How will pharmacists practice in 2015?

By the year 2015, pharmacists will be the healthcare professionals responsible for providing patient care that ensures optimal medication therapy outcomes, according to the best hunch of the Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners (JCPP).

As the healthcare systems' primary medication therapy managers, pharmacists will communicate and interact with patients, caregivers, other healthcare professionals, and qualified support personnel, according to JCPP's Future Vision of Pharmacy Practice. The consensus statement was developed by JCPP and endorsed by each of its member organizations. JCPP has given a newly formed implementation-planning group the job of figuring out how to take the outline from vision to reality.

In JCPP's view, pharmacists will be responsible for the:

Pharmacists will achieve public recognition as essential healthcare providers ensuring that medication therapy management is readily available to all patients; improving patient outcomes; minimizing the overuse, underuse, and misuse of medications; ensuring that medication-related public health goals are more effectively achieved; and optimizing the cost-effectiveness of medication therapy.

Pharmacy education's role will be to prepare pharmacists to provide patient-centered and population-based care; to manage resources to improve therapeutic outcomes; and to promote health improvement, wellness, and disease prevention.

Pharmacists will develop and maintain a commitment to care for and about patients; an in-depth knowledge of medications and of the biomedical, socio-behavioral, and clinical sciences; and the ability to apply evidence-based therapeutic principles and guidelines, evolving sciences, emerging technologies, and relevant legal, ethical, social, cultural, economic, and professional issues to contemporary pharmacy practice.