Lucinda L. Maine, PhD, RPh

How many career paths are open to today’s pharmacy graduates? I often marvel as I look at the diversity of both titles and organizations with which pharmacists are affiliated.

My pharmacy education began more than 40 years ago when I enrolled in a Bachelor of Science program. When offering career guidance, our faculty would often say, “The majority of you will work in community or hospital pharmacies upon graduating, so that is what we will focus on.” Even then there were many other “non-traditional” roles, but we had few opportunities to understand them from within our classrooms.

Fortunately, I listened to students in classes ahead of mine who encouraged us to join student organizations and attend local, regional, and national pharmacy association meetings. It was at national meetings especially that I began to hear pharmacy leaders speak about the new and emerging roles that pharmacists were assuming in long-term care, managed care, the pharmaceutical industry, and government. My engagement in national associations have never ceased since then, and I continue to learn about the expanding number and types of positions my colleagues in pharmacy are creating.

I was also very fortunate to find opportunities during our summer breaks to identify diverse opportunities to learn about pharmacists’ roles in the community, hospital, industry, and government settings. While early practice experiences and calendar-year degree models might limit the time available for summer internships, gaining experience in multiple types of settings should be a priority for every PharmD student. Not only did I gain a broader appreciation of my career pathways, but the practical experience enhanced my learning in the classroom.

Not too long after I graduated from my post-graduate degree program, I became involved in the development of a fantastic opportunity for students developed by the Glaxo Corporation (now GlaxoSmithKline). Elliott Sogol was the Glaxo originator of the Career Pathway Evaluation Program for Pharmacy Professionals, which continues to be available today through the American Pharmacists Association (APhA).

The Pathways program allows participants to complete a self-assessment related to a set of “critical factors” identified through research as essential to career success and fulfillment; the program identifies the career pathways that are most aligned with the individual’s responses. There are profiles of 28 different broad career areas included in the online program resources.

Many colleges and schools of pharmacy incorporate the APhA Career Pathway Evaluation Program into their efforts to provide career information and consultation to students. In many cases an assistant or associate dean for student affairs will take the lead in guiding students through the program, butt other faculty and preceptors can be equally valuable sources of insight into the wide array of roles for contemporary pharmacy graduates.

Given the wide array of career opportunities available to pharmacists today, I feel confident in saying that there is a perfect career match (or 2 or 3) for every individual in the profession. Sometimes geographic constraints or the need for some additional education might create barriers to finding your best fit position, but don’t give up assessing your options and working toward that excellent match between your interests and aptitudes and positions. At some point, you may have the opportunity to even create your own position, one that perhaps has never existed before, to address patient needs that your pharmacy education has prepared you to meet.

I think that Jeff Goad, PharmD, MPH, the 2017 Next Generation Pharmacist

 of the Year, said it best: “In work and in life, if you are not having fun, you are doing it wrong.” There are endless way in which you can make an impact as a pharmacist, and if you are having fun while doing so, then you’ve succeeded in finding the perfect career fit for you.

Lucinda L. Maine, PhD, RPh, is the executive vice president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.

Articles

How many career paths are open to today’s pharmacy graduates?

Know No Limits: Future Pharmacy Careers 

As I began my pharmacy education in the mid-1970s I represented new diversity in the profession — I was a female student. My class was the first at the Auburn University School of Pharmacy to be comprised of 50% women; that was quite a milestone. Today, of course, that is no longer the least bit novel.

Over the decades since then, the composition of our classes has changed in many ways: older, second-degree learners mix with traditional first-degree students; and the mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds of PharmD students, graduate students and faculty members has changed significantly. AACP’s Argus Commission analyzed issues of diversity in pharmacy education in their 2012-13 report titled “Diversity and Inclusion in Pharmacy Education.”

While documenting increased diversity, the Argus report reveals that our current student body and faculty composition does not yet reflect the growing diversification of the US population that our students are preparing to serve.

Inclusiveness is 1 of the 8 core values approved by the AACP Board of Directors as an update to our value statement in 2013. The accompanying phrase is that “All individuals have perspectives that we appreciate and represent in our work.” AACP leaders and staff do their best to live this value statement daily.

In July 2015, AACP’s incoming President Cynthia Boyle appointed the Task Force on Diversifying our Human Capital, chaired by Carla White from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They were given a 2-year timeframe to complete their work, and they will issue their final report and recommendations by June 2017.

The AACP House of Delegates unanimously approved the following policy statement in July 2016:

AACP recognizes that a diverse student body, faculty, administration, and staff contribute to improvements in health equity and therefore encourages member institutions to develop faculty, staff, pharmacists and scientists whose background, perspectives, and experiences reflect the diverse communities they serve. (

Source: 2015-17 Taskforce on Diversifying our Investment in Human Capital

In addition, the AACP Board of Directors also approved a corporate commitment to diversity and inclusion at its November 2016 meeting:

AACP affirms its commitment to foster an inclusive community and leverage diversity of thought, background, perspective, and experience to advance pharmacy education and improve health.

