The role of the community pharmacist is expanding beyond merely dispensing medication, and Stefanie Ferreri, PharmD, couldn’t be more excited.

“We are at a critical time in community pharmacy,” says Ferreri, a clinical associate professor in the School’s Division of Pharmacy Practice and Experiential Education. “The way that community pharmacy is practiced is going to be a lot different in the future than it is today. I think it’s an exciting part of pharmacy; pharmacists are really going to have to utilize their communication skills.”

Ferreri says the future of community pharmacy will stress the importance of pharmacists developing relationships with their patients to provide effective care. Instead of dispensing medications full-time, pharmacists are offering medication therapy management services for patients, which suits Ferreri just fine.

“The reason why I went into pharmacy originally was my passion for people; I really like to talk to people,” she says. “It makes me feel good to say that I made a difference today and that a patient now understands the medication they are taking. As a pharmacist, that’s my job.”

Part of Ferreri’s job is to prepare students for the changes currently taking place in the community pharmacy practice. With many patients starting to turn towards self-medication practices by using over-the-counter drugs, consultation services will be necessary to ensure the health of a patient.

“Nonprescription drugs have to be used correctly in order to be safe and effective: there is no physician oversight,” she says. “It’s our job as pharmacists to know what questions to ask to determine if a medication is the best medication for that person and determine if there are going to be any side effects or drug interactions.”

To address this changing aspect of community pharmacy, Ferreri teaches a course on self-care and nonprescription drugs to educate pharmacy students about the effects of certain over-the-counter medications and the complications that may arise from taking them.

Her concern about patients practicing self-medication procedures also led to her role in publishing the Handbook of Nonprescription Drugs. Serving as the associate editor for the past five years, Ferreri describes her involvement as a surreal experience. It continues to surprise her to see her name on the book considered a standard by most pharmacy schools for courses related to self-care and nonprescription drugs.

In addition to medication therapy management, community pharmacy has also begun to expand to include other fields such as pharmacogenomics. Pharmacogenomics studies how a person’s genetic makeup affects a drug’s ability to perform its function. Recognizing that this field will become crucial to pharmacy in years to come, Ferreri took the initiative to join a project to implement a pharmacogenomic service in a community pharmacy setting. The project, a collaboration between Kerr Drug and the School, could have huge implications for community pharmacies. If successful, community pharmacists would be able to create customized, individual treatments for patients based on their unique genetic makeup.

The project will study Plavix, a heart medication and blood thinner, to determine if a pharmacogenomic service could be feasible in a community pharmacy setting. Ferreri says that 20 to 30 percent of Caucasians may have a genetic variation that does not allow Plavix to be converted from the drug’s inactive form to its active form. The project aims to examine the practiability of such a service, where pharmacists would give patients genetic tests and use the results to make recommendations. The team will assess patient interest in the service, prescribers’ willingness to accept the service, and pharmacists’s comfortability with using gene therapy to make recommendations.

“More than seventy drugs with genetic therapy are available,” Ferreri says. “If successful and if there’s acceptance, we can expand the pharmacogenomic service to a lot more drugs with genomic testing.”

As the practice of community pharmacy continues to evolve, Ferreri recognizes the need of pharmacy schools to offer programs that address the changes in a pharmacist’s role, including the rise in demand for clinical skills. As director of the School’s community pharmacy residency program — one of the oldest and largest in the country — Ferreri prepares graduates to work in a community pharmacy setting by showing them how to utilize the clinical skills they learned in pharmacy school.

The community pharmacy residency program teaches residents how to provide optimal patient care and how to manage a business. Ferreri, who has overseen the program since 2004, has trained more than fifty residents.

“I love training the future leaders of community pharmacy so that they can carry through with the same passion I have.”

Additionally, Ferreri keeps up with the evolving practice of community pharmacy by devoting part of her time to assist patients at Kerr Drug Health Care Center in Chapel Hill, where she educates patients about diabetes, provides medication management services, counsels on over-the-counter medicines and administers influenza, shingles, and pneumococcal vaccines.

“It’s enjoyable to see patients take ownership in their own health care,” she says. “At the heart of the matter is that I like teaching students and I like teaching patients.”