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did you even read the rest of the post?
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PharmD = Dr. revisited...
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did you even read the rest of the post?
I am not in any way shape or form saying that pharmacists should be doing physical assessment - that is not our job and that'sd not what we are adequately trained to do. You however put yourself in an interesing position:
On one hand you argue that physicians get superior medical training while in school because that's what medical school is tailored to do. Yet, on the other side, you refuse to acknowledge the same thing for pharmacists - that pharmacists get superior pharmacological knowledge to a far greater extent and therefore are also suited for prescribing.
You talk about all the years of training an average specialist spends in school, but how much do you think avearge pharmacists spend in school - 2 years ? I ask because an actual med student once asked me if Pharm.D was an associate degree, so I figured it is a fair question.
You completely ignored my point about that for nearly every year of training and experience that doctor has, pharmacist has a nearly comparable training. Bachelor degree is a standard at decent schools - 4 years ( 6 in my case seeing how I pusrsued two), 4 years pharmacy school + 2 years of residency + ALTERNATIVE fellowships training just like the ones you mentioned for specialists and you are easily looking at nearly comparable amount of time both of us spend in school ( will be at least 12 years in my case). Yes, certain specilities in medicine, such as surgery, far exceed this time limit, but let's not forget that your average medical school graduate is not going into surgery.
Additionally, you make it sound like doctors see thousands of patients in their life time and hence this experience building up is what makes them more suited but for prescribing, but somehow you neglect to understand that for very patient a doctor sees, a pharmacist deals with probably an equal amount of patients. Who do you think will cousel that Chris Jones you seen at the clinic 10 minutes ago, coke seller on the corner ?
What I find the most ridiculous is that you keep arguing with me that doctors have a comparable amount of knowledge to pharmacists in terms of drugs. What the heck do you think we study in school all these years ?It would be nice if instead of going around it and talking about all the years of experience specialized doctors have you just plainly answered: Are you actually insinuating that medical students get a comparable amount of training on drugs to pharmacy students ?
Additionally, you keep belittling my comments about watered down pharmacology lectures. I find it interesting for two reasons: first what experience do you have comparing pharmacology you learn vs. what pharmacy students learn ? I speak based on my experience - I am friends with a bunch of med students and see what sort of information they actually study when they are sitting next to me at a coffee table for example getting ready for an exam. Secondly, you have no problem, insinuating that our medicine related diagnostic lectures are watered down for pharmacy students ( because we don't learn the same extent of medical information) but you can't accept that the reverse is true ?
Lastly, what makes you think we are unsuited for prescribing non-pharmacological treatments when it's one of our main area of expertise ? For every topic that we learn we learn both pharmcalogic and non-pharmacologic therapies - for your beloved allergic dermatits example below I can list at least 10 for example.
Conclusion: you seem to have no idea or clue what pharmacy school is all about or what sort of infomation we are learning. No suprise there, since big chunk of pharmacy students, including myself, switched from pre-med and have direct hospital experience - work or volunteer, while most medical students never set a foot in a pharmacy or shadowed a pharmacist and are completely cluess.
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I'm not saying that physicians are not suited to prescribe, what I am however outraged about is "scary" scuff remake he or she made in response to my initial comment that pharmacists in this state have prescribing rights. What is so scary about it ? Even nurses have prescribing rights in some states.
Additionally, both of you seem highlight that pharmacists are not trained to diagnose - am I not saying the same thing ? If you bothered to read my earlier post you'd actually see I state the same thing - I clearly said that we do not study Elsevier's essentials of medicine for two years unlike med students.
I already described my shadowing experience - doctors round and have a pharmacist as a team member. The doctors review patient's history, symoptoms during rounds and diagnose, then ask the pharmacist for his recommendation - makes perfect sense since the pharmacist has far extensive knowledge on drugs and will be able to immediately catch what Rx history in the patient's profile may be significant and pose potential problems to the indicatedl therapies.
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I'm done arguing on this idiotic topic since I wasted a last hour on the board, instead of actually studying for my quiz in one hour. When SDN interferes with my schooling, that's when it's time for me to cool down.
i think for the most part we are in agreement... it really is a very fuzzy line. although i think many pharmacists are capable prescribers, as i said before i believe the diagnosis by the physician is the most critical component of prescribing medication. they are trained to collect data in an effective and efficient manner and use this data to formulate a prescription that should be able to have a positive effect on the patient. should pharmacists be able to propose a modification to a patients medication regiment? absolutely. but in the end the decision is up to the physician because he has spent more time with the patient, made the (hopefully) correct diagnosis, and is held accountable for his chosen prescription.
now, with the advent of molecular biology and genetic engineering, we are on the cusp of a revolution in medicine. being able to sequence and scan a patient's genome for allelic polymorphisms that contribute to differences in drug disposition is going to be HUGE. some drugs are already administered in this fashion (ie: tamoxifen/warafin) and i believe it is important for the FDA to take SNPs into account when testing the safety and efficacy of a new drug about to hit the market (and drugs that are already on the market). the role pharmacists will play in this new era is questionable. say there is a patient with breast cancer and the physician chooses to prescribe tamoxifen. the patient's genome is sequenced (hopefully for a moderate price) and the physician is able to see, say, two polymorphisms in the enzyme that contribue to increased metabolism of the drug to its active form, endoxifen. all he has to do now is adjust the dose to a smaller amount since more of the drug is being metabolized at a faster rate.
with this vision, i still don't see pharmacists playing the role of a main prescriber, but an increased role as a medication manager. if you have a patient on multiple medications, there are an infinite amount of permutations if you consider all the possible enzymatic allelic variants combined with the fact that the patient may be taking multiple medications. this is where i see pharmacists stepping up and playing a larger role in the future.
