Pharmacy and Therapeutics Competition
2018 AMCP P&T Competition
|
P&T General Overview:
The Pharmacy and Therapeutics Competition (not pharmacology and therapeutics competition!) is one of the cornerstones of AMCP. For many people, they may be under the assumption that the P&T Competition is a “managed care thing,” but for the most part it is designed to replicate what it would be like to be on an actual P&T committee. This can be useful in many areas; for example, every hospital has its own P&T board, tasked with the duty of assessing whether or not a drug should be added to its formulary. Clinical judgement is required to assess if a particular drug meets efficacy standards and the needs of that hospitals demographic. After this is determined, the committee then needs to determine economic factors of the drug. Even though efficacy is the most important factor for the committee, the hospital still needs to be able to pay for the drug. Remember, each hospital has budget for medications and cannot sacrifice other drugs that patients would need.
Essentially, it is up to the committee to determine if the drug in question should be added to the formulary, or if current/alternative therapies are more suitable. So, for those of you that are interested in hospital pharmacy, the P&T competition serves as an important skill. Not only will you have to determine the correct treatment on a patient level, you will also have to be able to apply the same kind of clinical skills on a broader, health-care system based stage. This approach can be applied to many, if not all areas of pharmacy. Insurance providers need to determine if certain drugs should be covered on its medical benefits, pharmacy benefits, both, or neither. Additionally, retail pharmacies offer certain drugs on their “four-dollar list.” How do you think they determine which drugs to cover, which to exclude? The P&T committee is the building blocks of pharmacy and healthcare as a whole. This is the start of the journey pharmacists can take to consider patients as a whole population and determine how to make choices that benefit many individuals at once. |
Why should I participate in the P&T Competition?
The competition does require approximately 30 hours of your time for preparation. However, you will be on a team with three other students and have the current AMCP officers to help you along the way.
Here is a short (but not all-inclusive) list of the benefits you will gain:
Here is a short (but not all-inclusive) list of the benefits you will gain:
- You will gain real life experience by closely simulating P&T committee work
- You are eligible to receive elective credit hours for your hard work
- You will have a great addition to your CV
- The competition provides invaluable insight into the role of the pharmacist in managed care