Narrator - Dr. Abel 00:00 Welcome to HelixTalk, an educational podcast for healthcare students and providers, covering real life clinical pearls, professional pharmacy topics and drug therapy discussions. This podcast Narrator - ? 00:11 is provided by pharmacists and faculty members at Rosalind Franklin University, College of Pharmacy. Narrator - Dr. Abel 00:17 This podcast contains general information for educational purposes only. This is not professional advice and should not be used in lieu of obtaining advice from a qualified health care provider. Narrator - ? 00:27 And now on to the show. Dr. Sean Kane 00:32 Welcome to HelixTalk episode 100 I'm your co host, Dr. Kane, I'm Dr. Khyati Patel 00:35 Dr. Patel. And with us today, we have a very special guest, Dean Marc Abel, Dean of College of Pharmacy at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. Thank you for joining us. Dr. Abel, thank Unknown Speaker 00:46 you for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you so. Dr. Sean Kane 00:49 Dr. Abel, we asked you to come on to the episode because today's episode is a very special episode for us. It's episode 100 of HelixTalk, and we wanted to kick off the episode by first thanking the audience. We've received lots of emails, iTunes reviews, comments, things like that that have really motivated us to continue this podcast through 100 episodes and more. So we really appreciate the audience support, and we thought that it would only be fitting to have the dean of our college come for the 100th episode to really talk about the profession of pharmacy and pharmacy education. So the title of today's episode, Episode 100 is evolution or revolution, the future of pharmacy and pharmacy education. Speaker 1 01:29 May I just add that I'm very proud of Dr. Kane, Dr. Patel, and also Dr. Schuman, who has been a part of this podcast for a long time, and I'm pleased that we're able to produce this Dr. Sean Kane 01:39 absolutely well, let's kick it off by talking about some numbers in terms of pharmacy education, if you look over the past five years, so we're looking at 2013 versus 2018 the most recent data. What does it look like in terms of the applicant pool the pharmacy schools? In that time period, we've gone from 124 pharmacy schools all the way up to 142 pharmacy schools. There's 18 new ones. We've had an 11% increase in the number of graduates, and yet we've had a 32% decline in the number of applicants to pharmacy schools. So basically, we have more pharmacy schools, a slight increase in the number of graduates and a pretty big decrease in the applicant pool of people who are applying to pharmacy schools. So in terms of that context, you know, what are some of the drivers to that, and how does that impact how pharmacy schools are approaching pharmacy education? Speaker 1 02:28 I think students and individuals considering a career in healthcare have lots of options now. Is part of the issue. They're looking at other healthcare professions, and I think that perhaps they don't know enough about what pharmacy really can provide. Pharmacy is a fantastic career with lots of options and lots of career opportunities, but I'm not sure that that message is really getting through to high school students and even younger students, let alone undergraduates who are considering healthcare professions. Dr. Khyati Patel 02:58 So if we look at the data that you provided, Dr. Kane, are we then looking at some long term or short term pharmacy shortage in the future? Since we don't have that many applicants applying to new pharmacy schools, that's Dr. Sean Kane 03:11 a great question, and probably a question that no one really, truly knows the answer to, as the health care system may be evolving at some point in the future. You know, when I was applying to pharmacy school, there was a huge shortage of pharmacists, where many pharmacies were offering very large sign on bonuses just to sign on for a couple years at a given pharmacy. And that has basically gone away at this point where we don't have a pharmacist shortage anymore. So the climate has changed. People are less interested in applying to pharmacy school, which means that as we have fewer graduates, maybe we'll have this pendulum effect where we go back to a shortage at some point in the future, just because of the applicant pool and the number of graduates that we're having right now, it's really hard to say Speaker 1 03:55 historically, we've seen that sort of cyclical Nature for healthcare professions in general, at various times, PT, medicine, others have have had a large number of applicants, and then, in response to that, there aren't enough jobs, and so there's a shortage of applicants. And so I think that's maybe what's happening in pharmacy. That may be one of the drivers for this man. Dr. Khyati Patel 04:18 It seems like it's like the law of economy, right? You have that supply and demand, you have that surge and decline. And so perhaps this is what we are seeing in pharmacy as well. Speaker 1 04:27 In addition, I think the reason that so many schools have opened is in response to the shortage that you were talking about a moment ago, Dr. Kane, and now we're seeing the other side of the pendulum as it swings. And I would Dr. Sean Kane 04:39 also add to this, and we've spoken with Dean winnicie about this in terms of job satisfaction and careers after graduation and things like that. You know, there are a lot of community pharmacists who are less happy than they thought they would be in their jobs. And part of that deals with the nature