Matt Paterini, Nick Kirkpatrick, and Lynn Switaj are the creators of The Nontraditional Pharmacist (www.thenontraditionalpharmacist.com) and PharmD graduates of the University of Michigan with a passion for exploring nontraditional roles in pharmacy. Matt works for IBM, Nick for CVS, and Lynn for Walgreen's. Their website is a central information source designed to help pharmacists and pharmacy students gain exposure to unique roles for pharmacists.

The Nontraditional Pharmacist

Pharmacists practicing integrative medicine do not transition from the role of the pharmacist but rather expand it. In a podcast interview with 

, Pam Tarlow, PharmD and Swathi Varanasi, PharmD discuss with the importance of other modalities of health and touch on the business implications of integrative medicine in the future. Lynn Switaj, PharmD, moderates the discussion.

 Can you give an overview of integrative medicine?

: So the way I see integrative health and integrative medicine is a multi-modality approach. It’s conventional pharmacotherapy, so prescription medications that you’d normally think of, but plus other modalities of health. That could be through natural products, dietary supplements, meditation, homeopath homeopathy, all those different possibilities to help the patient. And the way that we have talked about it also is that it really centers around a patient-centered, shared decision-making model. And so that’s working one on one with the patient to make a decision that’s best for them.

 Tell me a little bit about your specific role.

 Both of us are in some shared roles and some different roles. But I think the way Swathi explained it before is really that we have embraced and learned and utilize other strategies other than just pharmacotherapeutics. And so some of our work is 1-on-1 with patients at a pharmacy. Sometimes it’s direct consultation with people outside of the pharmacy. There’s educational different components clinic or we’re both involved in some clinic, lots of education. So it really varies, but it kind of boils down to the question: what can I use with my medications? Or what would be harmful if I took it with my medications? Do I choose this or that, or can I take them both? And then, also when a situation comes up that a particular patient either can’t or won’t take a certain kind of medication. We see both. Sometimes they can’t because of risk factors or other factors, availability factors, or sometimes they just don’t want to. And their doctor has told them as long as they get symptom relief or their biomarkers improve, then they can try things outside the box a little. And so we’re there for that. Not saying that this is the 1 way to do it, but hearing the patient’s story or in some cases the clinicians talking about the patients to us and then providing certain options, showing advantages, disadvantages, etc.

 What advice would you give to somebody looking to pursue a similar role?

: I would say there are so many great resources, whether we’re talking about podcasts, whether we’re talking about various free newsletters that you can get from different websites that we can link for you if you’d like or put them in your caption. There are so many great opportunities to learn. So I think just even starting there with just like trying to feed your interest in that way. But then the other thing that I think is so important is networking. And so I would say, like anyone, no matter if they’re like a first-year pharmacy student or a pharmacist that’s been working for however many years. Everyone should have a LinkedIn [account] or some sort of method to network with other people, because I think when you speak to other people about what they’re doing and anything that they’re interested in, you can feel that passion and actually really get a better understanding of what that field is. So I think that if people connected with us, for example, we could talk about our experience more. But there are plenty of other people doing amazing things and you just have to find them through networking.

 And for pharmacists looking to transition, what advice would you give to a currently practicing pharmacist?

 It’s that it is more of an expansion rather than a transition, because I don’t leave anything behind that I learned in pharmacy school or in a conventional practice. I just add on to it and look to see what my patients are taking. So I’m always listening to my patients, always. And when they ask about supplement A, or homeopathic medicine B, or nutritional strategy C, I’m always thinking about that in the way I think about anything. Who would be harmed by it? Who might be helped by it? What’s the benefit to the risk? Is there solid evidence? This is straight pharmacy, so there’s no transition out of that. It’s just opening up to really the way the body is able to maintain its own resilience and its own homeostasis. And that’s what nutritional products and homeopathic medicines can offer, that pharmaceutical medicines can’t really. As wonderful as they are for certain conditions once they’ve gotten to a certain point. That’s what the message I would really like to say. It also depends on why a pharmacist or traditional pharmacist might want to make this expansion. There could be business reasons. They could want to expand into the cannabis medicine market so that patients can come to them for certain products depending on what state they’re in. And that’s really blossomed in this year, and what Swathi and I have been working together on.

Editor's Note: The transcript is a summary of the interview. View the video for the full interview. 

Seizing New Opportunities in the Pharmacy Industry, Part 1

Seizing New Opportunities in the Pharmacy Industry, Part 2

Articles

The Nontraditional Pharmacist podcast presents a discussion about pharmacists practicing integrative medicine and touch on the business implications of integrative medicine in the future. 

