Eighty-five per cent of community pharmacists would not recommend a career in pharmacy, a C+D website poll has found.

The poll of 116 readers, run ahead of the C+D Salary Survey 2012, found that just 15 per cent of respondents would recommend their career choice to others. The findings are in line with a Lloyds TSB survey of 110 pharmacists, which found that just 19 per cent of respondents would encourage their son or daughter to follow them into the profession.

The results suggest an increasingly bleak outlook among pharmacists – in the C+D Salary Survey 2011, more than half of the employee pharmacists surveyed said they would recommend pharmacy as a career.

The stark warning against a career in pharmacy suggests an increasingly bleak outlook within the sector

Avicenna: Pharmacy is facing all-time low Pharmacists see falling and stagnant salaries Take the Salary Survey 2012

One community pharmacist posting on C+D's website this week commented: "The Department of Health only sees headlines such as multiples posting record profits and offering more free stuff. They think we're all loaded but they don't see the stress and the 60-hour weeks. We need some leaders who actually know about pharmacy – oh, what's the point? It has been the same for 25 years." And healthcare recruitment consultancy Flame Health confirmed that it was becoming tougher to pursue a career in pharmacy.

"Employers are increasingly expecting more from a pharmacist and are focussed on recruiting pharmacists with the desirable skill sets and accreditations and who can clearly demonstrate a proven track record of delivering a diverse range of services," said Flame Health divisional partner in pharmacy Clare Brazill.

But Ms Brazill stressed that pharmacy remained an "excellent career choice" with "many success stories".

The comments were backed by Ryan Hamilton, president of the British Pharmaceutical Students' Association (BPSA), who told C+D that students remained enthusiastic about the sector despite a "saturated" job market".

"At our conference this month we had a lot of students coming away feeling enthused and wanting to go into different areas of pharmacy – I don't think anyone was regretting [choosing pharmacy as a career]," he said.