Higher pay, expanding options drive pharmacy school boom

Drug Store News, June 9, 2003 by Barbara White-Sax, James Frederick

Steadily increasing salaries and career-track options have put the oomph back in pharmacy as a career choice for today's students, according to pharmacy school educators. And as increasing numbers of students opt for pharmacy as a career choice, the outlook for community pharmacy's long-term shortage of professionals appears to be improving.

Pharmacy is becoming an increasingly attractive course of study at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. Sam ford's McWhorter School of Pharmacy has experienced an increase in class size of 10 percent to 15 percent over the past three years to four years, according to Joseph Dean, Ph.D., dean of pharmacy.

"The number of entering freshman who declare pre-pharmacy as their course of study has more than doubled in the last two years," said Dean. "That means in fall 2003, 10 percent or more of the entering freshman class at a liberal arts college will be pre-pharmacy."

Why such a boom? Dean said pharmacy is seen as a good profession, stable in its growth pattern and one of the helping professions that offers broader experiences than direct patient care alone.

"Pharmacy is a platform from which students can go in many directions," said Dean. "Where you take pharmacy ... is limited only by your imagination."

Graduating pharmacy students have more choices than ever before, agreed Robert McCarthy, Ph.D., dean of the University of Connecticut's School of Pharmacy. "It's a given that pharmacy school graduates are going to command a good salary and en joy a good lifestyle," he said. "But I hope we continue to attract students for other reasons. The role of pharmacy is continuing to evolve and will become more important than ever as more potent medicines come onto the prescription and OTC markets.

"Pharmacists not only will have to possess knowledge about these medications, but be able to communicate their risks and benefits to patients and other health care professionals," McCarthy added.

Timothy Chan, Ph.D., who is dean of the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy, noted that rapid changes in the pharmacy profession had prompted the university to begin integrating its doctorate of pharmacy curriculum with 'complementary disciplines including business, law and public health." The aim, he said, is to "enable our students to meet the growing need for pharmacists knowledgeable in business administration, the legal profession and population-based health care" through "a variety of career opportunities.

In response to the evolving health care environment, our administration and faculty undertook the task of modernizing the pharmacy curriculum," added Chan in a statement, as the school prepares for its 100th anniversary in 2004. "The school of pharmacy is pioneering the transformation of the pharmacist's role from a traditional product orientation to a patient care perspective. We see the pharmacist as an integral part of the health care provider team. Our students are trained to be experts in patient drug therapy, as well as agents of change within the field of pharmacy."

Skilled professionals are driving change

Despite growing interest in the pharmacy program, the University of Connecticut's pharmacy school limits its enrollment to 100 students so it can best prepare them for their future careers.

"Graduating students are so much better prepared than they were a decade ago," said McCarthy. "They are trained in screening programs and disease state management, as well as in counseling patients."

McCarthy admits that students are so well prepared that once they reach the workplace, they often spend less time on disease state management and counseling than ma have expected.

To continue moving the profession forward, he asserted, pharmacy schools need to be at the forefront of providing students with the best skills possible. That often means offering training in specialized areas to help them ace challenges in the retail environment.

"We're finding that some specializations that had been de-emphasized in some pharmacy schools, such as compounding and pharmacognancy, are growing in importance," said McCarthy. "In fact, pharmacognancy--or the study of medicines that come from the earth-is becoming even more important than ever for pharmacists. That trend is going to continue, and pharmacists need to be able to counsel patients on these drugs."

Real-world time pressures

Although 70 percent of graduating students take a position in a retail setting versus an institutional setting, Samford University's Dean said many are surprised by the varied retail settings available to them. Dean said, "Many students come to pharmacy school having worked in pharmacy of some sort before, and they are surprised that so many retail outlets that don't necessarily have a natural health care connection have added pharmacy to their array of customer services." It's a service retail channels are aggressively marketing to their customers, he added.

Once students are actually out in the professional arena, Dean said, they are sometimes surprised at the gap between their expectations and the reality of the workplace. "They find work much more intense than they had expected," he said. "The workplace is often harder and more demanding than students anticipated. Employer expectations are quite high, while patient expectations can be lower than students anticipated. Students are eager to take time counseling patients, yet customers can ... rush off without the benefit of counseling."