Looking Beyond Prescription Medications with Integrative Medicine

Will Soliman, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Accreditation Council for Medical Affairs (ACMA) provides advice for pursuing new pharmacy careers, in the second part of an interview with The Nontraditional Pharmacist (NP).

What advice do you have for students looking to pursue avenues in Pharma, or pharmacists looking to make a transition? 

I would say step 1 really is to get certified. Because think about it—when you go into an interview, and people start to ask you questions at [ASHP] 

 and you’re trying for these fellowships in industry, I’ve heard from many, many people that have said, “You know, because I have been certified, I was able to answer a lot of questions and I was able to discuss in detail what my thinking was, and they were able to see that I had a lot of in-depth knowledge.” So getting more education and training, because it’s so specific, it will give you a huge return on your investment. It is totally worth it and I’m very confident you’ll see a lot of benefit.

One of the pieces of advice I give to any individual who’s trying to build a career in this area is really become an expert in a certain therapeutic area or in a certain area in general and really try to be known in that area. And part of that then, the third aspect of that is networking and really building a strong network. And nowadays with LinkedIn, it’s pretty easy, and you’ll be able to connect with folks and really reach out, and build networks where you can go to live events and things like that. And that’s actually what we do at the ACMA is when you actually get board certified or certified, it’s not like you’re just certified and it’s done. Anyone that is board certified in medical affairs for the ACMA automatically becomes part of the ACMA society. And when you are part of the ACMA society, you get to go to live events, attend webinars etc. We did that because we know how important it is to really have a network and have a community, and being part of a community of professionals that you want to work in that space with, that’s so important, right. Because a lot of times the reality is, you know, having those connections matters. Sometimes it is whom you know, and so that makes a big difference. And so I would absolutely encourage people to become part of that network, attend those events, be part of those societies, because you’re going to inevitably meet individuals that can help you.

So it’s just small things and little ideas, but I would recommend it. The biggest thing I would say is your resume—really have a solid resume. I’m sure there is services either at university, or you can hire folks, that can really help you to develop a professional looking resume. And the resumé, you need to figure out how to make it stand out. There’s different ways to do that, but that’s critical. And then really educating yourself on interviewing skills, and how do you boost up your soft skills so that when you’re out speaking with folks in an interview, you’re really able to convey why you’re the best candidate for a position. So I think it’s a combination of those different things.

Yeah, you said some of those are small things, but also so important. We talk about networking, and a lot of people throw that term around, but really making those connections with individuals that are in a position to either provide that experience, additional education, or simply help out, help you through the process is important. How does someone go to become involved with the ACMA?

It’s real simple. You go to our website, 

 or you could just Google “ACMA Medical Affairs” and can go on our website, register, and you can schedule time to speak with one of the academic advisors that the ACMA has. They would be happy to help you learn a little bit more about the opportunity, but you can actually apply directly online. You can speak with other individuals that have gotten board certified. If you go on LinkedIn, you’ll see there are plenty of folks that actually have the credential, the 

 credentials, hundreds and hundreds of them that actually use it on their LinkedIn profile. So I always encourage folks to reach out to those that have actually went through the process and hear it firsthand from them. But it’s simple, it’s all online. One of things that we really try to do is make the process as simple as possible. So ACMA has a 24 hour, 7 days a week live chat support. So you can go online, and know ask any of our team members about questions related to the process, the exams, etc. They’ll be more than happy to answer. And of course, like I mentioned, we have telephone support as well, and members that can answer questions live.

Seizing New Opportunities in the Pharmacy Industry (Part 1)

Will Soliman, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Accreditation Council for Medical Affairs (ACMA) discusses the exciting opportunities available to pharmacists in the pharma industry, in the second part of an interview with The Nontraditional Pharmacist.

Will Soliman, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Accreditation Council for Medical Affairs (ACMA) discusses the exciting opportunities available to pharmacists in the pharma industry, in an interview with The Nontraditional Pharmacist (NP).

What is your background, and your role within the pharmaceutical community?

I’m not a pharmacist, I’m a PhD. I’m married to a pharmacist, I guess that comes close. But I worked in the pharmaceutical industry for almost 20 years, and I worked most of the time in an area called Medical Affairs, and started the ACMA about 5 years ago.

The ACMA is a global organization. We have offices in the US, in Europe, Asia; Mumbai, India, as well as in South America. And even in now, just recently in Abu Dhabi, and the United Arab Emirates, and our learners are all over the world. We actually have what’s known as a global redirect technology in our learning system. So if you’re based in Japan, the 

 of credentialing you would get would be a little bit more relevant for that part of the world. And if you’re in, let’s say Brazil, it would be the same situation. And the reason for that is, as you may know, a lot of the rules and regulations from a compliance standpoint are a little different when you go from country to country or region to region. So now actually, we have learners in over 35 countries. And so it’s a very much a global program and it’s growing; we get people from all over the world.