of the work, lack of breaks, being on their feet a lot not. Doing what they thought that they would be doing when they're in school, things like that. So I think that the messaging from those, potentially a minority but outspoken pharmacists, may be also hindering the profession, and saying, I'm not happy with my job, and that is also getting out as well. Speaker 1 05:15 I think that's a very good point. And to that point, those same pharmacists came into the profession typically when things were different, and now that the job requirements are changing and the regulations are changing and the overall satisfaction is changing, of patients, even those pharmacists are feeling that they're not as happy and secure in their positions. Dr. Khyati Patel 05:36 And we can ponder here and just talk about what's affecting But lately, if you think about the research that's out about the pharmacist image in social media, or like how it's portrayed in movie industry or on television, and it's sort of negative imaging, if you think about it. So when the message goes out to future pool of applicants that, oh, this is what pharmacists do, it's not quite appealing. So that's hurting us as well. Speaker 1 06:02 That's right, and the AACP has been addressing that with two elements in the strategic plan. Actually, the first is to increase the number of applicants, and the second is to increase the positive image of pharmacists by the general community. And to the second point, a large number of dollars have gone toward a media campaign called pharmacists for healthier lives, which you might want to look into. There are a lot of resources there, there are ads, there are social media efforts. And I think that this situation that Dr. Patel just described isn't going unrecognized, and steps are being taken to to try to rectify the situation, and we'll see how that goes. Dr. Khyati Patel 06:42 And pharmacy education just doesn't stop there. It then grows to acquiring postgraduate training such as PGY one, PGY two fellowship. So what have the trends been in the last five years when it comes to advanced training like these? Dr. Sean Kane 06:56 Yeah, so if you look at the numbers in terms of PGY one and PGY two for PGY ones, we've seen a 34% increase in the number of positions that are available. We've seen a 41% increase in the number of applicants applying to the match process, and roughly the match rate has been the same. So typically, about two thirds of applicants will match to a PGY one program, and that's been fairly consistent over the past five years terms of PGY two, we've seen a huge increase in PGY twos, a 71% increase, and we've also seen a comparable 78% increase in the number of applicants applying to a PGY two program. So to summarize, we have had a very large growth in PGY one and PGY two, both programs positions and applicants and more graduates are actually pursuing these efforts. If you look at the percent of graduates over the last five years that applied to a PGY one as an example, it was about 30% now it's 37% and a similar increase of about 4% of PharmD graduates five years ago pursued PGY two. Now it's about 6% of PharmD graduates have pursued a PGY two. So these are growing fields, not narrowing fields. Many graduates are pursuing this as a career opportunity after graduation. Dr. Khyati Patel 08:11 And if you can think about some of the reasons why we have seen such an influx in applications and interest in pursuing residencies, some of them could be that we talked about earlier, the job satisfaction if you enter in an entry level position, it's not as great, as opposed to if you were to receive some advanced training and then enter into those clinical positions thereafter. Dr. Sean Kane 08:32 I think part of this too is mentorship. So many of the faculty who students are exposed to are residency trained faculty, often who have clinical positions, especially later on in the curriculum. And if you're a student and you have a role model faculty member, you're probably going to pursue a similar career path to what your role model or mentor has done. So I think it's reasonable that that is also something that is a driving force here. Speaker 1 08:56 Another factor in this, I think, is the relationship between the students and the community pharmacies, where, as you pointed out a few minutes ago, the satisfaction isn't great. I'm not sure that that's so true in the hospital systems. And so our students are being trained in clinical pharmacy. They're not just being trained to deliver prescriptions, and I think the opportunity for that clinical interaction with patients is much greater in a hospital system. And so I think students are seeing that opportunity, and they're being trained for it, so they're going to look for opportunities to have a position that allows them to do those things that they're trained for. Dr. Khyati Patel 09:35 And on the flip side, thinking about more residency spots, I believe the institutions are realizing the worth of having clinical pharmacists on board, having the resident trainees on board, and how much they can contribute towards the improvement of patient outcomes and the services they provide in the institution itself. So I think we're seeing increased spots for residencies because of these factor Speaker 1 09:56 two, absolutely, there is a wealth of data now. Showing that when a pharmacist is involved in patient care in the hospital, the outcomes are much better, the return rate to hospitals is much lower, and therefore the hospitals are happier because they're