Dear Joyce: When you wrote about jewelers as a good second career choice, you said that other suggestions would follow. Did I miss any? -- C.S.

Dear C.S.: No, you didn't miss any. Pharmacist, today's column, is the next in the occasional series.

Dispensing medications prescribed by physicians and other health-care practitioners and counseling patients about their use is a fine second career choice, if you're in good health and can stand for a day's work.

Detail-minded
Meeting the increased pharmaceutical needs of a larger and older population, pharmacists are first-line resources when people need help with the details of medications. Pharmacists succeed because they have scientific aptitude, good communication skills and a desire to help others. They're conscientious and pay close attention to detail because lives depend on their skills.

Satisfying Hard Work
"Careers Now" reader and pharmacist Elaine Lanham says, "This is a terrific and very rewarding field to be in. As far as age discrimination, I haven't seen it. I have worked with colleagues over 50 and 60 who could put some younger folk to shame."

Lanham points out the physical demands of the work: "This is a field that is very hard on the body, as is any job that requires you to stand pretty sedentary for eight hours. Your feet, legs, back, neck and hands do feel pain at times."

High Pay
Pharmacists' earnings are very high -- often in the $60,000 to $80,000 range; the highest 10 percent are in the neighborhood of $90,000 and up. But you'd expect people with a heavy responsibility for your health, including participation in drug therapy decision-making and patient counseling, to be paid well. Additionally, the education requirements are substantial and rigid.

Six Years' School
A license to practice pharmacy in the United States historically has required completion of a five-year program in an accredited college of pharmacy, an internship and the successful completion of a state exam. Now add a year.

The new requirements, apparently designed to prepare the profession for new drug therapies, extend the period of study to six years, resulting in a Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D) degree. Lanham says, "The six-year doctorate program is expensive and rigorous, requiring endless hours of study time and is almost impossible to complete on a part-time basis."

Financial aid is available regardless of age. But you'll have to be very determined to enter this excellent profession later in life.

Foreign Pharmacists
Although government projections say pharmacist employment is expected to grow slower than the average for all occupations through the year 2008, demand for pharmacists right now is outstripping supply.

Efforts to automate drug dispensing and the greater use of pharmacy technicians, to some degree, damp down the demand for pharmacists.

Now there's a new wild card to consider: A gathering effort by employers and recruiters to wipe out their shortage problem with the importation of pharmacists from other countries, such as India, South Africa, the Philippines, Nigeria and Russia.

The foreign pharmacists would enter on H-1B visas, the same route traveled in the 1990s by software programmers to the enormous disadvantage of older U.S. technical workers who couldn't compete with below-market wages and subservient newcomers handcuffed to a specific employer by the working visa.

Other Places to Work
Both full-time and part-time jobs are available. Most pharmacists, three out of five, work in community pharmacies. Nearly all are salaried but some are self-employed owners. About one-quarter of salaried pharmacists work in hospitals. Others work in clinics, mail-order pharmacies, pharmaceutical wholesalers, HMOs, long-term, ambulatory and home health-care agencies, or the federal government. A few work in administration or research positions for pharmaceutical companies or teach at one of the nation's 82 accredited colleges of pharmacy.

Learn More
Visit these Web sites for more input on whether pharmacist is the right second-career choice for you.