Pharmaceutical work is highly regulated. It's not just what a pharmacist gives patients—it's how they communicate, how they work, even how they wash their hands. It's helpful for aspiring pharmacists to understand the regulatory environment they're walking into.
In this article, we take a look at the shifting pharmaceutical landscape and how it is influenced by FDA approvals and other public health priorities.
Education and Credentialing Requirements
It's a long road towards becoming a pharmacist. In the United States, you will need a Doctor of Pharmacy, also called a PharmD. Before you can begin this program, you will typically need to have completed an undergraduate degree with at least two years of study in biology, chemistry, or other scientific fields.
But wait—there's more. You'll also need to pass a standardized test called the PCAT (Pharmacy College Admissions Test). This is similar to the LSATs, the NCLEX, or the MCAT (the test doctors have to take before getting into medical school). Though some schools have phased out their standardized test component, it remains a fairly prominent benchmark that you should expect to come across.
Even after you've completed all of these educational requirements, you're still not done. Once you graduate, you will not be able to begin working as a licensed pharmacist until you have also completed the NAPLEX (North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination) and the MPJE (Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination).
All of this to say that the regulatory navigation begins long before you ever put on a white lab coat or step foot in a Walgreens. While the scope of compensation and responsibilities is comparable to those of, say, an MSN recipient, the background requirements are arguably considerably more intensive.
Pharmacists' Role in Health Care
Until you've worked as a pharmacist, it's easy to underestimate what a central role you will be playing in someone's health care journey. Obviously, aspiring pharmacists understand the importance of the service they are rendering—they might not fully realize that for many people, a pharmacist is their most consistent and often most impactful contact with the wider health care world.
For example, imagine the case of Mr. Brown, a hypothetical senior citizen living in rural America. Mr. Brown is on a half dozen medications for his heart, cholesterol, blood pressure, and diabetes. He lives 45 minutes away from the nearest hospital but just a few blocks away from his local pharmacy. With the amount of medications he is on, he is in there very regularly and recognized on a first-name basis by most of the staff.
When he has a question about one of his many medications, who do you think it is he asks? Not Dr. So-and-So from two counties away. He talks to his pharmacist.
This is a very common dynamic experienced by millions of people all over the country. Pharmacists answer important questions about side effects, drug interactions, and other important health care considerations that are often overlooked or potentially not even fully understood by medical doctors.
Key Regulations Every Pharmacist Encounters
Health care regulations are constant, no matter what side of the industry you find yourself on. In the context of pharmaceutical work, you'll be interacting a lot with FDA regulations. This will involve careful monitoring of what types of medications you and your pharmacy dispense.
There will also be DEA regulations, creating strict procedures around how controlled substances are handled. This includes not only how they're distributed, but also how they're stored, how they're recorded, how they're inventoried, and so on.
Additionally, there will be state-specific regulations, and this will include everything from how you behave on the job to how you continue your learning and in what capacity you supervise activities within the pharmacy where you work.
Because you're a health care administrator, you're also going to be subject to HIPAA compliance regulations. These are the federal procedures concerning patient privacy and confidentiality.
To make matters even more complicated, you may need to have at least a rudimentary understanding of various insurance regulations, along with Medicare and Medicaid compliance considerations.
Sound complicated? It is, but at the same time, that's what all of the schooling is, at least in part, preparing you for.
Professional Standards
In addition to all of the government regulations, there will also be professional and ethical standards concerning patient safety that you will need to be aware of. These codes of ethics stem from organizations like the American Pharmacists Association, along with other internal regulatory bodies, and in all cases, the idea is to reduce patient risk, maximize privacy, and generally ensure a safe pharmaceutical environment.
It's very easy for a layperson to misunderstand the full scope of a pharmacist's responsibility. After all, aren't they really just handing out bottles of pills? You, of course, understand that there's a great deal more to it than just that.
The regulations that we are describing in this article can be frustrating, stifling, confusing, and overwhelming, but they are ultimately there to create a safer, more robust health care environment.