doing their job better, and their reimbursements are better. Dr. Sean Kane 10:14 And let's not forget as well, that on the student side, if a student is interested in clinical or hospital pharmacy, it does depend on geography a bit, but for the most part, especially in a more urban area, you have to have a residency in order to be competitive in the market to get a job at a hospital, for example. Speaker 1 10:32 At the same time, there's an increasing number of community residencies, so some pharmacies are starting to recognize the value of that additional training in the community as well. Dr. Khyati Patel 10:42 I mean, going back, what, seven years now, if I think about why I went and did the residency to be competitive, you know, in the market, for sure, for the job, but also for the fact that as a fourth year student, I just didn't feel like I was ready to practice and have that, you know, decision making and burn it on my license. And I thought that I needed that additional year of training to gain that additional experience, the confidence in making those clinical those more sort of gray decisions that you know nowadays all clinical pharmacists are faced with. Dr. Sean Kane 11:12 So Dr. Patel, I truly view that as the niche role of the pharmacist in any healthcare setting. Is this is really complicated stuff that we do, right? So it's not as simple as you look up a dose, and that's the dose, you know, we're trained on pharmacokinetics, we're trained on genomics, we're trained on disease states and interactions with different drugs and those disease states and things like that. If this was simple, we wouldn't have a job, right? So we have a job because this is a complex arena, and we are the medication experts in that arena of this interprofessional team, right? So in order to be the best person on that team, oftentimes you do need more than what a PharmD can provide in order to practice at the level that you need to practice at for some of these jobs. Dr. Khyati Patel 11:55 And we are thankful for certain organization taking the leadership in crediting these residency programs, establishing the standards. So even the graduates of these advanced programs come up with the caliber, where they can serve the patients at the standard that we are hoping that they serve. Dr. Sean Kane 12:13 So switching gears a little bit, we can look at training. We can look at the applicant pool. What about jobs everyone's concerned about? Do we have too many pharmacy schools? Do we have too many pharmacists? Are they? They're just not going to be a job for these graduates in the future. And the best place to look for statistics about that is the National Bureau of Labor and Statistics. This is a really cool website where for any profession, it will tell you how many workers are in that profession, whether they expect it to be expanding or contracting. You can go all the way down to geography and look at specific markets to see what that labor market looks like for given profession. So if we look at that, the National Bureau of Labor and Statistics, and I quote said, employment of pharmacists, is projected to grow 6% from 2016 to 2026 so a 10 year period, and that's roughly about as fast as average for all occupations. So pharmacy is not contracting at all. It's growing at the rate of other jobs nationally. So there's nothing special about it, but it's also not a contracting field either. Dr. Khyati Patel 13:12 That's great to know. And if you look at some of the past performance, so like going back from 2012 to 2016 we have looked at 9% increase in pharmacists in the workforce. So that says that this is a growing trend. Dr. Sean Kane 13:24 In addition to that, they also provide geographic based numbers to give you a sense of you know, is the job market in Illinois or Wisconsin different than national trends, and if you look at Illinois and Wisconsin, they have a location quotient less than one, basically meaning that the density of pharmacists to the population in that state is less than the national average. In Illinois, it's point nine, six, so we're roughly about national average. And in Wisconsin, it's point eight, eight, meaning that it's 12% lower than the national average in terms of the number of pharmacists per capita, if you will, in that state, indicating that we are not a saturated market in these two states compared to the national average pharmacist per person in that state. I think it's Speaker 1 14:07 important to point out too that there's a an intra state element to this as well, so that the areas of denser population, particularly in those states that have a large number of pharmacy schools in the urban settings, the competition for those jobs is much greater, but the jobs are available in the rural areas, suburban areas and others, absolutely. Dr. Khyati Patel 14:27 Yeah, and the quotient like this that you mentioned, Dr. Kane and Dr. Abel is it's probably the deciding factor on varying salaries that the institutions offer, depending on the geographic location as well as the demand for these positions. I just Dr. Sean Kane 14:43 want to go back when I was a p1 student working in a retail environment as an intern, the market was completely different than it is now, and I think for people roughly my age that maybe are dissatisfied with the job market. We were used to sign on bonuses, multi. Multiple job offers before you even graduate, and at this point, it's gone back to normal. This is a normal job market. This is not a hot job market anymore. And to have what we used to have as