I remember a scene in the 1964 film "Seven Days In May," when a senator,
played masterfully by Edmond O'Brien, exclaimed, "Right now, the government
of the United States is sitting on top of the Washington Monument, teetering
this way and that way." That is how I answer your question about pharmacy.
Which way this activity is going to go, I don't know.  Will pharmacists rise
above the description below, to become the "specialized doctors" you
describe, or will they simply be replaced by the currently rising ranks of
pharmacy technicians, who have just gained registration with the Board of
Pharmacy in my state (Texas)?

If you believe the academics and the regulators, pharmacists can
instant-message the Almighty. They are exquisitely trained clinical
professionals with an ever-expanding "key role" or "key position" on the
"healthcare team." In some settings, such as major teaching centers, this
may be true, but I've never spent much time in those centers. My 28 years of
experience (or, have I merely done the same year 28 times?) tell me that
such experience is rarified and concentrated in those centers and seldom
leaks out into the "gen pop" of practicing pharmacists. What most of us
experience instead is the problem faced by Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance in
a classic episode of the TV series "I Love Lucy," in which Lucy and Ethel
(Vance) work on a conveyor belt in a candy factory wrapping candies. The
belt travels faster and faster, delivering more and more candies for them to
wrap, until the only way they can keep any kind of pace with the conveyor
belt is to start stuffing the candy into their mouths. Pharmacy has been a
grating, often mindless, mass production, and any experience of clinical
meaning has been a topic of amazed conversation when it happens.

Now, the requirements for a pharmacy degree have been ratcheted way, way up,
with a six-year Doctor of Pharmacy degree now the norm (it won't be long
before it's required for licensure.) The regulations have been ratcheted
way, way up. But, like candy bars, these represent empty calories. All that
knowledge does it fuel a sense of woe and danger--danger from the public,
danger from management, danger from regulators. We are seldom overtly called
professionals except in a court of law, when we are being tried by something
we OUGHT to have done. Yes, pharmacy pays better than it ever has before,
but remember the New Testament: "What profiteth a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his soul?"

I am now a retired Pharmacist but I agree with your remarks.  When I worked
at a 750 bed hospital in Detroit I had a lot of good questions from medical
interns, students, and nurses.  The best questions were when the new house
staff started in July and in the middle of the night from the nursing staff.
Don't most practicing doctors get their medical info directly from the drug
salesmen and not retail Pharmacists? So-called free samples, gifts, and BS
seem to sell a lot of pharmaceuticals.  Look at the off label use of drugs
that have been suggested by drug salesmen.

"I did "work" in Hospitals and Retail ..along with a few years in the
Military ....the ONLY place I really used my education on a daily
bases was in the Military...most likely because the Physicians were "Green"
and the supply of drugs limited"

I am now retired and honestly The only thing I was interested in when
I was in your situatuion was BUILDING MY BANK ACCOUNT ..period...

I did "work" in Hospitals and Retail ..along with a few years in
the Military ....the ONLY place I really used my education on a daily
bases was in the Military...most likely because the Physicians
were "Green" and the supply of drugs limited

See Above....

Hell No

?

I have a feeling you are smoking somthing

Bob Griffiths

I am applying to pharmacy school, and have been thinking in more
detail about what I want to do when I become a practicing pharmacist.

Currently, I volunteer in a hospital pharmacy, and get a little
exposure to what the pharmacists there do in their day to day jobs.
They get called on frequently to provide drug knowledge, and it seems
like, advice to the other staff (nurses/doctors).

It seems like pharmacy school curricula is highly intense. I would
think that pharmacists have SO much knowledge about drugs,
pharmacokinetics, and just an incredible amount of
chemical/physical/thermodynamic knowledge about how pharmaceuticals
work in the body. Yet it seems like they will never really get to
implement this knowledge day-to-day.

I would like to hear from others, both in retail, hospital, industry -
what do you think?

Do you use your education?

Are you consulted on by other healthcare peers as an expert?

Do you feel like you are called on, and needed, to provide your expert
advice?

To me, a pharmacist is a sort of a specialized doctor. Someone who can
be there to provide very specific and accurate information, and apply
that to a situation where lives are at stake, helping to save those
lives, and make them better. Do you feel this is the case in reality?