Pharmacy-school grads guaranteed jobs

Shortage of trained pharmacists here, worse across nation

Americans are using more prescription drugs than ever.

In fact, industry associations estimate that four out of five patients walk out of a doctor’s office with a prescription in hand. Retail pharmacy sales for 2002 are expected to reach $188.5 billion, up 15 percent from 2001.

Great news for pharmaceutical companies, but there’s a catch: Every prescription must be verified by a pharmacist, and with an aging population, an ever-increasing number of drugs available and the proliferation of chain drug stores across the nation, the number of vacant pharmacist positions is well outpacing the number of new professionals entering the field.

“There are enough pharmacists in the state for us to protect the health and safety of the public,´ said Ken Chau, member of the Colorado State Board of Pharmacy. “Of course, we’d be thrilled if we had two applicants for every position, but that’s just not the case.”

Chau said Colorado fares better than many states because a high quality of life and the attraction of the Rocky Mountains makes it easier to recruit.

Ebb and flow

Val Kalnins, executive director of the Colorado Pharmacists Society, said the shortage on the state level seems to ebb and flow based on the number of graduates entering the market. “Right now across the state there seems to be as many positions available as the number of pharmacists looking for jobs,” he said, “but that could change in a month.”

Recent changes in academic requirements for pharmacists will replace all five-year bachelor’s degree programs in pharmaceutical science to six-year PharmD degrees by 2004. When the University of Wyoming’s Pharmacy School implemented the change, current students had to extend their studies for another year, so the university had no pharmacy graduates entering the field in 2000. As universities across the country follow suit, the number of new graduates will temporarily dip. Industry experts also fear that a more intensive program with an additional year of tuition may turn some interested students away from the field, further intensifying the shortage.

Recruiters seek grads

Recruiters and headhunters are racing to the field, many of them jumping ship from the sinking information-technology market.

Steve Croke, for example, built his business on the need for pharmacists. PharmacyChoice.com started in 1999 as a job board specifically for the pharmacy sector and has expanded to provide all types of services for the industry. Croke said there are about 10,000 unfilled positions across the United States and the expansion of retail drug chains could make things worse.

“There are about 85 pharmacy schools across the country that graduate about 7,000 students a year,” Croke said. “Walgreens alone could go in and take every single graduate in the U.S.”

The Illinois-based drug-store giant is “on the verge of the most spectacular growth in its history,” according to the company’s Web site. With 3,908 locations across 43 states and Puerto Rico and plans to build another 450 in 2003, the firm is well on its way to a goal of 6,000 stores by 2010. With each store averaging four or five pharmacists on staff, Walgreens is known to offer employment packages that are tough to beat.

“We do recruit pretty aggressively,” Walgreens spokeswoman Carol Hively said, “not only graduating students but from other pharmacies, too.”

New pharmacists are being wooed by retail chains much like computer programmers were just a few years ago, with high salaries, signing bonuses, paid relocation costs and other perks.

Retail competition

The attractive offers from retail pharmacies make it more difficult for hospital and health-care pharmacies to lure new recruits. Poudre Valley Hospital’s director of pharmacy, Katherine Edelblut, reinforces others’ claims that Colorado has had it easier than most states, but still views the labor pool as a shallow one.

“We have seen over the last year or so that it takes much longer to recruit a pharmacist than in the past,” Edelblut said, adding that the hospital now averages only two or three applicants per job opening as opposed to the eight to 10 received several years ago.

The majority of new graduates enter the retail sector because there are more jobs there and the pay is better, she said.

“With hospital work the pay is not as high,” she said, “but the benefits are sometimes better and we think the work is more interesting.”

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