A Pharmacist’s Degree

Something that has always bothered me a little bit about pharmacy is the fact that no one cares where you get your degree from. While partly because of the shortage of pharmacists, we cannot deny that the public must claim ignorance about the quality of pharmacists produced at the accredited schools of pharmacy. We care that the best lawyers come from top-ranked law schools like Yale and Harvard, and MBAs from Wharton are just as highly prized. There isn’t an undergraduate student or their parents who doesn’t recognize the quality behind an Ivy League education. Why is it, when it comes to healthcare, the one thing that directly influences your very health, do we not care about quality?

This is not to say that the school is a sign of one’s intelligence. There are many reasons why people may choose one school over another. However, when I meet a fourth-year, nearly graduating student from another pharmacy school who does not know that atenolol is used to treat hypertension, that presents a serious problem for consumers. Forget talking about the actual mechanism of the drug. Would you trust someone who doesn’t know one of the top 50 drugs and claims he is a medication expert? As with all healthcare professions, licensing is done through a written examination. With enough preparation, even a pharmacist who knows nothing coming out of school can study hard and cram information to pass the exam.

The excellence of a school, however, can not, and should not, be governed by the U.S. News and World Report rankings. My personal opinion is that people take too much stock in these rankings, and they ignore quality educations that are offered by smaller institutions. Instead, prospective pharmacists and consumers should be asking their pharmacists where they receive their education, and making appropriate decisions to find the best pharmacist to suit their needs. In a free market such as ours, if we keep asking about the quality of our pharmacists, we will inherently improve the quality and value of a pharmacy that hires the best pharmacists.