NDSU School of Pharmacy helps rural pharmacy workforce shortage

One of the challenges facing rural health care in North Dakota is the shortage of pharmacists in many communities. Some pharmacies have closed and others have had open pharmacist jobs for as long as two years.

The NDSU Pharmacy Program is looking to help remedy that problem. Amy Werremeyer, professor and chair of NDSU Pharmacy Practice, received an award of $198,518 from the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services to build a workforce for rural pharmacies via her program, “Expanding Rural Pharmacy Introductory Practice Experience Rotations.”

“A long term goal of the project is to help build our rural pharmacy workforce through a trained, sustainable contingent of pharmacists prepared to work in rural areas. Ultimately this addresses several goals including promoting healthcare access and improvement for the people of North Dakota, in line with NDSU’s land grant mission,” said Werremeyer.

“The need is very high,” she said. “Adding to the challenge is the fact that North Dakota is the only state that legally requires a pharmacy to be at least 50% owned by a pharmacist. Thus, it is imperative that North Dakota has a strong field of working pharmacists to keep healthcare and medication access in place across the state.”

The NDSU pharmacy program requires students to complete a rural rotation, but Werremeyer notes that, “we haven’t always been able to provide a lot of extra support or rural health-specific training to go along with that requirement, and we knew that would be helpful to our students.

According to Werremeyer, the ND Department of Health funding will provide:

--paid time for development of a rural health track in the school of pharmacy.

--paid time for hired experts to teach in a new rural health course for pharmacy students and pharmacists.

--financial support to pharmacy students who complete rural pharmacy rotations in certain areas, so long as they commit to working in a rural community in the future.

“It will also provide for greater connection and collaboration with rural health providers and rural workforce development programs across the state,” Werremeyer added.

As part of the project, NDSU faculty will be involved in the creation and delivery of a rural healthcare elective course for pharmacy students and will assist in building relationships with rural pharmacies/pharmacists and healthcare systems to advertise the ability for graduating students to complete commitments to rural pharmacy locations.

“The positive impact on NDSU pharmacy students will be significantly greater opportunities to get specific training in rural health,” Werremeyer said. “They will also have greater support available to offset the costs associated with travel to and staying in a rural locations. It may also impact them by getting them thinking more about the potential benefits of a career in rural pharmacy.”

Short-term benefits to the state would be additional workers for rural pharmacies as students complete rotations. Students would work as interns, which means they are able to fulfill all duties of a pharmacist but only under supervision of a licensed pharmacist. Werremeyer noted how the mere presence of students in more rural areas in the short term may also help to improve working conditions for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians by reducing the sheer burden of volume or work. “In the long term, as more students graduate with experience and interest in rural pharmacy careers, these benefits can be expected to become more embedded across a wider area, leading to overall benefits to the health of the population in the state.

Going forward, the hope is to expand the program for students’ Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences.

“We see this programming potentially expanding to include both pharmacy students’ Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experiences and also their Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences,” Werremeyer said. “This would mean more students getting involved in rural healthcare and being supported financially to do so across a wider range of rural sites. We also see a lot of potential partnership with other healthcare training programs across the state, so that not only are pharmacy students training in rural areas, but they’re also training alongside their future interprofessional healthcare team members—promoting early role understanding, early opportunities for collaboration and teamwork—ultimately improving the quality and access to care for North Dakotans.”