How to become a pharmacist?

How does a Canadian Pharmacist working at a Community Pharmacy become a Hospital Pharmacist in CALIFORNIA?

• Some background information: I have already written the FPGEE and have passed. I have been working at a popular retail pharmacy chain in Canada for more than a year, and am a 2010 graduate with my BSc Pharm. I'm a little at loss now as to how to pursue Hospital Pharmacy, so anything would help, websites I can look at, step by step suggestions as to what I should do, etc. I hope the answer isn't I need to have completed some sort of residency program in Canada before even thinking of this, because I haven't :(

• Answer:

  Do whatever California requires to be come a licensed pharmacist in that state. You should be able to find out the qualifications for taking the licensing exam from a website. There is a glut of pharmacists in the US right now in a lot of places but it may be a patchy situation because the housing market makes it so difficult to move to another state for a job. Many pharmacy programs in the US are now PharmD programs which take a total of 6 years to completed, 2 years in liberal education and 4 in pharmacy school. I don't know how that compares with your Canadian education. Once you have the state license then you can start looking for work in Hospitals and solve whatever immigration hurdles there are in place.