Supporting the future pharmacy workforce will require greater efforts to recruit students to the profession, prepare them for licensure examinations, and integrate new technologies into their curriculums, according to a recent gathering of more than 150 pharmacy school deans and health-system pharmacy leaders.
Their annual meeting, held at the 2024 Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition in New Orleans, was an opportunity to encourage harmonization and collaboration between health systems and academia. “Bringing academic leaders together with practice leaders in health-system pharmacy is a unique value ASHP provides to promote the profession of pharmacy,” ASHP President Leigh Briscoe-Dwyer said. “No one in this room can be successful without the others.”
Participants assembled in small groups for facilitated discussions around three societal and healthcare trends affecting pharmacy practice and education: workforce pipeline and recruitment, experiential education and post-graduate success, and healthcare technology and data analytics.
Workforce Pipeline and Recruitment
In the first portion of the meeting, attendees reflected on how schools and colleges of pharmacy (SCOP) and health systems can support each other in recruiting students into PharmD programs and pharmacy graduates into residencies and jobs.
The conversation focused mainly on deepening the public’s understanding of health-system pharmacy. Attendees were excited about the potential for ASHP’s We’re Your Pharmacist public awareness campaign to elevate the profession and showcase the vital roles of pharmacists through storytelling. “We don’t do a good job of touting ourselves, patting ourselves on the back, and letting everybody know who we are,” said one attendee. “That’s why we have to share our stories.”
The groups also agreed that SCOP must reach students earlier in their academic journeys before their interests in math and science take them in other career directions. Parents and guardians should not be overlooked as an essential stakeholder audience. Suggested avenues to reach middle and high school students included after-school enrichment, career days and job fairs, field trips, and summer camps.
Experiential Education and Post-Graduate Success
Next, SCOP and health-system leaders were asked to share how they define and measure post-graduate success, from pharmacy curricula and experiential education placements to national and state examination results and hiring outcomes.
The North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination (NAPLEX) was a hot topic — not only are first-time pass rates declining nationwide, but fewer pharmacy graduates are choosing to take the test if their jobs do not require licensure. Participants thought the field should do more to encourage students to take the NAPLEX so they remain competitive in the job market long term. They also recommended that SCOP fine-tune their coursework according to students’ performance on NAPLEX content, which emphasizes pharmacy basics and board certification exams.
The discussion surfaced several ideas to set SCOP and pharmacy students up for NAPLEX success, including moving toward national standardized student evaluations and providing incentives for students who opt to share their NAPLEX scores and test feedback with their SCOP.
Healthcare Technology and Data Analytics
In the last segment of the meeting, pharmacy leaders explored the evolving role of digital health and technology, which hold significant implications for students, faculty, and practitioners alike.
While the group was generally excited about the potential role of tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) in experiential education and ethical patient care, academic leaders expressed concern that the emphasis on digital health, technology, and informatics is burdening their already-full curriculum. For this reason, they recommended integrating healthcare technology knowledge and skills into what students are already learning.
Meanwhile, health-system pharmacy leaders welcomed two-way learning between preceptors and students, who tend to be early adopters of digital health and AI tools. The groups agreed AI’s most appropriate use in pharmacy practice is streamlining repetitive operations and analytics tasks, such as taking notes and synthesizing large amounts of information, not clinical decision-making.
The discussion emphasized ethical use, critical thinking, and validation whenever AI is involved. Visit the ASHP Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence Resource Center for more information on this topic.
ASHP will next convene SCOP deans and health-system pharmacy leaders in a virtual meeting planned for spring 2025. “We want to hear about what your pressing issues are, what your needs are, and what ASHP can do to partner with you,” said ASHP CEO Paul W. Abramowitz.
View the executive summary of the meeting on ASHP’s website.
