Why is Continuing Education Important for Specialty Pharmacists?

Rina Shah, PharmD, Vice President, Pharmacy Operations and Specialty Pharmacy, Walgreens, discusses how Walgreens has encouraged their pharmacists to continue their education.

Shah: The great thing about when you go through pharmacy school is that you have 6 years of training, primarily 4 years in pharmacy. In order for us to continue to help our patients—the industry of specialty continues to evolve, it’s really exciting but it’s evolving really quickly. And in order for our pharmacists to take care of our patients, we need to make sure they have the appropriate tools and training so that they’re kept up to speed on what’s happening within the industry.

What we’ve done... it’s been fabulous, our partnerships with NASP and Pro-CE. What we’ve been able to do is partner with them so that we’re continually getting new and up to date information for our pharmacists and they have access to those CEs available at their fingertips.

Specifically, they’re on demand. Pretty much what has happened is as pharmacists really want to learn on their own—if they want to get deep in oncology or if they want to get deep in transplant—they can do that by the partnership we have with Pro-CE and NASP. They can also attend some live CE programs, so we’re really excited about that.