What are the some of the specific opportunities available to pharmacies as it relates to pharma?

Great question. So I’ll kind of go through role by role. Probably the most It’s popular for a number of reasons, most of which I think really relates to the fact that when you’re an MSL, you’re out, you’re engaging health care providers, you’re working usually from the field or from your home. It’s not a routine type of job. You get to build relationships, you’ve got to educate and present. I think you can relate as pharmacist or physician or a PhD, innately we like to educate. And so that’s part of the role as well and collaborating with different crossfunctional groups. So that’s definitely, I think, 1 job, is the MSL job.

The other job, I think, and the other opportunity for pharmacists, certainly is medical information or drug information. And those are typically more headquarters based type roles where you’re working in a call center. And again, this can range in terms of what you would be involved in, everything from being able to take calls, inbound calls that come in from health care providers or patients, all the way to being involved in promotional, regulatory, medical, legal review of materials that would eventually go out to health care providers.

Another area is drug safety or what we call pharmacovigilance. This is an area where they love to have pharmacists because it’s an area where you’re analyzing data, you’re trying to look at trends in terms of adverse events, drugs to drug interactions. Based on that data, you might discover gaps and needs when it comes to new studies that need to be looked at or developed to address certain issues that might impact the medical community.

Another area is in medical communication and scientific communications, which also includes publication planning. And this is an area where you would be involved in understanding and planning what’s the long term strategic plan for publications for a particular product or device, etc.

And then the other two things that I would mention that a lot of people aren’t aware of, and where there’s opportunities if you’re going to some of these websites and looking for jobs, is looking at medical education companies, promotional medtech companies, advertising agencies who serves the pharmaceutical industry. So if you’re having a difficult time breaking into a pharma company, I would consider looking at some of these agencies who are solutions providers to pharma. A lot of these companies are looking for people that have clinical backgrounds. And so these are companies that are looking for people that would have titles like scientific director or medical director. You typically start an associate level. A lot of times there’s a lot of medical writer positions.

And in the last area, I would say is managed care. So you have companies like United, Aetna, Optum, Cigna, all these companies, they would love to have professionals with a background in pharmacy who can work with these providers to look at and assess records of patients, information from health care providers and try to understand the business needs and what not. And also collaborating with Pharma on their end. And so there are different areas, it’s not just strictly Pharma but I would say those three verticals are where you’re going to find a lot of opportunities.

Will Soliman, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Accreditation Council for Medical Affairs (ACMA) discusses the exciting opportunities available to pharmacists in the pharma industry, in an interview with The Nontraditional Pharmacist.

Seizing New Opportunities in the Pharmacy Industry

Nabeel Qureshi, PharmD, expands our understanding of the typical Medical Science Liaison (MSL) role by taking a look at his position in managed markets in an interview with Matt Paterini, PharmD of The Nontraditional Pharmacist podcast.

A lot of people may know some bits and pieces of the MSL role, but could you describe further your current role and day-to-day responsibilities?

  As you just pointed out, your audience may already be familiar with the traditional MSL role. Traditionally a medical science liaison calls on physicians and hospitals and key opinion leaders (KOLs) to provide them with most current scientific evidence around a particular disease state, talk about the drug pipeline for their company and their competitors' companies, talk about their products, on-label information, off-label information, and answer medical information questions at a level that you know a practicing clinician may not be well versed in the day-to-day practice. That’s sort of the traditional MSL role, so that’s really what my role is. What’s different about being a managed market ML, a medical liaison, is that instead of a physician or hospital or KOL being my typical customer, my customers are really payers, so managed care organizations and employer groups. So we refer to that collectively as being 'market access.' And so I’m meeting day-to-day with health plans, with employers, associations, to provide clinicians and nonclinicians with that most current clinical evidence and information around our disease sates and products.

How does this job fit with your personal and professional life?

I love it. It’s something that I feel like I’m good at and enjoy, and where I feel like it can make an impact, such as when I go to a customer and provide them clinical information. I’ll give you an example. Today I was with a customer. It was a big employer health coalition and they represent nearly a million lives across 34 states. So any formulary decision that they’re making on products can be quite consequential right to the health of thousands, in this case almost a million people, and my company has a new product coming out. I’ll be able to give them a full clinical downloader on that product and really kind of take information that they would have been seeking out, some of that’s not published.

