Just a day or so after I published my Blog on
how telepharmacy will cause permanent loss of pharmacist jobs in Michigan, a
friend made me aware of an important blog entitled “A Looming Joblessness
Crisis for New Pharmacy Graduates and the Implications It Holds for the
Academy” published by the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education
(AJPE) and available at medscape.com/viewarticle/811430.
It
is worth reading in its entirety but essentially there was too big of an
expansion of pharmacy colleges and they have created an over-supply of
graduates.
The size of the academy
was relatively stable during the 1980s and 1990s. In 2000, there were 80 colleges and schools
of pharmacy in the United States. Since
then, 48 new programs have been established and 2 schools combined into 1
college, bringing the total to 127 accredited colleges and schools as of fall
2012—a 60% increase from 2000...Since 2001, 31 colleges and schools increased
their number of PharmD graduates by more than 50%.
This happened with law schools and law school
graduates suffered grievously. Another interesting
quote from the Medscape article is the following:
Regardless of the job
market, those new graduates who are “fittest” will be able to find
employment. But the profession of
pharmacy should not fall victim to viewing graduates as commodities who must
fend for themselves in Darwinian fashion.
Some might opine that the profession would benefit from filtering out
its less capable pharmacists, but faculty members and administrators must not
become insensitive to the plight of each graduate amid a backdrop of broader
institutional concerns. (Emphasis added)
There is a cult of people and politicians that are
regressing our country into a kind of dog-eat-dog zeitgeist where a
small number of families profit enormously while the rest of us are getting
closer and closer to an abyss.
It took centuries of struggle for humans to
learn to cooperate sufficiently to trade relatively peacefully and to minimize
the frequency and severities of war.
Humans became more advanced and empathetic and learned that we are
better off when we share resources enough to ensure that everyone has
something.
The rest of us now need to look beyond our
everyday “busy schedules” and become more active in politics and our profession—if
only to survive. Do not sit at home
assuming that the MPA, the Board of Pharmacy or anyone else will save you
without your effort. Right now,
it’s down to you and what you do.
A good start would be stopping
telepharmacy in Michigan. Write letters
to your local newspaper editors, rally your patients and colleagues, bombard
your political representatives and stop letting the greedy take jobs away from us. Remember, mail order pharmacy started
small. Don’t fall for the story
about conveniencing a handful of patients to allow telepharmacy to get a
foothold in Michigan.
