Study: Pharmacist demand reflects aging population

America’s burgeoning elderly population, which is using sophisticated drug therapies in record quantities, has helped make highly educated pharmacists one of the hottest commodities in health care, researchers at the UW School of Pharmacy say.

There is a concern that there are not enough pharmacists to fill traditional roles such as staffing pharmacies and dispensing patient prescriptions. David Mott Asst. Professor of Pharmacy

Pharmacy schools are responding by re-engineering themselves and their graduates, but demand is outpacing supply and there’s no quick cure in sight, according to David Mott, an assistant professor of pharmacy studying workforce and policy issues.

“There is a concern that there are not enough pharmacists to fill traditional roles such as staffing pharmacies and dispensing patient prescriptions,” he says.

The rising demand may, however, be just the right medicine for people preparing to launch or change careers, Mott says. Pharmacy students are spending longer than ever — at least six years — in school, but upon graduation they are finding a healthy job outlook, above-average salaries and a larger role in drug therapy decision-making and patient counseling, he says.

Several concurrent developments have boosted the demand for pharmacists:

• A growing population of older Americans who require more drug therapy.
• A sharp rise in the number and complexity of therapeutic drugs.
• Expansion of services requiring pharmacists’ knowledge and skills.
• More health professionals approved to prescribe drugs including some advanced practice nurses, physician’s assistants and optometrists.

These changes have produced mobility among the nation’s nearly 200,000 registered pharmacists, Mott says. Pharmacists are being recruited to growth areas: drug research and development, home-based health care, managed care administration and retail management.

Advances in drug therapy have allowed some conditions, such as ulcers and certain cardiovascular problems, to be treated without surgery and with minimal hospitalization, Mott said. The increased use of these complex therapies means pharmacists must assume more responsibility for patients’ safe and effective drug use.

“With the complexity of the new agents – the biotech drugs – and the number of drugs people are taking, there needs to be a professional whose sole focus is improving the selection and coordination of therapies,” Mott said.

To prepare pharmacists for expanded roles as “drug therapy managers,” most of the nation’s 79 pharmacy schools – including Wisconsin — now offer an advanced degree or “PharmD” degree requiring one or two additional years of education, Mott said. The extra training better prepares graduates for direct patient contact, consultation with other health care providers, and work within the managed care setting. But it also aggravates the workforce shortage, he said.

Mott is studying the pharmacist shortage to clarify patterns and identify contributing factors. His preliminary findings suggest that rapid job turnover may contribute to the labor shortage by creating a mobile labor pool. In a study of more than 500 pharmacists, Mott found that job turnover among pharmacists was nearly twice the average for all sectors of the national economy from 1990-94.

Job turnover was particularly high among women pharmacists, who currently represent about 46 percent of registered pharmacists and two-thirds of new graduates. By comparison, just one in four physicians or dentists is female, while more than 86 percent of nurses and other direct caregivers are women. Since women are a strong and growing segment of the pharmacy work force, their work patterns have a significant impact on workforce trends, Mott said.

“The labor market in pharmacy is fascinating because there is a relatively stable supply – a limited number of schools with fixed enrollments – and a demand that’s rising rapidly in response to the aging of the population,” Mott said.

“We want to assess not only demand-related issues such as job vacancies, but other issues such as turnover rates, job satisfaction and preparedness of emerging graduates,” Mott said. “We’re just starting to ask employers the right questions.”