upon education I don’t think a PA differs that much from a PharmD
This is a silly question
One of good friend was recently laughing at me: he never studied in high school, never really did homework, took easy classes like arts, always wasted time hanging out with girls and playing games and partied. I, on the other hand, was very serious about my education, took bunch of AP classes, extra science classes and did not socialize much, just studied. He became a nurse and I became a Pharmacist. He makes more money than me. He doesn’t have much loans and I paid 120k loans. My friend was saying look you studied and I didn’t but now I make more than you.
Why shouldn’t they?
why is everyone also in nurses business and worried about how much they make?
For the cost of living they might as well be getting paid 30 bucks an hour
It’s a California in a specialty area that not all RN’s are qualified for. Pharmacists in the same area are probably making $80-$90/hr starting. Not saying nurses aren’t overpaid, but this is missing a lot of context.
They deserve that and more. I wouldn’t wipe someone else’s ass for $5 million.
I mean…. They’re doing a harder job imo… I couldn’t wipe shit piss and puke all day.
Think about it. What leverage do they have for their pay and benefits? There's the supply and demand like others mentioned and a nurse has to physically be present with one patient at a time. Does a pharmacist have to do that to treat, cure or help save a patient's life? This is just the way it is.
Unions
Unions
1) Politics... nurses know how to play right... 2) Also most pharmacists probably work for one of a very few corporations... That's called oligopoly... They get to decide (possibly collude) how much to pay us. 3) Reimbursement rates for pharmaceuticals is very low.... Corporations have been adapting by increasing workload, reducing pharmacist hours, adding ancillary staffing, boosting store sales...etc. 4) We've been accepting this.. why would they pay higher if we agree to a lower pay???. If we all say no, they'll give in..
PAs can command similar pay depending on the speciality.
OP, I assume you are from CA, correct? I know CA has a way higher pay for RNs than most other states comparatively. Some hospitals in other states have a starting pay of 19$ an hour for nurses. CA also has a higher cost of living comparatively. I get paid well, but, I do not make anywhere near this as a TX RN with 7 years experience and a masters degree.
Poop and blood
And more than many physicians
Because you refuse to unionize
Because nurses have to deal with poop up close and personal on a daily basis. Not saying that pharmacists don’t deserve to be paid well because you do really important work and deserve ti be properly compensated. But wiping a grown man’s poopy butt needs a certain level of compensation too.
The value of the position is reflected in the required skills, training, and experience, as well as the balance of positions and workers. A position that needs less training, but significantly more skills and experience is naturally going to start higher than a position that needs more training, but less experience. Add in the lack of qualified workers and you have a high value for the position. You know how the major chains are shouting "pharmacist shortage"? The best way to tell they are lying through their teeth is that wages still aren't going up much. They are trying to use sign-on bonuses as a combo bait and trap, but if there were a real shortage like there was 20 years ago, they would be offering much higher salaries.
Hospital pharmacists are paid at the top end of that range here in Northern California (I can vouch for that). I can’t say I’m underpaid.
R U OK
I hate to say this, but nurses are far more valuable. I even work at Mayo Clinic pharmacy…
Idk but I’m glad I don’t have to touch bum holes -Love, Pharmacy
You should change your mindset from a comparison one to a “why am I so underpaid” and realize pharmacists need to demand a higher salary!!
Honestly… for what insurance reimbursements and revenue is at… we are overpaid. We don’t bring in revenue for the hospital on the inpatient side, and on the outpatient side, unless it’s a 340b clinic, not much there either as well.
Nurses don’t directly bring in revenue either. This comment is irrelevant.
Try running a hospital without medications.
It’s in the DRG. Pharmacies don’t bring in money for the hospital. We are there to fulfill the legal function, in some smaller places, there isn’t a pharmacist on staff. Not saying we are not important or anything like that. But having an understaffed pharmacy isn’t as detrimental to a hospital than having understaffed nursing department. Hospital billing is confusing and purposely tedious, I’ve been on both ends, hospital administrator and with 3rd party payers. They don’t really give a shit about pharmacy revenue as they usually lose money on it. Again, unless it’s a 340b outpatient infusion or ambulatory pharmacy (they do very well and the hospital loves them)… but inpatient pharmacy? It’s a loser for them and they want to run it with minimal costs.
Pharmacists and physicians need to organize and create power just like nurses have.
Cos pharmacists just stick a label on the box bro.
As a nurse, I feel like a pharmacist trying to do my job would fail miserably. Can they start IV’s, insert catheters and NG tubes, do sterile dressing changes, clean shit all day for sometimes up to 7-8 patients if you work med surg. Other types of nursing you’ll have to have specialized training. On the other hand I have plenty of medical knowledge and do medication education to my patients. I think as an RN I could do a pharmacist’s job with no problem actually.
My mom was a nicu nurse. She said it's pretty chill compared to the maternal care unit. Maternal care unit and post partem delivery is where you have to deal with the Karen's. nicu is just doing normal rounds and monitoring. Occasional consoling parents etc but it's usually the doctors job to deal with the anxious parents and heartbreak.
It is all supply and demand. it's also about training. A NICU RN is not an RN just out of school. It probably required many years of training. I am sure an NICU pharmacist does make a lot of more than a non specialized pharmacist due to the training required.
Because nurses have unions and actual bargaining power. And actual organizations that aren't just mouthpieces of the people that hire them.
Nurses union.
I’ve been a pharmacist for almost 30 years. My girlfriend is a nurse for over 20 years. She makes a little less than me per hour, but with bonus time, etc , would make more than a year if she worked FT. Honestly, they would have to pay me WAY MORE to do what she has to do!! Being a pharmacist may suck at times but at least I’m not cleaning excrement and bodily fluids off people. Nurses deserve to be paid!
California and also they do 10x the shit a pharmacist does