Redefining 'advanced': Supporting and promoting practice change through community advanced pharmacy practice experiences.

INTRODUCTION

Community pharmacy practice in the United States (US) has faced several external pressures, threatening traditional practice models. Schools and colleges of pharmacy (S/COP), particularly through experiential rotations, are perfectly poised to help these practices create new sustainable business models. The purpose of this article is to highlight demonstrated, reproducible successes of community advanced pharmacy practice experience (APPE) advancement initiatives.

PERSPECTIVE

Despite community pharmacists being highly-trained health care providers with roughly equivalent educational backgrounds, community-based practices in the US are not all the same. Student pharmacists can contribute to the design and implementation of revenue-generating services helping individual pharmacies elevate their practice. Doing so involves new models for staffing, workflow, billing, and documentation. Students can help support practice change by focusing on implementation and sustainability. Example APPE integrations focused on community pharmacy practice transformation are described in detail from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Pharmacy, University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Idaho State University.

IMPLICATIONS

Establishing intentional connections that focus on new sustainable community business models is a responsibility for S/COP. The examples provided serve to demonstrate the feasibility of these partnerships. Training students on innovative practice models and utilizing them is critical in moving community practice forward. As academicians, we must prepare students to be agents of change for the profession and intentionally integrate them into a systematic plan to help promote and change practice activities wherever possible, but especially in community practice.