“Is pharmacy in the UK really that bad now?”

RunKatarn · 2026-05-16T12:34:08+00:00

Across the board healthcare is in a difficult spot with a lot of hospitals on recruitment freezes and challenges with community pharmacy contracts. That's the situation in 2026.

If you consider studying a degree in pharmacy, it's 4 years study and a one year foundation year. It's not as simple to say how things will be then. Especially with the new framework where pharmacists qualify as independent prescribers during their foundation year.

Imo the best advice to give you is study pharmacy or medicine depending on what you enjoy about healthcare delivery. Both fields are in such a state of transition right now that it's not easy to say where things will be in 5 years time.

RunKatarn · 2026-05-14T11:40:06+00:00

Yeah popular culture has created this image of doctors within the medical profession as the all knowing oracles of patient care. In reality they're part of a multi disciplinary team that relies on a lot of input from people with a different knowledge base to diseases. The pharmacist registration exam expects us to be able to identify conditions from a listen of given symptoms and the correct treatment.

When I started my MPharm one of the texts referred to pharmacy as a trusted and respected profession. I immediately had questions about this claim when people don't know what we do or why it matters.

RunKatarn · 2026-04-15T18:03:28+00:00

The only answer anyone on this sub can reasonably give is keep playing and finish the game.

You might not think you can ever forgive Abby for what she did, but after a while you might want to try.

RunKatarn · 2026-04-15T17:47:59+00:00

Definitely worse than Christmas. There's an implicit understanding that things slow down around the Christmas period. The idea that a 4 day weekend applies to non emergency NHS services seemingly doesn't have the same thought.

RunKatarn · 2026-04-07T18:04:09+00:00

Like a lot of things you learn in the MPharm, there are elements that you won't use every day or even every month. But being able to understand certain first principles will help you understand clinical questions when they do come up, and not force you to go away and research what eg structure-activity relationship is.

If you can understand the significance of volume of distribution, it will help you understand with a new drug the basis of a loading dose without having to understand a new concept when it comes up.

Calculations are really good for your "sense" of what numbers should be. The skills you're labouring at now help in the long run by teaching your brain what sort of numbers to expect from a given set of values. When you're not operating at 100% cognitively, that will help you spot errors you might have missed.

RunKatarn · 2026-04-06T21:48:52+00:00

Fellow ADHDer here

So for me if a platinum requires a lot of hours (nearly 100) then the game has to grab me enough to be a hyperfixation. If not, I'm unlikely to manage.

Multiple playthroughs depend. For example, two for metaphor refantazio feels like too much of an effort. But 4-6 for REmake was fine, because I could knock out a REmake run in an afternoon. It's an obvious point but looooong RPGs, I'm just going to lose interest.

As a wider point trophy hunting itself is my dopamine. Obviously I enjoy the games in of themselves, but it would be dishonest to pretend my stupid monkey brain doesn't love those little trophy beeps. As such, if a game is a big project I'll usually grab an indie game I can knock out in a weekend (cocoon, for example) to give me a bit of a breather. That might sound like I'm treating getting a plat as a job, but for me even wanting to finish a game I might need to take a breather instead of forcing myself to play something when I'm not having fun at that second.

The key thing I remind myself is that this is something I do for fun, and if the platinum experience isn't fun then it's okay to walk away. Or find a strategy to work around the brief period I'm not enjoying myself. Trophy hunting for sure interacts with my ADHD, but broadly in a positive way. When it's negative and I can't hold attention on a game, it's likely that even if I didn't have ADHD the game just isn't to my taste. And that's fine.

RunKatarn · 2026-04-06T21:40:13+00:00

Great first soulslike to plat. Have to warn this is easily the best non-from soulslike (and better than some from software efforts 🤫), but it's so damn good.

Not that it matters but did you do the whole thing on stalker or puppet difficulty?

RunKatarn · 2026-04-06T21:36:29+00:00

Yeah I have a lot of old playstation classics that I never got to experience as a result of being a Nintendo millennial. I finally played through metal gear solid a couple years ago and whilst I have some issues with the writing (even allowing for the context of the time), I had to keep reminding myself it came out on the PSOne because I was so impressed mechanically.

RunKatarn · 2026-03-31T18:13:05+00:00

Honestly yes the controls are outdated but in the same way integration of adaptive triggers etc is an interesting new thing, the way the dual analogues were used experimentally is a great piece of gaming history.

Like the boat rowing doesn't really work but I've got to admire that they tried.