perspective, I think, makes it harder to appreciate where we're at now. Speaker 1 15:14 As I said before, this is a cyclical issue, in my opinion, and it's been shown historically to be cyclical. And I think there are factors that are coming into play that will move the pendulum to the other side, and the job market will get better. One of those is that older pharmacists will be retiring in larger numbers coming up in the near future. Secondly, provider status will hopefully allow the retailers to get reimbursed for the efforts of the pharmacist, and therefore they will want to have more pharmacists on staff, and allow the pharmacist to do more of the things that they're trained to do, which relates to my earlier point, that that would increase job satisfaction, and therefore there would be more of an attraction by incoming pharmacists who want to get into the field. So I think that there's, there's a number of things that can come together that will will move the job market in a positive way. Dr. Khyati Patel 16:07 Yeah, and as we look at even the trends in job market are changing. They even the community pharmacies are now requiring that pharmacists spend more face to face time with patients doing clinical activities, and we talked about how there is more community residency programs developed as a result of that too. So talking about and focusing on clinical practice of pharmacy, how is that changing? Let's, let's take a look at that a Dr. Sean Kane 16:33 little bit too. And I really view this as one of the most important talking points of what is the value of a pharmacist, especially in my neck of the woods, in the inpatient hospital arena, just because that's the area that I touch the most, I view that inpatient hospital pharmacist as someone who can save the hospital money, improve efficacy, where our drugs work better and improve safety, where we have fewer medication errors and fewer adverse effects of our medications, as a direct result of the pharmacist being involved in that setting. Dr. Khyati Patel 17:03 Yeah, and if you kind of translate that on the outpatient arena or ambulatory care are now where I work, I think the value of pharmacists is proving just what you just described Dr. Kane. But in addition, provide patient education, provide services such as transitions of care, as Dr. Abel mentioned, with these services, patients will be less apt to returning to the hospital, would save hospitals some money on the reimbursement for readmissions as well. In addition to that, pharmacists provide education to providers to improve Safe Medication prescribing, such as outpatient antimicrobial stewardship, to curb the resistant problem that we're seeing with antibiotics in community recently too. That's one example, I'd say. Speaker 1 17:46 And to that point, in terms of interprofessional education, the other healthcare providers are starting to realize the value of the pharmacists, and it begins with interprofessional education. And we can talk about that in a minute as well. But even in the current situation, I'm hearing a number of reports from pharmacists that they've been called in to consult with physicians and sort of offer the the expertise that Dr. Kane mentioned earlier, that the physicians are starting to realize that the pharmacist is the medication expert. I'm fond of saying that that the other healthcare professions either prescribe medication or administer medication or monitor medication, but they don't really have the training in medication, and so the pharmacist is the expert. The pharmacist is the person who can bring all that together for them and give them that that sense of security with regard to medication. Dr. Khyati Patel 18:38 And if I may indulge our audience with one, recent example that occurred, we got a patient to monitor for anticoagulation at our clinic. Patient's been on warfarin, in and out of warfarin therapy. We do the first visit consult with the patient, and the patient at the end of the visit tells me that she's been on warfarin. She's been monitored by multiple different provider. This is the first time somebody has gone in depth and asked so many questions, retrieved so much information and provided education that knowing Warfarin and being on Warfarin for so long that some of the things that she didn't know that she should have known until now. So that's a testimonial as to how pharmacists are the medication expert and can provide these services at much more granular and detailed level that can improve patient outcomes. Dr. Sean Kane 19:25 And if you just put yourself in the shoes of these other healthcare providers for a second, think about their perspective in terms of, let's say they graduated 10 years ago. How many new medications are on the market? It's hard for me, as a drug expert pharmacist, to keep up with even non oncology based drugs that are new. And in the oncology realm, there, it's an explosion of new drugs and new therapies and things to know about them, just keeping up on that the high drug costs, so appreciating not just efficacy and safety, but cost insurance coverage, things like that. That's a huge deal for patients and for. The entire insurance realm, in terms of having money to afford our healthcare. On top of that, identifying what is the most effective therapy, what is the most effective way to do something that's a whole different tier, as opposed to just these are drugs for hypertension. But what is the best one? What is the best way to monitor it? What's the best one for that particular patient? I really view this