Management Consulting with PharmD Degree and 2-year HSPA Residency

petergibbonsPractically zero without a top-tier MBA. Your easiest path to an MBA would probably include moving into the corporate side of a major pharmacy chain, building some business skills and going from there. Why not set a goal of working in pharmacy merchandising or operations at CVS or Walgreens, rather than consulting? Plenty of PharmDs there, consulting seems like a very random goal.

Thanks for the fast response, Mr. Peter Gibbons. I really appreciate it. I was an intern at CVS for four years and there are indeed plenty of PharmDs at CVS and Walgreens. From my time there, I did not see much future in merchandising or operations especially with the decreasing reimbursement rates. The bulk of the business still comes down to the PharmDs at the store level verifying as many prescriptions as possible, trying to get people to sign up for automatic refills, hustling for flu shots, etc. Consulting does not seem like a random goal to me because even though the training is very specific and one can definitely spend a whole career counting by five, pharmacists also receive a strong education on and exposure to the various pieces of the healthcare system (payers, health systems, PBMs, MCOs, etc.) that give them a unique perspective on the healthcare ecosystem.