High Starting Salaries, Expanded Roles Mean Opportunities for Pharmacists Have Never Been Better

BUFFALO, N.Y. - A nationwide shortage of pharmacists, entry-level salaries as high as $100,000 and the expanded role pharmacists are playing in health-care delivery have boosted interest and prompted expansion in the professional pharmacy program at the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and similar programs nationwide.

This fall, UB's entering class has 115 students studying for their Pharm.D. degree, compared with 91 in 1999, an increase of 26 percent.

The number of applications to the Pharm.D. program at UB is up 15 percent over last year. In addition, the number of UB freshmen who have expressed interest in entering the pharmacy program when they are eligible after their sophomore year has seen an impressive increase -- 58 percent - over last year.

To accommodate the increased demand, the UB departments of Pharmacy Practice and Pharmaceutical Sciences have hired a total of 16 new faculty members over the past four years.

"Opportunities in pharmacy have never been better," says Wayne K. Anderson, Ph.D., dean of the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. "Some entry-level workers are earning salaries as high as $100,000 per year."

A field with that kind of growth gets students' attention, he added, especially in light of the country's struggling economy.

"When the economy is really flying, I think students tend to focus more on chasing their passions," he says, "but in times of economic uncertainty like these, the goal of going to college to develop a career is quite strong."

Driving the need for more pharmacists is the soaring number of prescriptions filled annually in the U.S. -- now around 3 billion. The annual count has doubled in the past decade and will climb higher as baby-boomers age. Also fueling the demand, Anderson notes, is the fact that

many diseases that used to require a hospital stay now can be treated on an outpatient basis with prescription drugs.

At the same time, he adds, the profession is undergoing fundamental changes as pharmacists leave routine dispensing functions to technicians and spend more time in hospitals and in community pharmacies, counseling patients with chronic diseases about their medications and acting as "disease-state managers."

"Students are beginning to discover pharmacy and the greater role it's playing and is going to continue to play in the health-care system," he explains.

Anderson points out that the more direct involvement of pharmacists in expanded patient care decreases health-care costs since by working closely and frequently with patients, pharmacists are able to catch and prevent potentially serious -- and costly -- medication problems.

Recent studies have shown that up to one-third of all stays in long-term and nursing facilities for older patients can be attributed to a preventable medication-related problem, Anderson adds.

As part of the training for their expanded roles on the health-care team, pharmacy students at UB spend 40 weeks in full-time clinical clerkships, helping patients with chronic diseases ranging from diabetes to asthma to HIV to better manage their health and their medications.

In most states, Anderson notes, legislative changes have allowed pharmacists to bring their extensive expertise directly to patients through counseling, administration of immunizations and a broader role in patient management as part of a collaborative health-care team.

New York State is among the minority of states that have not yet passed such legislation, but Anderson notes that bills that make that possible are now pending in both the New York State Senate and the Assembly.