I'm Paid Third World Salary

I know I've been complaining about my job way before this blog was even started, and I know people get tired of hearing me "singing" about my frustrations with work. Yet, I just cannot help complaining. It is something to help me keep my sanity and to give me a false sense of righteousness.

Seeing that the year is coming to an end and I would very likely tender after my year-end bonus sits snugly in my bank account, I started surfing the net on information such as career choices, and career changes etc... you get the picture. Happened to chance upon this website dealing with salary survey in US. Curiosity got the better of me and I automatically clicked on the salary survey for pharmacist and guess what! Pharmacists in US are paid loads better than us here in Singapore.

The national average is USD93,300 per annum. That's USD7775 (~S$12K) per month! Even if I were to compare to the lowest state average (Washington DC) which is USD88,000 per annum, I cannot help but feel underpaid. Granted the living standard is much higher in US, but I am sure it is not 5 times higher than Singapore. I am only drawing a fifth of the US national average, but I have to work much harder. On average, an inpatient pharmacist have to look after 100-150 patients in Singapore. This compared to the average of one pharmacist to 10-20 patients in US... we are working 5 times harder but paid 5 times lower.

It made me realise that Singapore despite trying to market itself to have world class healthcare services are not paying the people working in healthcare world class salaries. Kind of sad really. Lack of monetary compensation, long and unpredictable working hours are what drives people out of healthcare services, and policy makers do not realise this. They continue to hold stupid meetings after meetings to discuss on how to retain the young pharmacists in the profession.

Get this: we need to be paid more, and you need to cut down the repetitive work we are doing. We did not go to university just to say, "Take 1 tablet 2 times a day," every working day.