The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7484 p9
5/12 January 2008

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Pharmacy graduates motivated by career and promotion prospects

Career and promotion prospects are the major motivators for pharmacy graduates when they choose their preregistration training posts.

The latest report (PDF 410K) from an ongoing longitudinal cohort study by the Pharmacy Practice Research Trust says that 86 per cent of undergraduates base their choice of training post on its long-term prospects and the likelihood of it offering good preparation for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s registration examination.

The findings also suggest that the pharmacy profession is becoming increasingly feminised and ethnically diverse, with 72 per cent of participants in the research being female and 47 per cent being from ethnic minority groups.

Overall, 42 per cent of respondents secured preregistration posts in hospitals and 56 per cent in community pharmacy. Male and ethnic minority students were over-represented among those training in community pharmacy, which reflects the existing occupational segregation by sex and ethnicity in the pharmacy profession.

Two-thirds of respondents said that it had been easy to find a preregistration place, but ethnic minority students were significantly more likely than white students to report having found it difficult to find preregistration training and harder to secure their first choice of post.

So far as plans after qualification were concerned, two-thirds of respondents intended to go straight into pharmacy practice in Great Britain. Few had particular posts in mind, but industry and academia were unpopular choices and most students intended to continue in the sector in which they undertook their preregistration training.

Almost all students (94 per cent) expected to work hard in the profession and only 68 per cent expected to work in pharmacy up to retirement. But 15 per cent wanted to work outside the profession and 20 per cent did not want to be pharmacists.

The author of the report, Sarah Willis, says: “These findings perhaps indicate that discrimination is preventing some subgroups obtaining a preferred training post, but that certainly there is a gap between expectations and experiences of securing a training post that warrants further research.”