The Summer Placement Contest

It seems I am not alone in finding it near impossible to secure a pharmacy summer placement these days. According to an article on Tomorrow's Pharmacist online, many students are resonating at the same wavelength, with over 40% of students surveyed at the BPSA's Annual Conference 2009 "concerned with the number of preregistration and summer work placements available".

When I didn't get a summer placement for the summer after my first year, I became highly self-critical. At first, I thought my CV wasn't up to scratch so I paid a very helpful visit to my university's Careers Service, where I was assured that there was nothing major wrong with my CV and a few tweaks to it were made. As it was only first year, I let it pass.

Soon after starting my second year, I began applying for summer 2010 placements. Again, I was unsuccessful with all the high flyers on the High Street as well as the local hospitals I applied to. It seemed everyone I asked had a placement either during first year or had been successful in getting one during the second year summer. This time I believed I wasn't doing enough to show my commitment to acquiring transferable abilities, "enhancing my CV" so to speak, on top of volunteering and previous work experience (which, ironically, I'd had quite a lot of before I started university, pharmacy- and non pharmacy-related). So I surprised even myself by getting involved with (almost) everything that came my way; blogging for the PJ, peer mentoring, networking, BPSA events and student competitions being just a few, analagous to Jim Carrey's character in Yes Man.

Most recently, I've been contacting pharmacies, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies regarding work experience during the summer, as I'm still undecided on the pharmacy sectors and so I can spend my summer doing something practical because, alas, a week long break in the UK is the best "holiday" we can manage this year. It's this that's worried me most. The number of companies that said no to even voluntary work astonished me. While most employers may say they give priority to third years when it comes to summer placements, I can't understand why it's so difficult for employers to allow enthusiastic students to voluntarily work in their organisation.

The point is that, even though I have another two full years of the MPharm to go, it has been extremely difficult for me, and others I now know of in my school of pharmacy and beyond, to get any sort of pharmacy work experience, let alone a summer placement. Pretty soon, Pharmacist Support may be getting a much bigger proportion of student and preregtistration calls to their helpline than the 36% of calls reported in 2009. I wonder if pharmacists who are approached by students actually know of the lengths students need to go to these days in order to gain experience in a highly competitive market.