as kind of an iceberg phenomenon, where you graduate, you kind of see the tip of the iceberg, and then as you go into practice, you kind of see how deep it goes. And that depth is really where pharmacists shine, in terms of not just knowing the surface level, but everything underneath. And that's a huge area that I think pharmacists play a role in, Speaker 1 20:36 and the impact on patient care is huge. And that's the message that we need to get out, I believe, to those people that are thinking about a career in healthcare who want to help people, we hear that so often. The typical thing is they think about a physician or a nurse or a PA. But if we can get the message out that pharmacists really help people greatly, then we may have changed the perception a little bit. And so I think that's a message that we need to pursue. Dr. Khyati Patel 21:02 Yeah, and then talking about working interprofessionally, collaborating with the physicians to improve medication or therapy related outcomes. Nowadays, we have those facilitation whether they come in form of collaborative practice agreement. That's where I practice in Wisconsin follows, or certain other states follow something called standing orders, and these agreements and orders per se, are helpful in both ambulatory care, clinic based practice as well as community practice, where pharmacists have the opportunity to collaborate. They have the opportunity to talk to the patient face to face to improve and monitor their clinical outcomes and work together to make a difference when it comes to medication therapy. Speaker 1 21:45 I explored that a little bit before we got together to talk today, and I found out that there are 109 provider status bills currently in 34 states in the 2019 season. So this is a burgeoning effort. I believe it's going to come on strong, and ultimately will will do very well for the profession. In addition H.R. 592 had 296 co‑sponsors in the House of Representatives, it hasn't been brought forward, but once that bill is brought forward, the provider status may take hold nationally. In addition to the state efforts, Dr. Khyati Patel 22:19 which is really good news for pharmacists and the opportunities that we are seeking, and when it comes to reimbursement for the services that we are providing, having this provider status is very vital. Speaker 1 22:30 Exactly it means, if you're a provider, it means that the pharmacist can be can participate in part B of Medicare and be reimbursed. Dr. Sean Kane 22:37 And I think that's so important, if you think about it, because right now, the way that a hospital views the transaction of having a pharmacist is they pay a salary, and really the monetary benefit comes down the road, right? It isn't an immediate billable thing. It's a the pharmacist is a formulary enforcer to make sure that we're using medications appropriately and from a cost effective standpoint or preventing litigation. So medication errors causing multi million dollar lawsuits, you don't have to have that many multi million dollar lawsuits prevented before you've really paid for that pharmacist salary in full. But again, the problem here is that this is a long play, and an administrator has to appreciate that long play, as opposed to being able to bill that day for the service that you provided that day. I think that that is a game changer. Dr. Khyati Patel 23:24 Yeah, and I think I believe, Dr. Kane, you're alluding to the cost saving model that a lot of the institutions are looking at when it comes to justifying a pharmacist salary. But we're hoping that with the provider status, there will be some direct billing involved that would result into direct monetary benefit. Speaker 1 23:41 Ultimately, I think if that comes to pass, and the system changes in the ways that we're describing here, the perception of pharmacists will also change, because they'll be more out front. They'll be able to do the things that they're trained to do, and they'll be recognized for those efforts, and because it's a value to the employers in general, they're going to want to expand the pharmacist presence in their patient care efforts. Dr. Sean Kane 24:07 Dr. Abel, one of the reasons that we wanted you to come here was to actually talk about the pharmacy school aspect, not just kind of where the profession is going, but how we're preparing future students to become graduates and then be engaged in whatever pharmacy holds in the future. So how are pharmacy schools evolving nationally to respond to how the practice model is changing? Well, there Speaker 1 24:30 are a number of things in play. The first thing to look at is the standards that the ACPE puts in place for colleges and schools of pharmacy. The Accreditation Council for pharmacy education puts out standards that all schools must abide by. New Schools need to work toward those standards in a sequential way over over a period of years, and those standards have changed. The most recent set of standards was put in place in 2016 and in those standards we talk about practice. Practice ready and team ready graduates. And so the idea there is that our students need to be ready to practice, even though it's just the tip of the iceberg in some cases, and they need to be team ready. So the inter professional element of the education is something that's really coming on strong. And there's a lot of discussion amongst Deans with the ACP and AACP as well, about how to do that in the best possible way, what the requirement is and and how to meet that requirement. And so in many schools, it's it's