AACP recognizes that the increasing diversity of the population, and especially diversification of the segment of the population currently in K-12 and post-secondary education, demands more vigorous efforts to recruit and retain a more diverse student body.

To be fully successful, we must ensure that our faculty and staff are similarly diverse, and that the culture of pharmacy education is inclusive and welcoming. This extends beyond the classic considerations of race and ethnicity and encompasses diversity of all perspectives. To that end, a new position of Director of Recruitment and Diversity will be added to the AACP staff beginning this July.  

While pharmacy has been identified through research as one of the most egalitarian professions

 there is still room for significant progress. It has only been a relatively short 40 years that female students were attracted to the profession in higher numbers than the population and, in my opinion, the profession has adapted effectively. It is with similar confidence that I believe we will achieve our objective of recruiting and retaining a sufficiently diverse student body so that 21

 century patients will see themselves reflected in the pharmacists who serve them. It is in our collective best interest to work toward that end.

Lucinda L. Maine, Ph.D., R.Ph. is the Executive Vice President and CEO of the  American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.

Victor A. Yanchick JN, Baldwin, J. Lyle Bootman JL, et al Report of the 2013-2014 Argus Commission: Diversity and Inclusion in Pharmacy Education. 

A Most Egalitarian Profession: Pharmacy and the Evolution of a Family-Friendly Occupation

The composition of our classes has changed in many ways.

The Changing Face of Pharmacy and Society

There has been some recent controversy regarding pharmacists’ job prospects, and now it’s time to set the record straight.

Reports of weakening pharmacist employment simply don’t reflect the national picture. According to a recent 

 analysis, the current unemployment rate for the profession is estimated at 4.1%—a national figure that reflects the experience of job seekers.

In Virginia, 92% of pharmacists are currently employed, and only 1% are involuntarily unemployed, according to the 2015 report of Virginia’s Pharmacist Workforce. On a national scale, demand for Class of 2015 pharmacy school graduates is high.

In a survey of 17 member schools, 95% of the more than 1500 job-seeking graduates who responded to their school’s request for information were employed. This figure is far from the grim portrait of an alleged saturation of the marketplace. In fact, graduates of one pharmacy school in the Southeast were reported to have received 2 job offers on average.

Linda Garrelts MacLean, BPharm, RPh, FACA, associate dean for advancement and clinical professor at the Washington State University (WSU) College of Pharmacy, confirms that demand for WSU’s pharmacy graduates is strong.

“In the Northwest, we are seeing the reappearance of signing bonuses, in the magnitude of $20,000 to $30,000 for pharmacists who are willing to relocate to rural areas such as Moscow, Idaho, and Lincoln City, Oregon—excellent places to live,” she said.

Recent commentaries have missed the essence of today’s evolving health care marketplace and future opportunities for all pharmacists. When their knowledge, skills, and accessibility are fully deployed, pharmacists add tremendous value to the patient care experience.

A recent analysis funded by the Community Pharmacy Foundation documented that pharmacists involved in comprehensive medication management (CMM) improve outcomes, control costs, and enhance the satisfaction of patients and clinicians. The report also cites evidence that pharmacists who engaged in CMM can return up to $12 for every $1 invested in the delivery of such services.

Some stakeholders have recommended increasing dispensing fees to $10 to $15 as an answer to pharmacy’s current challenges. However, significantly boosting dispensing fees is unrealistic and won’t address the fundamental need for equitable compensation for patient-care services.

The profession must continue to work to secure compensation for care in all settings that is distinct from dispensing reimbursement. Imagining that increasing reimbursement tied to dispensing as a means to support enhanced care delivery is simply out of step with contemporary health policy and payment practices.

“The reality is, the pharmacist is the single most accessible healthcare professional for people in America,” Garrelts MacLean said. “In order to address the profound shortages in health care access and availability, we must fully utilize pharmacists to provide the services where there is a desperate demand. Services that people are, in fact, willing to pay out-of-pocket to receive.” 

As a profession, we must stop the fearmongering about a possible glut of pharmacists. Instead, let’s focus our efforts on creating new opportunities across both traditional and nontraditional settings where pharmacists—the nation’s only medication use specialists&mdash;can use their education and experience to identify, remedy, and prevent medication-related problems, as well as expand access to prevention, wellness, primary care, and chronic care management services.

Together, we can all help patients live healthier, better lives.

Lucinda L. Maine, PhD, RPh, is the Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.

There has been some recent controversy regarding pharmacists' job prospects, and now it's time to set the record straight. 

Pharmacist Job Prospects: Setting the Record Straight

There has been considerable conversation lately regarding a 

 the November 2015 Aggregate Demand Index (ADI) of 2.96 as an indicator of this “problem,” but there is much more to this number and what it means.

