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For over 50 years, DIA has served as a global platform for more than 30,000 health care product development professionals, researchers, regulators, clinicians, academics and patient advocates to collaborate to improve health globally through the advancement of lifesaving medicines and technologies. As the premier professional community for the health care product development ecosystem, DIA (the Drug Information Association) provides global players a neutral and transparent forum for the exchange of ideas and collaboration. By offering access to tools, resources, and networking opportunities, DIA provides its members and international participants objective opportunities for extending debate and discussion to advance scientific and medical innovation.
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This is a very misguiding and sad article. Clearly the author is very uninformed RPH. You did well explaining what doctor means as person who has earned a doctorate degree being it either a PhD or a professional doctorate. Physicians are called doctors because they hold a doctorate in Medicine, hence MD. Your definition as a doctor of a person who diagnose and treat a disease is misleading because now PAs and NPs do similar but not called doctors because they did not earn a doctoral degree. Other healthcare professionals like Chiropractors, Dentists, Veterinarians, Optometrists, Psychologists, etc all call themselves doctors and not because they can treat a "blister bleeding finger" but because they think they have earned doctorate degree toward their field. When it comes to the treatment of certain diseases, physicians refer patients to other specialized physicians and doesn't mean they are not doctors. So is the reason why physicians and other clinicians consult pharmacists for their expertise in disease treatment, and without knowledge in diseases state, diagnosis and drug therapy pharmacists can not make those recommendations. The fact that pharmacists don't write prescriptions does not mean they can not diagnose and treat conditions. If a pharmacist has earned a doctorate degree toward their field of study then they are allowed to used that title as they please and not be criticized by another pharmacist who doesn't have one. Your analogy with anthropologist is erroneous because anthropologists don't work in clinics or round on hospital floors. You are definitely obsolete in your thinking and the old perception of the pharmacist is still in your own mind and so as the general public and this delusion should be eradicated. This is the reason why the profession can not make any strides in spite of the crucial contributions pharmacists are making to healthcare today. Today pharmacist dispensing fees have dwindled to nothing because of notions like this, they are not professionals so lets not pay them professional dispensing fees. The flaws with the PharmD is not the education but the way early educators who started the program did it. It lacked consensus between the educators, the medical community, policy makers and payers and clear definition of the utility of the PharmD advanced degree. Thats why over 50% of PharmD graduates are working in the retail to experience this ridicule.
However, Nurses also work on hospital floors even present at operation theaters, but are not called doctors.