Why is everyone bagging on illegallysmooth? It seems like all he/she wants to point out is that PharmD's shouldn't be prescribing for patients that they didn't do the clinical assessment for. That MDs have a competent knowledge of drugs especially those in their specialty, and that pharmD recommendations are welcome.
I know several recently graduated MDs and I have to say that they do get a lot of additional training and education in their residencies and beyond. A lot of MDs have to pull 100 hr weeks after graduation to learn what they need to know. Though pharmacists do residencies and continue into specialties also, i doubt the training post-grad is as grueling.
As a future pharmD, I would love to see the pharmacist role expand and I would love to see doctors and pharmacists collaborate more, but as it is right now, the practices are too far apart.
I know several recently graduated MDs and I have to say that they do get a lot of additional training and education in their residencies and beyond. A lot of MDs have to pull 100 hr weeks after graduation to learn what they need to know. Though pharmacists do residencies and continue into specialties also, i doubt the training post-grad is as grueling.
As a future pharmD, I would love to see the pharmacist role expand and I would love to see doctors and pharmacists collaborate more, but as it is right now, the practices are too far apart.
Chebs, you are an incompetant reader.
1. Never did I even hint at physicians in general having equal pharmacologic knowledge as phamacists in general. You seem to have made this up and keep harping on it over and over. YOU CONTINUED to belittle the pharmacologic education of physicians, and my description of the education of physicians was intended to point out to you that our pharmacologic education does not end in school.
2. For my masters degree I have been taking classes with pharmacy students AND medical students, so don't even begin to tell me what I DON'T know about these two professions. You're so ignorant about medical profession I can hardly believe you're IN pharmacy school.
3. If you want to prescribe, you must assess/diagnose. If you want to diagnose, you must go to medical school (or, obviously, be a PA/NP). These are my thoughts in a nut shell. Of course, if you wanna give out cold medicine and laxatives, more power to you. Unless you can walk into the room of a woman with acute abdominal pain and know what to do, you shouldn't be prescribing. If you actually think that docs should not be prescribing, I think you should be sent off to the loony bin.
1. Never did I even hint at physicians in general having equal pharmacologic knowledge as phamacists in general. You seem to have made this up and keep harping on it over and over. YOU CONTINUED to belittle the pharmacologic education of physicians, and my description of the education of physicians was intended to point out to you that our pharmacologic education does not end in school.
2. For my masters degree I have been taking classes with pharmacy students AND medical students, so don't even begin to tell me what I DON'T know about these two professions. You're so ignorant about medical profession I can hardly believe you're IN pharmacy school.
3. If you want to prescribe, you must assess/diagnose. If you want to diagnose, you must go to medical school (or, obviously, be a PA/NP). These are my thoughts in a nut shell. Of course, if you wanna give out cold medicine and laxatives, more power to you. Unless you can walk into the room of a woman with acute abdominal pain and know what to do, you shouldn't be prescribing. If you actually think that docs should not be prescribing, I think you should be sent off to the loony bin.
The original topic of this thread was whether or not PharmDs should be called "Doctor". It was not meant to be a discussion about Pharmacists vs. Doctors.
lawl, every "should pharmacists be called doctor" thread ends up exactly like this. falls quicker than an enron stock.
Sigh.
Your thoughts in the nutshell represent the joke of the statement also known as a little publication titled "AMA Scope of Practice Data Series: Pharmacists. " - a piece of work full of blatant mistakes and factual misrepresentations. When the entire AMA makes idiotic statements like "The health and safety of patients are threatened …when [non-physician providers] are permitted to perform services that are not commensurate with their education or training ", it's not suprising that tools such as yourself think the way they do.
Perhaps in the world you live in, I may be sent to the loony bin, but given how I do attend the best pharmacy school in this world (to scare you even furher, every quarter I enroll myself into a few school of medicine electives) and many of my classmates actually share my thoughts, some may call it progressive thinking.
The hilarity of this whole thing is that you actually think the statement "patient safety is threatened when people do things beyond their education and training" is idiotic. How dense can you be? Your problem shouldn't be this statement, it should be what the AMA defines as the education and training of pharmacists, apparently. You don't even know which statement to quote. It's hysterical.
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They take the ball from goal to goal like no one's ever seen.
They're in the air, they're on the ground, they're always in control.
And when you say Miami, you're talking Super Bowl.
Cuz we're the Miami Dolphins, Miami Dolphins, Miami Dolphins number one.
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I'd say this has run its course. Move on folks, nothing to see here. 🙂
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