For the past 15 years, the Pharmacy Workforce Center (PWC) has used the ADI to assess the relative balance between supply and demand in the pharmacist job market, with a score of 3.0 indicating a match between the number of jobs and the number of pharmacists. The PWC has recorded aggregate demand numbers regionally and nationally as high as 4.5 on a 5-point scale (indicating a severe shortage of pharmacists) and as low as the recently reported 2.96.

What does this number mean? Well, we know that 2.96 rounds up to 3, which means that nationally, there is a sufficient number of pharmacists to meet the current demand.

How is this number calculated? From panelists who primarily represent employers within the traditional pharmacy practice settings of chains and health systems. What’s missing are all the other settings where pharmacists work, including physicians’ offices and clinics, where future demand may be quite substantial.

Before we clamor for a return to a higher ADI, we should recall the national shortage of pharmacists that persisted for several years before the Great Recession had consequences that are rarely considered by the profession. Blunting innovation in pharmacy practice was, in my opinion, the most negative consequence of all.

In my own neighborhood, I vividly recall seeing signs on pharmacy doors indicating that no prescriptions were available from that location on a given day due to a lack of pharmacy personnel. If a corporation was uncertain about having a sufficient number of pharmacists to open every location every day, it certainly wasn’t thinking about expanding access to services like immunizations or medication therapy management by pharmacists. Those practices were not as able to provide preceptors for experiential education for the growing numbers of schools of pharmacy. Pharmacies and clinics serving poor, uninsured populations in rural and inner city locations struggled to attract pharmacists to serve needy patients.

Other consequences of the historical shortage included frequent turnover of pharmacists who responded to bonuses and incentives that were so common at the time, the rapid opening of new schools of pharmacy, and a shortage of pharmacy faculty. Meanwhile, the number of applicants to colleges and schools of pharmacy soared as the media communicated the attractiveness of 6-figure salaries and signing bonuses.

It is common for pharmacists to decry the opening of new schools as the primary villain in the current balance of pharmacist supply and demand. However, colleges and schools of pharmacy, both new and old, play a significant role in advancing the profession and creating new roles for graduates.

Consider the work of the leaders of colleges of pharmacy in California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Mississippi, and North Carolina who have worked hard with their state health officials and health systems to integrate pharmacists into important patient care roles in patient-centered medical homes, accountable care organizations, and safety net clinics. Their faculty engage with clinicians across the state to evaluate the positive impact of these innovative practices on patients’ clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes.

The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy provides awards, educational programs, and publications profiling these activities to stimulate innovation across all 135-member institutions. These activities create new career opportunities for graduates and pharmacists who enthusiastically embrace the notion that changes in health care represent opportunities.

Status quo is simply not an option. Payers and consumers have clearly indicated that they expect drug distribution services that are fast, accurate, and cheap. We may not like it, but that aspect of our work has been commoditized.

That is the future for our practices and our profession, and that is the excitement we bring to our profession.

While it is true that positions for new graduates can be scarce in cities where 1 or more colleges of pharmacy operate, we need to remember that the market for pharmacists is national. The vast majority of each graduating class has already secured employment before crossing the stage to receive a diploma. This includes the growing number of pharmacists who begin their careers in residency positions. These graduates are equipping themselves for the practices of the future in traditional and nontraditional places where pharmacists can leverage their accessibility, knowledge of medications, and spirit of teamwork and collaboration with patients and other health professionals.

This is the future, and we are already experiencing it.

 of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy

There has been considerable conversation lately regarding a perceived lack of jobs for pharmacists.

The Power of 3: Balance in the Demand for Pharmacists

"Never worked a day in my life!"This was the response of Nick Popovich,PhD, to the question of whether he enjoyedhis career in academic pharmacy. Dr.Popovich serves as professor of pharmacypractice and chairs the department at amajor US college of pharmacy. Certainlythis award-winning pharmacy educationleader works hard at his teaching, leading,and scholarly pursuits.

Yet, if you ask those committed to careersin academia why they love their work, youwill hear similar responses: "I love mentoringand teaching future pharmacists. I haveso much diversity and flexibility in the workI do. It is never boring!"

Pharmacy faculty positions vary, but allhave some component of teaching, research,and other scholarly activities and service. Facultyteach in classrooms, laboratories, and ina wide variety of pharmacy practice settings.

Research and other scholarly activitiesspan a vast landscape. Faculty members havediscovered new drug molecules as well asreceptor sites for pharmacologic activity;they work on dosage forms, pharmacokinetics,and pharmacogenomics. Health outcomesresearch, clinical trials, and sociobehavioralresearch are other examples offaculty research priorities.

Similar diversity is found in faculty memberservice activities. Advising student organizationsand participating in communityoutreach projects represent service opportunities.Many faculty hold elected leadershiproles in state and national pharmacy practicescientific specialty associations.

Diversity, creativity, and making a differencein the lives of others are all characteristicsof academic careers. If you have an interestin changing the future of pharmacy, theresimply is no better avenue than this!

Dr. Maine is executive vice president and chief executive officer of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, Alexandria, VA.