Why partner with clinical pharmacists?

While reading the “Opportunities to partner with clinical pharma­cists in ambulatory care” (Current Psychiatry, Evidence-Based Reviews, July 2014, p. 23-29 [http://bit.ly/1s3yqmh], I became puzzled. Several times, I asked myself, “As a psychiatrist reasonably well-trained in psychophar­macology, why would I need or want to partner with a clinical pharmacist in this fashion?” Indeed, I was under the impression that this is what I trained to do. It called to mind a bumper sticker from the feminist movement of the 1960s that read, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” It then occurred to me that a psychiatrist without a clinical pharmacist would find himself or herself in that same lamentable position.

Scott D. Mendelson, MD, PhD
Roseburg, Oregon