relatively easy, because the schools have other health care training programs, either in their own institution or nearby, and they're able to interact with those educators and the students from the other programs. For some schools, it's a lot more difficult because, let's say they're they're isolated. It's a pharmacy school, maybe there's another school, maybe nursing with them, but there's no medical school or PA or PT or some of the other professions, and so it's harder for them to meet the standard. But technology is coming into play, and those schools are finding ways to do that. But back to your point about the education, the clinical education is becoming more and more important, and the earlier that schools can provide some clinical exposure, the better for the training of the students, and many schools are beginning to to move the clinical experiential component earlier in the program. So ultimately, what we want to do is is have a student graduate with basis of knowledge and a wealth of experience, so that they can move into any arena within pharmacy that they're interested in pursuing, Dr. Sean Kane 26:42 and I will say, you know, part of that direct patient care, when I was a student, our IPPE hours, or Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience hours were completely different than what it is. Now, there's no way that as a p1 or p2 student, I would have ever been able to step foot in an intensive care unit be able to see what Critical Care pharmacists look like. My IPPE hours were done at a retail pharmacy, all of them, and a year or two after I had done my IPPE hours, the model changed, and I love it now, because it gives these students an opportunity to see what it's like to be in these other roles, direct patient care roles, working on that interprofessional team. And I really think that those two things have really driven how pharmacy education has evolved over time. Speaker 1 27:23 And you know, earlier we were talking about the different types of positions that pharmacists can can apply to and and obtain. I think the experiential component of the education speaks to that as well, because there are opportunities now for students, in addition to doing the clinical and the community type of experiences. Can also do an academic rotation, so they might see what the academic life is like, and they may want to pursue that they can have an experience in industry, and so they can see what industry is like on the inside. And so there are other opportunities for awareness about job opportunities, as well as just clinical training, Dr. Khyati Patel 28:00 yeah, and I think marrying both the didactic component and the experiential component and producing these optimally trained pharmacies student is the key to enhance healthcare in future. Dr. Sean Kane 28:12 And I will say, you know, it's great that we can look at where pharmacy education is right now in terms of where the standards are driving us to go, of course, as we have a new p1 student, we have to not just think about, what are we doing now, but where do we need to be when they graduate and four years after they graduate? How do we give them the toolkit to be successful in whatever the healthcare arena looks like in 510, 1520, plus years? That's a really difficult task to have. So what are some areas that you guys think are growth opportunities for pharmacy students that hopefully pharmacy schools are starting to embrace and at least integrate into curricula and experiences so that students can be successful down the road? Speaker 1 28:55 Well, first of all, can I just comment on what you just said about how pharmacy and the profession, the healthcare system and the world will be different when a student graduates as compared to when they first come in, as well as 510, 1520, years down the road. You know, we really can't predict what it will look like at that time, so I think what we have to do fundamentally is give students the tools to appreciate that things will change, and give them the tools to learn how to adapt to change, so that they recognize that they are going to have to change and that things will will be different down the road for them as they as they move through their career. And so some schools, including ours, have a course in lifelong learning, where we ask students from the very beginning to attend lectures and to think about additional things beyond the didactic curriculum as a way to expose them to staying current and staying interested and involved in trends for pharmacy and research and clinical practice as well. So that's one way that we're starting to approach it. Dr. Khyati Patel 29:56 And I think this kind of adds that not a passive learning approach. Much more of an active and independent learning approach that you know, there's a topic of their interest, they can seek that topic out, that can seek that seminar presentation now, and they can attend it, learn about it, write about it, and then perhaps pursue further opportunities in the similar areas. Speaker 1 30:17 One of the things that will definitely change in the future is the onset of more pharmacogenomics, and it's important for our students to understand what that means, how it's used, how to interpret data. And so I'm certain that schools, again, us included, are offering courses and requiring courses in pharmacogenomics, so that students are aware of this burgeoning field, and we'll be able to be involved in it as it grows. Dr. Sean Kane 30:44 And I would add to that, another area that I think is a huge growth opportunity