Students with degrees in pharmacy have it made this year.
The nationwide shortage of pharmacists means big bucks for those who earn a graduate degree in pharmacy. This year pharmacy majors are receiving an average of four job offers with salaries in the six-figure range before they leave school, school officials say.
“I start out with empathy for those students who are getting out and struggle,” said pharmacy major Jessica O?Kane, pointing to the hefty loans that students rack up during school and must start paying after graduation.
“It is comforting to work in a field where there is a constant demand. It?s not just the money ? it?s that you feel needed.”
Pharmacists? vacancy rate at hospitals in Maryland rose steadily over the past few years and reached 12 percent in 2007, said Nancy Fiedler, spokeswoman for the Maryland Hospital Association.
While nurses and doctors are also in short supply ? a result of the aging baby boomer population ? pharmacists are stretched even thinner because every grocery store seems to have a pharmacy now, Fiedler said.
“We?ve had a pharmacist shortage in the state of Maryland for a number of years, as well as nationally, and that shortage does not seem to be dissipating,” said Natalie Eddington, dean of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy.
The school received $62 million this year from the state to expand its pharmacy building, allowing it to increase class sizes from an average of 160 students to 200, Eddington said.
“It?s a very critical and transformative time for the area of pharmacy,” shesaid.
O?Kane, 27, was Student Government Association president at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, until she graduated last month from pharmacy school.
She received two job offers, which may be fewer than the number received by some other Maryland pharmacy students, but it didn?t matter: She landed her dream job in Dover, Del., as a clinical pharmacist at Bayhealth Medical Center.
