(123) State of the Academic Pharmacy Workforce Specializing in Geriatrics

Objective : The objectives of this study were to describe the roles, activities, and extent to which geriatrics faculty in American and Canadian schools of pharmacy engage with geriatric-focused teaching, research, service, and practice. Pharmacy programs inconsistently deliver geriatrics content, and programs differ in length, format, and educational philosophy. No study has previously asked geriatrics pharmacy academics about their experiences, support, and satisfaction.

Methods: A cross-sectional, web-based, self-administered survey was developed and pre-tested before administration. Listservs from pharmacy academia were used for the USA and Canada.

Results: A total of 129 completed responses were submitted. A total of 89.8% of participants had a PharmD degree, 4.6% had a PhD, and 32.6% had a PGY2 residency. Participants were mostly non-tenure track (59.7%) and 76.7% maintained an active clinical practice. Teaching effort was highest at 40-59% (37.2% of participants), and 6.2% of participants had 80% or more teaching effort; teaching was primarily for clinical sciences or therapeutics (90.2%), then foundational science principles (66.7%). A total of 84.5% agreed (strongly agreed or agreed) that teaching assignments were aligned with geriatrics expertise, but 23.6% felt they did not have adequate time to teach geriatrics content. Only 10% of respondents had 40% or more time dedicated to research, although 72.6% were involved in some scholarly work. Only 35.6% agreed that they could obtain research funding, and 37.8% agreed that they had adequate training in research methodology. Most reported expectations for scholarly activities (96.2%), however, a little more than half of participants (53.5%) indicated having an adequate amount of their percent effort dedicated to conducting research.

Conclusions: Pharmacy faculty specializing in geriatrics report fairly heavy teaching and clinical workloads but require further support for scholarly engagement.