That would’ve taken them a lot of time to look into, and I was able to connect with them. They were also pharmacists by training, so I was able to connect with them clinically and provide information that’s going to make their lives easier and potentially open up those products to a lot of patients that could potentially benefit from it.

 That’s awesome. It sounds like you fill everything that you’re looking for from a professional sense. How does it fit in with personal life? Everything fit where you want it to be with the balance between the 2?

Yeah I think so, it kind of flows a little bit. In some ways, like this week in particular, you feel like you’re working all the time and especially in my job, I cover a 4-state territory, so there is a certain degree of travel involved. So this was one of those weeks, for sure, where you know it goes out almost 4 days. And so there’s that downside, but it’s mostly upside, honestly. You have a lot of autonomy, you feel like you own your own business. You can manage you schedule to some extent around customer internal/external. So yeah, there’s definitely a lot a lot of personal balance that you can have in this position.

Paterini: Where would one go to learn more about becoming an MSL? 

For students, typically from what I’ve seen now that I’m in industry, the pharmaceutical industry, most people will seek out fellowships, and so a good place to start could be AMCP [Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy], the annual meeting in the spring or the next meeting and in the fall. Particularly if you’re [in a] managed markets MSL role, which is what I have. The other conference is ASHP [American Society of Health-System Pharmacists] Midyear Clinical Meeting. I know we have a booth at Midyear, our company, and I know other companies as well, so we recruit for fellowships. That’s often a good way to break into it because you get in-house medical training, and then you’re able to leverage that to be in the field as a medical science liaison.

For more experienced pharmacists looking for a change, I always say 'try to take whatever it is that you’re doing and find something unique about it, find something that you can work on within that job, that in some way relates to a future job. Regardless of where you are, try and get experience that shows that you are an expert, whether it’s research and publishing or taking care of patients or working on quality improvement projects or things like that.'

Nabeel Qureshi, PharmD, expands our understanding of the typical Medical Science Liaison role by taking a look at his position in managed markets in an interview with Matt Paterini of The Nontraditional Pharmacist podcast.

Not Your Typical Medical Science Liaison

Pharmacist David Vu has a nontraditional role as a QA engineer and project manager at Kit Check, and is also a champion of pharmacy informatics. He chatted with Matt Paterini from the Nontraditional Pharmacist podcast. Here are some highlights:

Tell us about yourself and describe your day-to-day responsibilities on the job.

I graduated in May 2018 from VCU School of Pharmacy, and I work as a project manager and QA engineer for a health IT company called Kit Check, which focuses on improving pharmacy workflow by providing automated medication management solutions. 

I primarily work on Bluesight for Controlled Substances, which is a management tool that provides 100% audit coverage of controlled substances. In a lot of hospitals, the current method of drug diversion detection is a really manual process which requires sifting through large volumes of data from different systems. Bluesight takes that information and applies machine learning algorithms to detect abnormal patterns in provider behavior and to surface any type of outliers to investigate. 

My work mainly consists of feature testing, data analysis, and working on customer implementation from a data perspective and making sure that everything is happening in a very timely manner. I touch nearly every team in my company—I join the implementation team on customer calls, help support with understanding logic codes, and work with the engineering team to provide clinical content for feature requests that we have. 

The QA engineer role is actually really similar to being a pharmacist. A pharmacist looks at prescriptions to make sure nothing is wrong and to determine clinical relevancy for that medication and patient. They'll make recommendations to the doctors and remedy any issues. The same thing applies in my QA engineer position—we identify problems in the source code and make recommendations to developers to fix that. 

As a project manager, I manage the implementation timelines for our hospitals that are going live with Bluesight for Controlled Substances. As the only pharmacist in the engineering team, I’m a really accessible resource to the rest of my team to answer any type of pharmacy workflow or clinical questions they have. I also do a lot of the coding for our hospitals. So being able to understand functionality and how the end user would perceive our software helps make a good product. 

 How does your professional work impact you personally? 

My No. 1 goal is to be able to impact patients in a grand scale. That's why entered healthcare technology, because I would be able to not only affect 1 patient, but many patients downstream. Even though I don't have the 1-on-1 patient interaction that I had when I was working in retail pharmacy, I’m really satisfied knowing that the work that I do can have long lasting contributions to overall patient health. By doing a little bit of coding, I can provide some value to a clinician or a pharmacist to free up their time and release some of their pain points so they can do what's important, which is helping their patients. 

What advice would you give to pharmacy students, or even pharmacists, if they're looking to pursue a career, or maybe make a career change in the pharmacy informatics realm?

