Pharmacy Fellowships: Challenges and Opportunities for Pharm D.Graduates

Introduction: Pharmacy fellowships are post-doctoral training programs intended to prepare pharmacy graduates for careers in research or the pharmaceutical industry. There are currently 131 pharmacy fellowship programs in the United States, but standardization, interest among students, and overall research regarding these fellowships are ambiguous at best. This literature review was conducted to describe common facilitators, challenges, contents and outcomes of fellowships, and to evaluate the group of programs as a whole. Methods: To do this, articles were identified using PubMed and a Google search engine, and were reviewed in context with the study goals. The primary search term used was “pharmacy fellowship(s).” Results: Key findings included articles describing the current state of pharmacy fellowships, the need for standardization, and how to pursue a pharmacy fellowship. A total of twelve articles were selected due to their relevance to the scope of this article. Conclusion: The current state of fellowships, their subgroups, efforts to develop and organize the group of programs, and possible careers following training are discussed. Benefits and limitations of the current fellowship system are summarized based on the current and relevant literature. Furthermore, this literature review is intended to serve as an accumulation of the current data on pharmacy fellowships to guide students interested in applying for a fellowship program