Pharmacist Roles in a Correctional Institution

Pharmacists are health care workers who provide continuous care and specialize in the proper management of medication stability and storage. Some individuals may think the only role of a pharmacist in the community includes working in a retail setting such as CVS, Publix, Walgreens, Walmart, and so on. But that is not always true; you can find pharmacists working in hospitals, clinics, universities, and government institutions. Some traditional roles of pharmacists include working in the community, where you may be counting, dispensing, administering immunizations, performing medication therapy management, or counseling patients about their current medication regimen. These roles are slowly declining in the pharmacy workforce as more individuals venture out or create new roles. Nontraditional pharmacy roles are becoming more prevalent as people follow their passions. As a pharmacist, you must be able to recognize your strengths and skills when you are considering a nontraditional role. It is also important to be confident in your endeavors, as you want to ensure that you can complete the task at hand, not only for yourself but also for your employer and clients.

When thinking about pharmacy roles, have you ever considered one in a correctional institution setting? How can you provide your expertise to this population? Many individuals in this community get overlooked because of the negative stigma associated with the job or facility. This population is in great need of clinical care, but you may ask yourself, what kind of care? A lot of these people have a plethora of different disease states that require clinical management. They require counseling on disease education, medication adherence, adverse effects, and much more. A pharmacist can provide this information within the correctional institution setting and provide education on HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke, among other conditions. Having this educational background allows you to provide services to the institution staff and inmates.

You can provide more than counseling and guidance on medication use in an institutional setting. Have you considered becoming a consultant pharmacist? These health care professionals provide expert advice on compliance with state and federal law regulations, facility medication utilization, trends of inappropriate medication usage, and appropriate medication storage. Many facilities need a consultant of record to operate in these class II, modified B permit pharmacies, which have special regulations in place to allow them to have a medication room without an active pharmacist onsite. This guideline allows nurses to administer the medication to inmates, ensuring that all health needs are met and disruptions in therapy are avoided. This permit is not specific to correctional institutions but can be used in health clinics, surgical units, urgent care locations, or other facilities with medications. While this permit is helpful for the facility, it inadvertently requires nurses to think like pharmacists, allowing room for potential errors. For this reason, it is important for a pharmacist to oversee these facilities to help provide guidance and answers to all pharmaceutical aspects. Consultants work as a team with all clinic staff to ensure the medication storage area is secured, clean, and orderly.

The pharmacist who represents these facilities must ensure the stricter law is followed according to state or federal regulations. This includes the destruction of controlled substances, which requires 2 witnesses. You must also provide guidance on licenses and permits, floor stock, refrigerated items requiring special conditions, and medication storage areas. As the consultant, you provide guidance on labeling medication in bulk inventory and for specific individuals. You must review medications on hand to ensure they have not expired and are properly administered to inmates. Additionally, it is important to have continual quality improvement meetings—these can occur quarterly—with the clinical staff to review all errors, potential errors, inappropriate trends in medical care, and any new business that may pertain to the organization. Pharmacists are the key to keeping medication safe and providing cost-effectiveness for clinics. Discussing the over- or underutilization of a medication can potentially save the organization money. As a consultant pharmacist, you ensure the facility inspection correlates or closely aligns with the facility’s policy and that all medication records are properly maintained according to state or federal guidelines.

As you think about your future and your role in pharmacy, can you picture yourself in a correctional institution providing the necessary care for this population? When choosing a career, always think about what you can offer or how you can make a difference in the community you are serving. Being a pharmacist comes with great responsibility to yourself and the individuals before you: Your service can bridge the gap for individuals in a difficult situation, provide the insight needed to make lifelong decisions or set new health care boundaries needed to succeed in life. Are you an individual who can step out of the crowd and take charge in a population that is easily overlooked by the common health care provider?