Pharmacy: The Underutilized Profession
Potential for change?
Pharmacists are the most underutilized professionals, hands down.
I feel this is true in every sector of our work including community pharmacy, retail pharmacy, clinical/hospital pharmacy, research and development, and the drug development industry.
The profession has undergone a significant change. The clinical background and education of a graduate pharmacist today is light years above what I had when I began my career. One aspect of a pharmacist's job in patient care, however, has not changed: it extends far beyond providing prescriptions.
As in the past, a lot of pharmacists now offer patient-centered services like medication management, patient education, and more. We frequently see patients more frequently than any other provider since we are the front line of the healthcare team. The most overtrained and underutilized profession in America today is pharmacy.
➡️ Healthcare Sector:
In the healthcare sectors, pharmacists do not have provider status yet although we pay tuitions close to that of MDs.
Our knowledge on disease states, treatment options, and guidelines aren't being used to its full potential. Only if you do a residency (but even then - still much improvement is needed).
Pharmacists provide outreach or Mediation Therapy Management (MTM) services to prescribers and patients in the hospital, ambulatory, and managed care settings. Reaching out to the prescriber gives a pharmacist the opportunity to suggest suitable substitutes when they receive a prescription that seems risky to use with a patient's other prescriptions, has an improper dose or duration, or is too expensive.
A pharmacist's evaluation is essential in determining whether prescriber outreach and consultation should be carried out for the patient's safety and well-being, as:
18% of children aged 0-11 years old reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days
27% of adolescents aged 12-19 years old reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days
47% of adults aged 20-59 years old reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days
85% of adults aged 60 or older reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30
These statistics are based on CDC medication analytics.
➡️ Retail Pharmacy:
The fact that a community pharmacy sells both prescription and over-the-counter medications may be its lone defining characteristic. Some pharmacies provide consultation, patient education, problem-solving, help with compliance augmentation, and advise for minor or self-limiting medical issues.
Many times, the services provided by pharmacists vary between nations. Some pharmacies can be found performing eye refractions, selling tanks of medical-grade oxygen, and performing clinical diagnostic tests on blood or urine samples, such as cholesterol levels and pregnancy testing.
In the US, pharmacists are the point of contact for many patients on a daily basis.
No pharmacists = no prescriptions!! Every patient comes into contact at some point with a pharmacist.
As of 2022 - 131 million people in the United States are on at least 1 prescription, meaning that almost half the population most likely has talked to a pharmacist at some point.
The potential for impact is enormous in the aspect of clinical and preventative education.
Yet retail pharmacists focus on relevant patient impactful activities for probably 25% of their job and get severely underpaid.
➡️ Pharmaceuticals industry:
In the drug development scene, pharmacists do not even know they can do most of these jobs in industry after graduation and only recently are pharmacists being adopted as gold standard employees for regulatory affairs, medical affairs, and clinical development.
The majority of the time, people observe pharmacists behind the counter handing out pills and occasionally offering advice on prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications. On occasion, they may also remind clients to get annual physicals or flu shots. Pharmacy professionals can do much more though. They have significant training in medication management as part of their professional degree in order to handle pharmaceutical side effects, interactions, and duplications, interpret test findings, conduct physical examinations, conduct complex evidence based research, and give immunizations.
These skillsets have placed us in unique positions to provide immense transferable skillsets for drug development positions.
We just have to sell it to hiring managers the right way!
That being said, the profession really has the potential for making massive changes in Healthcare. Not sure if/when it will.