Can Professional Judgment Be Taught?

If you are a new pharmacist straight out of pharmacy school, you may be wondering: Is there a way to acquire professional judgment when brand new to the field, and how?

After graduating from pharmacy school, you have acquired all the clinical skills, pharmacology, and guideline expertise taught in your courses and rotations. But how do you implement “professional judgment” into your real-world practice just from those criteria? Is this even possible?

In my experience as a staff pharmacist who trained new residents and supervised a pharmacy residency program, a key component was encouraging residents to always use their critical thinking skills. During training and orientation, I always asked questions. What do you think about this scenario? What would you tell a physician who called to clarify this order? These moments allowed me to gather information from them and determine what they already knew from their academic learning and what they had learned in clinical settings during their Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience rotations. Asking questions also allowed me to assess how much time they spent with their preceptors assessing clinical guidelines and patient care, rather than taking the “this is how we do it at our institution” approach.

Being newly licensed and a current pharmacy resident who is now legally allowed to give medication drug information to physicians can be a scary place for health care professionals. For this reason, I believe coaching a resident, rather than mentoring one, makes a big difference.

The bottom line is that professional judgment comes from experience. During the orientation training period in pharmacy residency, it was highly important to me that residents shadowed and observed how our staff pharmacists handled questions and demonstrated their ability to assess patient orders based on their professional judgment and years of experience. Although I felt it was very important for a resident to be licensed when they started a program or shortly after (so that they can stand on their own 2 feet), there is a thin line between being a pharmacist and being in the training program.

My top 3 keys to success for new pharmacists and residents using professional judgment are:

1. Do not feel rushed to answer a question immediately, especially if you have no clue what the answer is.
2. Use all the support and resources available to you, and do not feel ashamed or embarrassed to ask for help.
3. Access your colleagues’ critical thinking skills and ask questions about how they came to the conclusion. Use that as a model for yourself until you have the confidence and experience to make a judgment call on your own.

Even after my years of experience, there are still times when I ask my pharmacist colleague for their opinion on a physician’s order. There can be multiple responses to a single issue, and I want to gather all the information before I make a decision.

The bottom line is that the final decision is yours using your own professional judgment. Be confident that you have researched all avenues and feel secure in making your recommendations.