The biggest advice I would give someone is really to have a questioning attitude. I look at some process or technology and I think, 'How could this be faster? How could this be better? How could this be more efficient?' A lot of times we think about that stuff, but we feel disempowered: 'This is out of my control,' or 'corporate is dealing with it,' or 'if I make any recommendations then my voice isn't going to be heard,' and then people may get discouraged. As innovators, pharmacy informaticists, and people in healthcare technology we try to identify pain points and to see if we're able to try to resolve them by developing a solution or improving a process or augmenting an organizational structure. When you’re thinking and questioning all the time, it's crazy what kind of creativity comes from that. That mode of thinking would definitely go a long way in this type of field. 

What are your thoughts on the future of the pharmacy profession?  

Pharmacy is headed towards an area where technology will be a prominent player in healthcare in more ways than one—big data and analytics, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, block chain, and much more. The intersection between healthcare and technology is definitely where our profession is going. Using technology to save money and provide better and more efficient care is key to having less costly and better quality healthcare for our patients. 

Pharmacist David Vu has a nontraditional role as a QA engineer and project manager at Kit Check, and is also a champion of pharmacy informatics. 

Harnessing the PharmD Power as an Engineer

speaks with Ashlee Klevens Hayes, a pharmacist, keynote speaker, and co-host on the Pharmacy Podcast Network with her show Rx Buzz, about her business Rx Ashlee.

 RxAshlee is a career development company. We focus on career people (“we” as in me and my clients), focusing on career strategizing, career pivots, brand development if you’re starting a business or if you are going through a personal brand pivot, marketing yourself, and interview preparation. That is, in its whole, what exactly I work on 1-on-1 with clients. I have group clients, I have individual clients, I have students, I have high-level professionals. So really it ranges from students all the way through; physicians, CEOs, attorneys, experts in all different realms. It’s not really industry specific because everything we talk about is transferable.

Very interesting to note that you branch out and do coaching not only for pharmacists but for other professionals as well.

Yeah, and it’s not isolated to pharmacists. I would say about 50% of my work is pharmacists because that’s, again, my network, and that’s where a lot of pharmacists reach out to me. But it is actually grown in different areas because of referrals and recommendations. For example of how this started, I have a lot of pharmacists clients, but then they tell their spouses or their sisters or their friends about the work we’ve done and they’re not pharmacists. So I love working with every industry and it’s fun to learn about different experiences and different jobs and different career paths. I’ve learned so much just by working with unique people in nontraditional roles, or traditional. Things I would have never imagined, but because the skills that we go through and the tools that we use is nonindustry specific, it’s quite easy for me to jump on a call with someone that’s not a clinician.

 What is your specific role in RxAshlee? Do you work 1-on-1 or is it more in groups?

 I’m the content creator, the founder and then I have a few people that work under me, but totally different. They don’t do any of the direct client facing stuff, it’s all behind the scenes graphic design and freelance content creation for the blogs and photography, and I have an attorney that I work with. So it’s a group of us that make this whole business function but it’s really me as the face of the company. I do a variety of different things. First and foremost, I work 1-on-1 with clients every single day. So whether that’s in curating a business or launching a business or creating a business there’s that. Two, if it’s 1-on-1 with a client working in career pivots. And three if it’s interview prep I do that 1-on-1, too. I have online courses now that we’re going through. So I put a lot of the clients I work with through the online course and then the reason why I developed the online courses because a lot of people, a lot of professionals have the same exact questions. I also do a lot of speaking engagements now so I travel around a lot, and also am in the middle of group coaching too. I have a women’s mastermind group, there’s almost 10 professional women in this group coaching course. I’ve been working on writing a book and podcasting. There’s just so many different arms of the business. But ultimately the bread and butter is when I work with clients 1-on-1. That’s where it’s at.

What advice would you give to others that want to go down a similar path yours?

Great question. I think having the mindset that there’s not only 1 job for you, because ultimately I think the best advice I can give to people who are going through a career pivot in pharmacy specifically, the jobs out there are endless. There are so many jobs. It’s just what we typically are hyperfocused on is 1, maybe 3 jobs max. And I just totally disagree with that sentiment. I think that there are so many opportunities for us to use our skills, to use our background, to use our experiences and to really implement them into different companies and just using your assets in a different way. We have to address that the 1 size fits all model just doesn’t work. And health care is obviously an ever-evolving, rapidly changing space and we’ve got to keep up.

Now if people want to learn more about you, about RxAshlee, a little bit more about what you do, where can we go to find more information?

Sure. So the best placed to reach me on is my website, 

. And then you know I’m on all the social media outlets LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. My website is the best place to go.

Ashlee Klevens Hayes is a pharmacist, a keynote speaker, a co-host on the Pharmacy Podcast Network with her show Rx Buzz, and an entrepreneur with her business Rx Ashlee.