Pharm.D and the Expected Outcomes

Dear Readers..!!! Thanks for visiting my blog...!!!

Many a times when I say Pharm.D, the most common questions people asked me - "Is it Diploma??" What do you guys do in hospital?? Do you only review the case sheets?? What's your future career?? 

Just like me, if you have come across this situation. Don't forget to share this post

Before I answer the lay people let me first address the well educated. So that it can reach everyone with better understanding. Let me concise all these into few:

1. What is Pharm.D??
2. What are the expected outcomes of Pharm.D??

What is Pharm.D??

Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D) is a professional doctoral degree adopted from the West and introduced in India by the Pharmacy council of India and Government of India in 2008 to provide high quality pharmaceutical care that has the patient as its focus and optimal drug therapy and health. To be clear, this clinical course majorly focuses on population based and individual based pharmaceutical care. Pharm.D is a 6 year course (5 years of academics +1 year internship) for those who opts after Intermediate or Higher secondary Grade and it is a 3 year Post-baccalaureate (2 years academics +1 year internship) for those who opt after a graduation in pharmacy (B.Pharm).

What are the expected outcomes of Pharm.D??

Pharmacists are the important health care providers - drug experts; whose primary job is to interact with the health care team, interview and assess patients, make specific therapeutic recommendations, monitor patient response to drug therapy and provide an evidence based drug information for better pharmaceutical care. In Pharm.D program, the pharmacists are expected to gain expertise knowledge on drugs, disease conditions, patient factors, health outcomes and more importantly they are trained to deal with the health sufferings and intervene with Evidence based practice for better patient care. 

All the students who have completed this doctoral course is expected to be an expertise in the following areas to excel in this competitive global world. 

1. Drug factors: Able to apply knowledge of pharmacology and therapeutics to in various disease states for better patient care. Differentiate among the major therapeutic drug classes based on mechanisms of action, clinical use and adverse effects, contraindications, drug interactions, dosage forms, and dosing regimens.
2. Patient factors: Collect, integrate and apply knowledge of a patient’s disease states and develop an individualized patient care plan to improve therapeutic outcomes, minimize drug reactions, reduce adverse events, and increase adherence.
3. Information processing: Retrieve, analyze, and interpret the scientific literatures and provide drug and health information (evidence-based information) to healthcare professionals and the public.
4. Drug kinetics: Design best dosage regimens using patient-specific or population pharmacokinetic data, plasma concentration-time profile of drugs, and factors that alter them.
5. Public Health: Identify and address public health problems and promote health. Design individual and population-specific, evidence-based disease prevention and disease management programs (such as medication therapy management) and protocols based on epidemiologic and pharmacoeconomic data, medication use criteria, medication use review, and risk reduction strategies. 
6. Professional awareness: Identify emerging health-related issues, and analyze their implications for disease prevention and/or treatment services, management of medical information, involved in providing patient care; and patient-specific and population-based therapeutic outcomes.
7. Communication: Communicate effectively with patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and others. Demonstrate empathy, listening skills, and altruism in interactions
8. Management principles: Use management principles to analyze and evaluate and optimize physical and technological resources, to assure safe, efficient and effective management of medication distribution, control, and use systems.
9. Practice evaluation: Apply patient and population-specific data, quality assurance strategies, and evaluation to develop and implement practice-based drug use strategies and public health policies to assure that medication use systems minimize drug misadventuring, optimize patient outcomes, and address public health problems.
10. Professional standards: Apply relevant legal, ethical, social, historical, economical, and professional principles to perform all professional activities.

For more Updates, follow us on Facebook. 

Happy Blogging...!!!

Regards,

Deepak Kumar Bandari,

Pharm.D Intern,

Vaagdevi College of Pharmacy - India

Elsevier Student Ambassador - South Asia