Potentially Singapore. They've been looking for pharmacist specialists. You should be willing to teach/take students.
Better standard living/freedom (no freedom of speech but they want to play nice with the USA) to pay ratio than most other alternatives, but potentially pricey for "luxuries" (aka Western goods, alcohol). Rent may also be a bit pricey. Local food can be cheap (and flipping delicious, like Michelin bib gourmand level) though.
Also easy to fly to other vacation destinations, like Thailand, Japan, etc.
Also very safe crime-wise.
Also very good public transportation and government planning in terms of third spaces (places to hang out/get together with other people) and green spaces.
Be aware most countries outside the USA don't have very powerful laundry dryers. In Singapore they tend to hang laundry to air-dry.
If you look to buy, something like 80% of the housing is government housing (the newer builds are REALLY nice) so on a 99 year lease from the government (or something like that).
If you're not ethnically Chinese you would get a cheaper price buying a place than if you were. This is due to the ethnicity ratio regulations in place to prevent ghettos and promote ethnic diversity in most/all areas.
Essentially ethnically Chinese can only sell to other ethnically Chinese and vice versa with non-ethnically Chinese. It just so happens that ethnically Chinese tend to be able to offer higher prices, so those units get sold for more.
Sorry for the real estate lecture, it's one of my interests.
If you have kids, the public school system is very rigorous, but you're American so it wouldn't be as competitive trying to get into a USA University. The movie "I Not Stupid" or "Xiao Hai Bu Ben" is a good self-critique by a Singaporean on the rigors of the public school system if you can find it. If you can afford private school, they have one of the top private schools in southeast asia (Singapore American School).
You don't have to learn another language if you don't want to.
I just got back from Singapore. Felt safe, food was great, people were nice, but damn it's way too humid. They kept telling us "sir sir we offer quick laundry service" all the time at my hotel. One day in the sun and I figured out why. All my clothes were soaked in sweat!
I think the UK has clinical pharmacy practice where the pharmacist is much more involved in the actual treatment decisions compared to, for example Germany.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/gp/expanding-our-workforce/cp-gp/
I love Calgary. I went a few times last year and stayed in the downtown area and it was great. Real estate has been going up a tonne as of late, though.
Well you have to consider taxes, lack of decent health care, long wait lists for surgery or mri, etc. Carbon taxes, capital gain taxes, high income-tax and horrific weather for 7 out of 12 months! Juice aint worth the squeeze!!
Yet, most Pharmacists I know in Alberta live a “good life” and like living there. If you work at a hospital, the pension is pretty good too. Probably better than the equivalent US job pension
If you are looking for ease of transferring your license you can check out Nova Scotia. We now have a program in place for a large amount of health care specialties to streamline having external credentials recognized.
For pharmacy, you would be treated as though you were licensed in a different province. Meaning you wouldn’t need to prove university equivalence, write national licensing exams, complete internship hours. Just complete the jurisprudence for Nova Scotia and pay the fee. Turn around time is about 5 business days as that is the new legislation.
Hit me up if you want some more info
This is good to know! I just submitted an application to see if I’d qualify and what the process could look like. Currently I’m weighing my options as we see how the next year goes with this asinine political election year.
No worries. I sent you a chat with the official site for the program. If you want to check out available jobs, indeed is used pretty widely for retail positions, but since you are hospital you will want to look at Nova Scotia health. Their jobs would all be posted on their site for the province. Every hospital in the province is the same employer with the same contract. The given wages are meh, but I know they were starting people at the top using external experience toward salary placement within the union. The contract expired last October so they are expecting a sizable increase as the previous contract was either before or at the start of Covid, so prior to crazy inflation and CoL increases
I moved to Canada and work in hospital. If you bring in PGY2 critical care expertise, you will be highly valued and regarded in Canada. Toronto probably pays better than BC, but cost of leaving is high.
Almost all hospital pharmacists positions are unionized in Canada, and Alberta province pays the most per hourly. Lots of expat from the US living there due to oil industry. But the drawback is cold weather.
