Please see the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists (
www.cpnp.org). I believe membership is still free for students and the listserv is quite informative. Yes psych will typically be considered a specialty residency; however, depending on the interpretation of the new residency regulations (PGY1, PGY2, etc) some of the psych residencies may still go for the PGY1 designation and find ways to facillitate the PGY1 regulations w/ psych training (i.e. a pharmacy practice residency w/ a emphasis in psychiatry) so you may only be looking at 1yr. The reason why this may occur is that the concern w/ residency training is the actual size of the talent pool. Since psych isn't as popular as critical care or oncology the amount of applicants that compete for one residency spot in psychiatry varies alot from year to year so the programs are concerned about how an extra yr of residency training may serve as a potential deterrent to those wishing to do psych. The only program that has actually already kind of done this is the program at Rutgers; however, they have had some turnover recently as some of the faculty has moved on to industry so I'm not sure how any of the new faculty may feel about the recruitment of residency candidates.
As SDN1977 mentioned psych pharmacy is multi-faceted (depression/anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, PTSD, substance abuse, dementia, etc) as you have to have an appreciation for psychopharmacology (see Stephen Stahl, MD, PhD Essential in psychopharmacology) and also an understanding of the various psychometric tests (see the chapters in DiPiro and Koda Kimble). Put these two entities together and you understand therapeutics in various pt populations and how to determine outcomes via the psychometric tests.
GPA...just graduate w/ a 3.0 or above. Most residency programs (w/ the exception of those really competitive ones which is <5% of most residencies) really don't set limits about grade cut-offs. Extracurriculars...The most impt thing is that you are familiar w/ what you are getting into. Volunteering is kind of hard, but you could always check out the local National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) or shadow a pharmacist that works in the Dept of Mental Health or on a psych ward.
Job outlook...the bulk of psych pharmacists work in one of the 3 settings: academia/academic medical centers, department of mental health, or the VA hospital system
Bad side of psych...location, location, location
The amount of jobs out there are variable as most of the efforts in justifying clinical pharmacy services has gone to ambulatory care, critical care, med safety, oncology, pediatrics, etc. The problem w/ psych is the lack of defined outcomes so it is hard to justify service given it is difficult to evaluate the outcome as that may be based on the clinicians impression. Example...one indicator for a poorly controlled diabetic is a HgbA1c >8% so you can justify and validate how a pharmacist may be effective in improving HgbA1c scores.
A controlled schizophrenic may be determined by various psychometric test; however, a definitive outcome is not there as there is nothing you can measure in the pts blood to show an improved response. The psychometric tests are great and you can also show improved side effect profile; however, the receptiveness of the psychiatrist is really ideal and the tests themselves are always subjective to the clinician. Hint...the easiest way to get the foot in the door is monitoring for EPS w/ older agents (conventional antipsychotics like haldol, mellaril, etc) or monitoring for metabolic side effects w/ atypical antipsychotics (i.e. zyprexa, risperdal, seroquel, etc).
Depression, bipolar are a little more complicated, but pharmacists are still quite effective in streamlining medications and increasing response rates. Geropsych is always an option as well as the needs of the elderly typically outweigh the # of available clinicians for any disease state.
Back to some of the caveats...the VA, dept of mental health, and academia/academic medical center are fairly limited job markets unless you are able to move around to find that ideal job. Job openings in the VA just vary from yr to yr and from one VA to the next. Pay will also vary w/i the vary when compared to private sector. Pay could be comparable or much less than private sector (i.e. 10-15k less/yr)
Dept of Mental Health typically pay at least 10-15k less than the avg pharmacist in private sector, but benefits are pretty good.
VA is great w/ scope of practice/prescribing privileges and large psych population, but depending on what VA you are in pay may be variable, retention is high so turnover is low given benefits so new jobs opening up are minimal.
Academia is more of the same. Great gig if you can get it.
Psych populations in the avg hospital typically aren't big enough to justify 1 clinical pharmacist so you either have to be willing to staff w/ clinical duties or complement you psych knowledge w/ something else (i.e. geriatrics or internal medicine). The latter may be the most advantageous as you can establish a setting in a unique population as most in psych pharmacists are in the other 3 settings so you can really "work" the practice site and the local schools of pharmacy will love you for it in addition you can show pharm students and residents and application of psych pharmacy in other medical disciplines outside of psych (i.e. psychosomatics). This route you have a fair amount of flexibility as every hospital could always use another pharamcist to cover internal medicine and most hospitals also have ~20bed psych unit w/ no previously clinical pharmacy services to psych. I hope this answers your questions, but I'd really check out
www.cpnp.org for more info. Residency programs should be listed in the website or in one of the recent newsletters.
