Pharmacist-Led Education in Psychiatry Residency Training

[...]both studies lacked a control group, that is, psychopharmacology education led by non-BCPP educators, which would allow determination of whether the BCPP-led education is viewed and valued differently from other educators, such as psychiatrist-led psychopharmacology education. In their article on collaboration between child and adolescent psychiatrists and mental health pharmacists, Lu and colleagues [3] outlined many areas where pharmacists can contribute to treatment teams, which included, but were not limited to, screening for drug interactions; advising on optimal/evidence-based dosing; comparing clinically significant differences of formulations of medications; therapeutic drug monitoring; interpreting and applying pharmacogenetic testing; ensuring appropriate laboratory testing and rating scale monitoring; educating psychiatrists, patients, and families about complementary therapeutics; overcoming therapeutic inertia; identifying which medications can be safely and gradually tapered off to reduce side effect burden, cost, and patient confusion; planning for rational deprescribing; and coordinating care with other providers. The health care system is becoming more complicated and difficult to navigate and would benefit from true interdisciplinary collaborations, including education about the role and functioning of each discipline involved in patient care. Pharmacists may serve an important role in the expansion of collaborative care, which is especially important for physicians, in our case psychiatrists, who are the leaders of interdisciplinary mental health care.