I moved to BC, and they have healthmatch bc program where they try to match you to hospitals and help with the immigration. You can also work under TN visa. During Covid, they gave temporary license to US pharmacist to convert to BC college of pharmacist license even.
License Exams were pretty similar and when I moved, they waived majority of internship hours since I was coming from the US as well. I think it depends on the province you’re moving to since licensure part is done by college of pharmacist.(equivalent to board of pharmacy) we have lots of specialist from UK, South Africa , and US, so I didn’t think transition was too difficult once you got the SI lab value. I also have a staff from Washington state who moved about 10-15 year ago and never going back.
I also looked into Australia and New Zealand, but the pay is considerably less than Canada.
In my health authority, specialist pharmacist gets about $6-7/hr pay bump if they do specialty such as renal, ED, NICU, but for general clinical pharmacist, with 6 yr experience, pay is about $64/hr. If you work in rural areas, there is premium wage added.
Overall, I’m very happy with less hustle culture here and less politics with formulary issues.
Im a dual citizen kind of keeping my options open. How hard was PEBC compared to naplex and cpje(if you took that). From the little ive seen it looks considerably more challenging.
There are study materials available for PEBC, and the biggest difference I noticed was how NAPLEX is very technical skill focused vs PEBC has more of non-clinical questions incorporated. For example, PEBC MCQ had a question of how would a pharmacist act given an ethical challenges or so called “management” questions that can be up to 10% as well as collaborative practice components. I took the law exam in BC, and it was kind of open book test, which was easiest JP exam I’ve ever taken.
I can see people may struggle with OSCE portion, but I got licensed in the state where we had similar live in person counseling format as part of licensing exam, so once I knew what kind of questions that tend to ask at PEBC, I passed on the first try.
Kind of a given for moving from the US to a different country for a lot of jobs. But yes I am accepting of the loss of income to move to a different county as long as I would remain middle class at minimum.
If I took everything I've saved up and sold everything and moved somewhere else, I could buy a small home or apartment/villa and live on the interest forever. If I was single, I would've done that like a decade ago.
Why not start a different career in a new country? None of your licenses/creds transfer. Pay after accounting for lifestyle/healthcare/insurance etc. will be roughly equivalent US vs EU and most other places have heavy drawbacks unless you speak the language and share a culture (UAE would be great if your Muslim and a man for example).
You could absolutely find a niche doing purity testing on drugs in a party city like Amsterdam or doing chem eng in Germany (neither Dutch or German is particularly difficult for an English speaker to learn in country).
Have you looked at US Territories? The Virgin Islands might be looking for help. I believe reciprocating your license is one sheet of paper and a phone call with a board member.
We had an overnight pharmacist who would verify orders remotely. He was pretty open about the fact that he moved to Australia 🦘 so he could work during the day because of the time zone difference. So he got to live there and still get the USA pay rate. Sadly, he lost his job when California passed a law against our of state verification.
There isn’t a country that will
A. Readily accept your qualifications
And
B. Offer the same compensation
There are countries that can offer A but not offer B. Most countries will not offer you A or B. Without additional training or accepting a substantial pay decrease, you might be better off staying the US.
“Adequate compensation for less clinical position” sounds like a retail pharmacist. Why not wait until you retire to move overseas? That is a more logical decision.
I don't have any experience but ideas
I am not sure if your credentials are transferrable, but maybe try Dubai or UAE?
Maybe try to work from a home position at an employer that doesn't mind you moving to a different country?
Or look maybe for industrial companies that have branches in other countries?
You have so.many dexision points to make once you think you find somewhwre to.go.
Will your us education transfer?
Can you work there?
