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Psychiatric Pharmacy By Anya Hallam For years I struggled with “what to do when I grew up.” I thought I had made my decision when I applied and was accepted to pharmacy school. Little did I know that I would have to go through the whole process again when deciding what field of pharmacy in which I would want to specialize. Luckily, the RAMPS program was created to help with this problem. Through this program, I was paired up with Dr. James Gasper, a psychiatric pharmacist. Psychiatric pharmacy is a field that I am interested in but one that I did not know a lot about. To become a psychiatric pharmacist, Dr. Gasper completed a general pharmacy practice residency, as well as a specialty pharmacy residency in psychiatric pharmacy. The role of a psychiatric pharmacist is two-fold. Dr. Gasper works in a clinic as well as a drug information specialist. In clinic, Dr. Gasper has the opportunity to work directly with patients. He follows up on their appointments with the psychiatrist and helps manage their medications, making changes when necessary. When Dr. Gasper is not in clinic, he works from his office answering questions about the different psychiatric medications and researching new medications on the horizon. Dr. Gasper and I talked about some of the concerns a pharmacy student might have if they are interested in specializing. My particular concern involved focusing on one area of pharmacy and losing the broad knowledge of pharmacy that we work so hard learning in school. Dr. Gasper reassured me that there are plenty of ways to retain that knowledge. He reminded me that psychiatric patients also have some of the many common diseases of the general population such as high blood pressure and diabetes. In addition, as their pharmacist, he must also counsel them on those medications as well as looking out for any drug interactions; this task requires him to be current on his general pharmacy knowledge. To my surprise, he also informed me that he tries to spend a few hours each month in a retail pharmacy setting for the sole purpose of keeping current with all medications. The RAMPS program helped me learn what a day in the life of a psychiatric pharmacist consists of, and it sparked my interest even more in the field. In the search to decide “what type of pharmacist I want to be,” Dr. Gasper’s advice was to do an APPE in every area you are interested in because you do not know what it is like until you experience it yourself. I know I will be signing up for a psychiatric rotation next year!
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