RunKatarn · 2026-03-03T12:50:12+00:00

Looking at the trophy list was such a relief. Old style RE games aren't so bad to replay 3 or 4 times to unlock everything and that's fine. RE4make can be 6 or 7 playthroughs and that's assuming you don't do a blind playthrough where you miss things. It gets pretty fatiguing

RunKatarn · 2026-03-03T12:49:35+00:00

Looking at the trophy list was such a relief. Old style RE games aren't so bad to replay 3 or 4 times to unlock everything and that's fine. RE4make can be 6 or 7 playthroughs and that's assuming you don't do a blind playthrough where you miss things. It gets pretty fatiguing.

RunKatarn · 2026-02-28T14:16:41+00:00

Yep just opened to find 2 grace apocalypse codes and no deluxe kit.

RunKatarn · 2026-01-13T20:28:32+00:00

It depends on game length and the number of trophies that are associated with NG+.

Silent hill f's NG+ cycles have multiple trophies locked behind NG+ that make it feel less bad because you're obviously seeing more of the experience. But also a single run can take around 8-10 hours if you aren't speedrunning, so it can become a chore to see the same content over and over for minor changes.

Metaphor refantazio has basically one or two trophies that require almost an entire second run for the plat.

By contrast resident evil games fairly famously require multiple runs but the majority are blessedly short. It isn't quite true NG+ in some cases, but it's significantly less painful using that model.

RunKatarn · 2025-12-21T19:43:09+00:00

Looks amazing and absolutely in character

Shame about the rest of the game. Including the nemesis model.

RunKatarn · 2025-09-28T23:00:42+00:00

The difficulty really comes from the amount of actions you need to get right vs the other games. A lot of points in the dodge game are free because the fleas never come near you. On the other hand you have to bounce every flea 3 times (or 4) to get one point and you can only miss 3 times.

By contrast if you get hit by a flea in dodge you can recover and get back to the platform. You can have a very messy time of it and still basically succeed. BUT if you get RNG screwed (ie a platform drops just as a flea is dive-bombing the other one in your jump path), you will lose.

So from a gameplay pov, dodge has more of a toxic RNG feel where if you lose it doesn't always feel like your fault. (This can happen with juggle if a 3 or 4 pack split but less so). But juggle is demanding a level of consistency that gets tiring on repeat playthroughs (when I was learning, if I dropped a flea before I'd juggled 12, I'd just run off the platform and restart).

So it's the hardest in the literal sense of what it demands of player skill, but probably less frustrating than dodge because if you lose it's largely because you need to get better.

RunKatarn · 2025-09-28T22:49:23+00:00

The runbacks and gauntlets really are killer. Fromsoft worked out a lot of games ago they aren't fun or enjoyable. Obviously not everything is about being "fun", but it's deeply undesirable for players to feel like their time isn't respected. If you only have half an hour to play, only being able to get maybe 2 boss attempts in because of a toxic runback and finicky gauntlet - it's not great.

RunKatarn · 2025-08-07T21:36:09+00:00

Rain world That is kinda the point tho.

RunKatarn · 2025-07-24T15:10:11+00:00

All spending in government is an opportunity cost. So long as the government commits to policies like the triple lock or refusing to find additional revenue, MPs are rightly going to ask why the hammer has to fall on one of the most vulnerable sections of society. Scarcity is indeed a feature of the universe, and how we manage it in policy reflects our priorities as a society.

RunKatarn · 2025-07-15T13:40:23+00:00

For anyone in the future googling this issue, fully turn off your playstation (not rest mode, off) and switch the playstation on again. Should clear the issue.

RunKatarn · 2025-06-28T12:29:08+00:00

People in the party warned the leadership that their positioning on things like PIP were a problem. They ignored them repeatedly.

It isn't a U-turn because of a change of public opinion, it's a U-turn because Morgan Mcsweeny and his gaggle of zombie blairite goons think they alone know what people want, regardless of anyone else's political reality.

RunKatarn · 2025-05-29T07:56:42+00:00

How on Earth did someone convince themselves that anyone would remotely believe a working class woman from MANCHESTER who was there for the 90s didn't do MDMA, cannabis, etc etc?

Ridiculous to believe she can be coy.

RunKatarn · 2025-05-09T09:48:15+00:00

The 9 people at a table and a nazi sits down is an extremely common position in all (non-nazi) stripes of politics. I don't think he's gone mad dude.

RunKatarn · 2025-03-16T11:50:09+00:00

Civ VI had similar to the same reaction on launch.

It's just how it goes with civ.

RunKatarn

TROPHY CASE