for pharmacy is the integration of information technology, or informatics, with pharmacy, looking at big data, looking at the ability to analyze big data and make it meaningful, where this includes everything from a big database of patient metrics all the way to genomics, where you're using informatics plus genomics to make decisions about a patient care using many, many different data points for that individual patient. So you know, many pharmacy schools are considering certificate programs, even master's programs in genomics or informatics. I think that that is a huge growth opportunity for pharmacy too. Dr. Khyati Patel 31:21 And what you just said, Dr. Kane, kind of marries into something called Population Health, and that's where the running the reports and using the existing data, and then looking at, where are these big holes, where can the pharmacists come in and and fill these holes and improve the patient care? And that's where pharmacists are placed into clinics called population health clinics, and they're targeting specific deficits in healthcare and medication therapy and improving those particular outcomes. Speaker 1 31:50 Dr. Kane, you're correct in that schools are offering those training programs in pharmacogenomics and in big data, the analysis of big data, not all schools have the capability of doing that themselves. Their faculty may not be expert in that, but a number of schools are partnering with local colleges and universities that do have programs in big data analysis, and so they're developing sort of combined programs, which is another good thing. I think, I think it's important for pharmacy students to be to expand into other areas and to interact potentially with faculty and students from other institutions. It broadens their horizons and gives them new perspectives. Another aspect of students training and opportunity is in the area of research, and a number of students want to pursue research in various ways, whether it be bench science or clinical research or population health research, as Dr. Patel mentioned, or even social determinants of health and a number of other things. And so whenever possible, schools are offering students the opportunity to conduct research with faculty within the colleges and sometimes outside of the college, so they can get that experience, and sometimes it takes hold, sometimes it doesn't, but it's a good thing to eliminate opportunities as well, because then you can focus on the things that are more important to you. Dr. Sean Kane 33:11 Yeah, well, to kind of wrap up today, some key points that I got out of what we talked about. Number one is that we, we definitely do have a change in supply and demand. Within pharmacy education, we have more schools, fewer applicants, and a reasonable, steady trend upwards of the number of graduates from pharmacy schools that I think is consistent with the job market and makes sense of where we're at right now. Dr. Khyati Patel 33:35 And if you look at the advanced training programs such as the PGY one and PGY two, the spots for these advanced training programs are also increasing, and the number of graduates applying to these programs are also increasing, Speaker 1 33:48 and schools are beginning to focus more on these emerging fields in pharmacy, such as pharmacogenomics and informatics, it's important to maintain an awareness of those things and those topics are being integrated into the curriculum. They're being offered as dual degrees or certificate programs in some places. And it's, it's what the future holds for pharmacy, I think. Dr. Khyati Patel 34:09 And if you look at that translation on the and the real clinical practice side, we know that the the clinical pharmacist role continues to expand. These pharmacists are part of, you know, interprofessional teams. We're reducing costs, we're improving other drug outcomes, such as making the drug therapy more effective and safe Wonderful. Dr. Sean Kane 34:28 Well, Dr. Abel, I wanted to thank you again for your time. I want to thank the audience for their continued support of the show. And if you want to see show notes from today or any other episode, we're available at HelixTalk.com we're also on Twitter at HelixTalk, and we love the five star reviews that keeps us going. So with that, I'm Dr. Kane, I'm Speaker 1 34:46 Dr. Patel, I'm Dr. Abel. And I'd like to say thanks again for having me in this episode. I appreciate it. And for those who are interested, we've created a video with an original song that talks about how wonderful the profession of pharmacy is. If you'd like to see it. It and share it with us. Everybody you know, you can visit it at the following URL, R, F, U, dot, M, S, slash the hyphen, right hyphen thing, and Dr. Sean Kane 35:12 we'll have a link on our show notes as well for anyone who has trouble getting to it. But the video is amazing, and I definitely encourage everyone to check it out and share it, because I think it's a great representation of the profession of pharmacy. Dr. Khyati Patel 35:24 Thank you, Dr. Abel, for being here and to our listeners as usual, listen hard. Narrator - Dr. Abel 35:30 If you enjoyed the show, please help us climb the iTunes rankings for medical podcasts by giving us a five star review in the iTunes Store. Search for HelixTalk and place your review there Narrator - ? 35:41 to suggest an episode or contact us. We're online at HelixTalk.com thank you for listening to this episode of HelixTalk. This is an educational production copyright Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.