Hospital Pharmacy

Your degree isn't banded. What will determine if you get a job that is banded within 5 or 6 is how well qualified you are to undertake the job. The application pack will make it clear what experience and qaulifications are considered necessary for the job. Hope that helps. Good luck with job hunting

thanks

THANK YOU.

Hi Paul,

 I was interested to read your post regarding pay and conditions.  While I accept that the pay may be lower in the hospital sector in the first few years of practice, I would argue that the working conditions are actually much better than any community pharmacy. 

Despite best intentions, you will never get to work in a multidisciplinary team on the scale that hospital pharmacy allows, in fact encourages on a daily basis, if you stay in community.  

On-call duties might sound a bit rubbish, having to give up a whole weekend at a time and risk being woken up during the night, but most hospitals run a 1 in 8 to 1 in 12 rota.  So you will have between 7 and 11 weekends completely off work in between.  Compare that to most of my community colleagues who work at least every other Saturday, if not on Sunday too.  You are also paid an additional supplement for doing oncall outside of your normal salary (currently around £2500 pa). 

The working week is 37.5 hours.  Most community contracts will expect 40-45 hours a week from you.  You could therefore locum to make up the hours.    

Hospital pharmacy departments are run by senior pharmacists, so there is no corporate agenda beyond the safe and economical running of the department and trust.  There are no sales targets to meet, no minimum amount of MUR's to perform.  Your seniors fully understand the nature of the job you do, because they have all done it at some point too, and on that basis will not make demands based on any criteria except best patient care.

Your professional development is a priority to the trust and most hospitals actively encourage post-graduate education in the form of diplomas and will assist with, if not cover, funding.

 You are respected by the doctors, nurses, physios, OTs as THE medicines expert right from the start.  They recognise that you have learned something they haven't and as a result respect your opinion and try to learn from your knowledge. 

You have the support of a large number of peers, both from pharmacy and other professions.  Unless you are on-call, you should never feel that you are out of your depth or making a professional decision that you are not equipped to.  Even when on-call, you can still contact your seniors for advice.

 Pre-reg wages for hospital are actually higher than community at the moment, outside of London you can expect around £20K.  More in the capital.  

So as you can see, while the money for newly qualified pharmacists in hospital won't put you on the rich list, you can most certainly live very respectably on it while paying your student loan back.  I did my basic grade from Aug 2005-2006, on a salary of £21K after a pre-reg that paid £13.7K and was most certainly not starving!

I hope that gives you something to think about.  Money is a worry, of course it is, but working conditions in hospitals are not generally poor.  In fact, in my experience, the more understaffed the department becomes (which they do from time to time) or the more busy the hospital gets, the more the staff stick together to get the job done.  Cameraderie, especially between the junior grades of doctors and pharmacists is usually something quite special.  

The social life is pretty good too!

 Good luck!      

Hi Paul, hope all is going well. On the subject of the 37.5 hour week, I'll attempt some number crunching (so bear with me!). So a basic grade hospital pharmacist works 37.5 hours a week, outside London, on a salary of £24,103 (bottom of band 6). That is the mimimum. Compare that to a friend of mine, who recently took on a newly qualified pharmacist in a large community multiple, for a 42hr per week contract at £33,500. Taking annual leave/weekends/on call out of the equation (because I don't know what level of leave the community pharmacy awards, the on-call payment is a top up etc. and it will keep the numbers simpler) lets assume that the weekly hours translate into 52 weeks of work. At the end of the year, the hospital pharmacist will have worked 1950 hours. The community pharmacist will have worked 2184. Simply put, that translates to £12.36 per hour for the hospital pharmacist, and £15.34 for the community pharmacist. An extra £3 per hour, substantial, but remember the hospital pharmacist hasn't actually worked any weekends yet, whereas the community pharmacist gives up every other Saturday. If you were prepared to give up just one Saturday per month, i.e. 12 Saturdays per year and do a locum spot, you can expect around £22-£24ph. Assume an 8 hour day and that is an additional £2112-2304 per year. This translates to a salary of £26215-26407. Now lets assume that you top up your hours from 1950 (your basic hospital contract) to the community pharmacists basic number of hours by pure locums, i.e. the difference of 234 hours at £22-24 per hour. You would earn an additional £5184-£5616 per annum making your final salary £29287-29719. A final salary difference between newly qualified pharmacists of £3781 per annum. So if you normalise the salaries for hours worked by adding locums on top of the hospital pharmacists hours, the difference doesn't appear to be as mighty as it first appears. Plus you get the additional value of your post-graduate diploma which most hospitals will start you on quickly, worth around £2500 which they will usually cover. So yes, hospital pharmacists earn less to start with (and here I'd like to refer you to the Agenda for Change pay scales available online, hospital pharmacists can earn all the way up to band 9), but they work less hours compared to community pharmacists and have more quality time off (full weekends if not on call). If you are prepared to do a 42 hour week in community, why would you rule out a total 42 hour week comprised of hospital plus locums? Hope thats helpful, best of luck. Lindsay