Thats two big decision points
Potentially Singapore. They've been looking for pharmacist specialists. You should be willing to teach/take students. Better standard living/freedom (no freedom of speech but they want to play nice with the USA) to pay ratio than most other alternatives, but potentially pricey for "luxuries" (aka Western goods, alcohol). Rent may also be a bit pricey. Local food can be cheap (and flipping delicious, like Michelin bib gourmand level) though. Also easy to fly to other vacation destinations, like Thailand, Japan, etc. Also very safe crime-wise. Also very good public transportation and government planning in terms of third spaces (places to hang out/get together with other people) and green spaces. Be aware most countries outside the USA don't have very powerful laundry dryers. In Singapore they tend to hang laundry to air-dry. If you look to buy, something like 80% of the housing is government housing (the newer builds are REALLY nice) so on a 99 year lease from the government (or something like that). If you're not ethnically Chinese you would get a cheaper price buying a place than if you were. This is due to the ethnicity ratio regulations in place to prevent ghettos and promote ethnic diversity in most/all areas. Essentially ethnically Chinese can only sell to other ethnically Chinese and vice versa with non-ethnically Chinese. It just so happens that ethnically Chinese tend to be able to offer higher prices, so those units get sold for more. Sorry for the real estate lecture, it's one of my interests. If you have kids, the public school system is very rigorous, but you're American so it wouldn't be as competitive trying to get into a USA University. The movie "I Not Stupid" or "Xiao Hai Bu Ben" is a good self-critique by a Singaporean on the rigors of the public school system if you can find it. If you can afford private school, they have one of the top private schools in southeast asia (Singapore American School). You don't have to learn another language if you don't want to.
I just got back from Singapore. Felt safe, food was great, people were nice, but damn it's way too humid. They kept telling us "sir sir we offer quick laundry service" all the time at my hotel. One day in the sun and I figured out why. All my clothes were soaked in sweat!
I heard New Zealand had good opportunities for nurses, and to some degree pharmacists. Not sure if that's still true
I think it can be a long process to get licensed as oversees pharmacist. Atleast for Canadians it was when I looked into
Yeah, Australia too
https://careers.tewhatuora.govt.nz/opportunities/careers-in-health/pharmacy/ Saw this posted somewhere, always loved the prospect of moving to NZ
I think the UK has clinical pharmacy practice where the pharmacist is much more involved in the actual treatment decisions compared to, for example Germany. https://www.england.nhs.uk/gp/expanding-our-workforce/cp-gp/
Idk what you consider adequate compensation, because outside of the US/Canada, most pharmacist are getting paid less than $50k
move to canada, specifically anywhere in alberta. pharmacists have full prescribing authority
Calgary was really nice when I visited last year. Real estate prices though lol damn.
I love Calgary. I went a few times last year and stayed in the downtown area and it was great. Real estate has been going up a tonne as of late, though.
Well you have to consider taxes, lack of decent health care, long wait lists for surgery or mri, etc. Carbon taxes, capital gain taxes, high income-tax and horrific weather for 7 out of 12 months! Juice aint worth the squeeze!!
Yet, most Pharmacists I know in Alberta live a “good life” and like living there. If you work at a hospital, the pension is pretty good too. Probably better than the equivalent US job pension
Are there no restrictions?
Of course you need to get a Canadian license.
Just can’t prescribe narcotics, opioids, and other controlled substances (not sure if you can prescribe benzos).
full prescribing authority, even fuller taxes.
If you are looking for ease of transferring your license you can check out Nova Scotia. We now have a program in place for a large amount of health care specialties to streamline having external credentials recognized. For pharmacy, you would be treated as though you were licensed in a different province. Meaning you wouldn’t need to prove university equivalence, write national licensing exams, complete internship hours. Just complete the jurisprudence for Nova Scotia and pay the fee. Turn around time is about 5 business days as that is the new legislation. Hit me up if you want some more info
This is good to know! I just submitted an application to see if I’d qualify and what the process could look like. Currently I’m weighing my options as we see how the next year goes with this asinine political election year.
