Pharmacy: A Changing Profession

Pharmacist Schools

While some retail chains are closing their 24-hour pharmacies, hiring fewer pharmacists and using lower-cost technicians to fill the gaps, they are also driving many independent, family-owned community pharmacies out of business.

Meanwhile, pharmacy benefits managers such as Express Scripts Inc. are competing directly against retail chains, offering direct mail deliveries of prescription medicines to consumers.

However, new opportunities for pharmacists are available. Clinical pharmacists are becoming more accepted as key members of a patient's health care team, as experts in drug therapy who can help manage a patient's long-term care.

"It's a frightening time for pharmacists because the ones who are attempting to sustain themselves in the old way, focusing on distribution, are finding it tough to survive," said Wendy Duncan, the dean and vice president of academic affairs, St. Louis College of Pharmacy. "And the people who are trying to work in new ways in the clinical setting are having difficulty making a living."

Duncan said the college's new focus would help position pharmacy graduates to assume a highly valued, "hub" role in health care reform.

Read more about it at: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/0BF1D149152188B7862577230013E488?OpenDocument

Pharmacist Unions

In some cases, pharmacists are being overworked and treated badly by employers. As a result, pharmacists are turning to unions to represent them in the workplace.

The benefits of a union contract for employee pharmacists is a grievance procedure in place to make sure that employee pharmacists are treated fairly. For example, guaranteed break and lunch periodsand set job descriptions for pharmacists in the contract. Without union representation, some pharmacists are given tasks like cleaning the bathrooms and stocking non-pharmaceutical merchandise on the shelves.

Thomas Hanson, president of NPHA-USW Local 1969, which represents Walgreens pharmacists in the greater Chicago area, says, "Non-union pharmacists are always calling or e-mailing our office and wanting information about us and how to organize."

Read more at: http://www.modernmedicine.com/modernmedicine/Associations/Is-it-time-for-pharmacists-to-unionize/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/668529