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I'm a pharmacy student right now, doing my fourth year rotations. I've come to have an existential crisis with regard to our profession. What is the definition of pharmacy exactly? I mean look at medicine. Despite being one of the most diverse professions in terms of specialties and subspecialties, all the disciplines of medicine are unified by the common thread of examination and diagnosis. All start out with the foundation of pathological inquiry and symtomatology before diverging into the multitude of foci which make each specialist so uniquely knowledgeable.
It seems to me that pharmacy doesn't have as surefooted an idea of what it is. The leaders of our profession, whether we're speaking of lobbyists, professional orgs, advocates, etc, seem almost desperate to take what opportunity for clinical expansion comes our way, as though we as a profession are collectively picking up scraps, so to speak, and defining ourselves accordingly. We can't and don't diagnose as a profession because frankly speaking, we're not trained to. We can't treat as a profession because hoarding that responsibility assumes that every clinical manifestation has its panacea drug - which would be an irresponsible assumption. That was the fundamental flaw our forbearers made in founding a profession on something as tenuous as a pharmaceutical product, which is not as fundamental as say the human body in a pathological state is for medicine. And to be completely honest, I'm still not convinced we need 4 years of post-graduate education, at least in its current iteration, to dispense pills and counsel for AEs. As much promise as MTMS holds let's be honest, the confusion over how to implement MTMS is as much a victim to this confusion as our profession itself is.
I'm frustrated. Are we doctors by practice or doctors in name only? If 96 percent of law grads went on to do clerical work while the remaining 4 percent actually went on to practice legal research and counseling, would we call all JD's "lawyers"? I ask this because with pharmacy, that's probably the rough percentage of clinical pharmacy graduates who actually go on to use the stuff they learn - in the clinical setting, pursuing their craft as an art as much as a science. The remainder forget all they knew about D-tests and T-tests.
And for me, to be a doctor means to know your subject to the highest degree known to humankind, to the point of being theoretical. To the point at which art and reason converge. To be a scholar. In my opinion perhaps 4 percent of pharmacists, those who work in the clinical setting and go beyond staff-level may approach a level of expertise for which they were in theory trained. But the fact that so few of us have this opportunity suggests that such people are exceptions. And exceptions are found in every profession, professions which they don't define.
It seems to me pharmacy is still a work in progress. Many want to be called doctors just because we have a sheet of paper. How about the reality of the situation? I'm not going by what someone told me I am. I'm going by the facts. Perhaps our pharmacy education jumped the gun on reality?
It seems to me that pharmacy doesn't have as surefooted an idea of what it is. The leaders of our profession, whether we're speaking of lobbyists, professional orgs, advocates, etc, seem almost desperate to take what opportunity for clinical expansion comes our way, as though we as a profession are collectively picking up scraps, so to speak, and defining ourselves accordingly. We can't and don't diagnose as a profession because frankly speaking, we're not trained to. We can't treat as a profession because hoarding that responsibility assumes that every clinical manifestation has its panacea drug - which would be an irresponsible assumption. That was the fundamental flaw our forbearers made in founding a profession on something as tenuous as a pharmaceutical product, which is not as fundamental as say the human body in a pathological state is for medicine. And to be completely honest, I'm still not convinced we need 4 years of post-graduate education, at least in its current iteration, to dispense pills and counsel for AEs. As much promise as MTMS holds let's be honest, the confusion over how to implement MTMS is as much a victim to this confusion as our profession itself is.
I'm frustrated. Are we doctors by practice or doctors in name only? If 96 percent of law grads went on to do clerical work while the remaining 4 percent actually went on to practice legal research and counseling, would we call all JD's "lawyers"? I ask this because with pharmacy, that's probably the rough percentage of clinical pharmacy graduates who actually go on to use the stuff they learn - in the clinical setting, pursuing their craft as an art as much as a science. The remainder forget all they knew about D-tests and T-tests.
And for me, to be a doctor means to know your subject to the highest degree known to humankind, to the point of being theoretical. To the point at which art and reason converge. To be a scholar. In my opinion perhaps 4 percent of pharmacists, those who work in the clinical setting and go beyond staff-level may approach a level of expertise for which they were in theory trained. But the fact that so few of us have this opportunity suggests that such people are exceptions. And exceptions are found in every profession, professions which they don't define.
It seems to me pharmacy is still a work in progress. Many want to be called doctors just because we have a sheet of paper. How about the reality of the situation? I'm not going by what someone told me I am. I'm going by the facts. Perhaps our pharmacy education jumped the gun on reality?
). Epic's response was appropriate to his position, gender & actually cut right down to the situation.