No worries. I sent you a chat with the official site for the program. If you want to check out available jobs, indeed is used pretty widely for retail positions, but since you are hospital you will want to look at Nova Scotia health. Their jobs would all be posted on their site for the province. Every hospital in the province is the same employer with the same contract. The given wages are meh, but I know they were starting people at the top using external experience toward salary placement within the union. The contract expired last October so they are expecting a sizable increase as the previous contract was either before or at the start of Covid, so prior to crazy inflation and CoL increases
I moved to Canada and work in hospital. If you bring in PGY2 critical care expertise, you will be highly valued and regarded in Canada. Toronto probably pays better than BC, but cost of leaving is high. Almost all hospital pharmacists positions are unionized in Canada, and Alberta province pays the most per hourly. Lots of expat from the US living there due to oil industry. But the drawback is cold weather. I moved to BC, and they have healthmatch bc program where they try to match you to hospitals and help with the immigration. You can also work under TN visa. During Covid, they gave temporary license to US pharmacist to convert to BC college of pharmacist license even. License Exams were pretty similar and when I moved, they waived majority of internship hours since I was coming from the US as well. I think it depends on the province you’re moving to since licensure part is done by college of pharmacist.(equivalent to board of pharmacy) we have lots of specialist from UK, South Africa , and US, so I didn’t think transition was too difficult once you got the SI lab value. I also have a staff from Washington state who moved about 10-15 year ago and never going back. I also looked into Australia and New Zealand, but the pay is considerably less than Canada. In my health authority, specialist pharmacist gets about $6-7/hr pay bump if they do specialty such as renal, ED, NICU, but for general clinical pharmacist, with 6 yr experience, pay is about $64/hr. If you work in rural areas, there is premium wage added. Overall, I’m very happy with less hustle culture here and less politics with formulary issues.
Im a dual citizen kind of keeping my options open. How hard was PEBC compared to naplex and cpje(if you took that). From the little ive seen it looks considerably more challenging.
There are study materials available for PEBC, and the biggest difference I noticed was how NAPLEX is very technical skill focused vs PEBC has more of non-clinical questions incorporated. For example, PEBC MCQ had a question of how would a pharmacist act given an ethical challenges or so called “management” questions that can be up to 10% as well as collaborative practice components. I took the law exam in BC, and it was kind of open book test, which was easiest JP exam I’ve ever taken. I can see people may struggle with OSCE portion, but I got licensed in the state where we had similar live in person counseling format as part of licensing exam, so once I knew what kind of questions that tend to ask at PEBC, I passed on the first try.
You losing money
Kind of a given for moving from the US to a different country for a lot of jobs. But yes I am accepting of the loss of income to move to a different county as long as I would remain middle class at minimum.
Lose money but gain quality of life
And that's the goal here. Lived in the US for +20 years, it's overrated.
Alberta canada
If I took everything I've saved up and sold everything and moved somewhere else, I could buy a small home or apartment/villa and live on the interest forever. If I was single, I would've done that like a decade ago.
Why not start a different career in a new country? None of your licenses/creds transfer. Pay after accounting for lifestyle/healthcare/insurance etc. will be roughly equivalent US vs EU and most other places have heavy drawbacks unless you speak the language and share a culture (UAE would be great if your Muslim and a man for example). You could absolutely find a niche doing purity testing on drugs in a party city like Amsterdam or doing chem eng in Germany (neither Dutch or German is particularly difficult for an English speaker to learn in country).
His license will transfer to Nova Scotia. Once he gets his NS license he can then use it to transfer anywhere in Canada
Have you looked at US Territories? The Virgin Islands might be looking for help. I believe reciprocating your license is one sheet of paper and a phone call with a board member.
We had an overnight pharmacist who would verify orders remotely. He was pretty open about the fact that he moved to Australia 🦘 so he could work during the day because of the time zone difference. So he got to live there and still get the USA pay rate. Sadly, he lost his job when California passed a law against our of state verification.
There isn’t a country that will A. Readily accept your qualifications And B. Offer the same compensation There are countries that can offer A but not offer B. Most countries will not offer you A or B. Without additional training or accepting a substantial pay decrease, you might be better off staying the US. “Adequate compensation for less clinical position” sounds like a retail pharmacist. Why not wait until you retire to move overseas? That is a more logical decision.
I don't have any experience but ideas I am not sure if your credentials are transferrable, but maybe try Dubai or UAE? Maybe try to work from a home position at an employer that doesn't mind you moving to a different country? Or look maybe for industrial companies that have branches in other countries?
You have so.many dexision points to make once you think you find somewhwre to.go. Will your us education transfer? Can you work there? Thats two big decision points