Should veterinary pharmacy become a recognized specialty?

CURRENT FULL VERSION: Veterinary pharmacy is edging toward more formal structure, and that’s fueling a larger debate about whether it should be recognized as a bona fide specialty. The immediate hook is that the International College of Veterinary Pharmacy, an affiliate of the Society of Veterinary Hospital Pharmacists, has built a certification and residency framework for pharmacists working in animal health, including the Diplomate of the International College of Veterinary Pharmacy credential and PGY1 residency accreditation guidelines. Clinician’s Brief used that development to spotlight a broader practice question for veterinarians: is veterinary pharmacy now specialized enough to warrant clearer recognition? (svhp.org)

The backdrop is a long-running mismatch between where pet prescriptions are filled and how pharmacists are trained. AVMA has been warning about that gap for years, including a 2012 House of Delegates action urging better communication with nonveterinary pharmacies as outside dispensing increased. More recently, education-focused reporting and commentary have kept returning to the same problem: pharmacists are regularly asked to fill veterinary prescriptions, but most PharmD programs still offer limited formal preparation in animal pharmacotherapy. (avma.org)

The education data support that concern. A 2023 scoping review identified only 16 published studies describing veterinary pharmacy education in U.S. pharmacy schools, including nine on elective courses and four on experiential education. A separate survey of U.S. pharmacy programs found that 27% offered a didactic veterinary pharmacy course, while 60% reported experiential rotation opportunities. In other words, exposure exists, but it’s uneven, and often optional. That helps explain why veterinary pharmacy advocates keep describing the field as underbuilt relative to the demands already placed on pharmacists in community and institutional settings. (sciencedirect.com)

The practical case for specialization is strongest where veterinary medicine and pharmacy rules get complicated. Under AMDUCA, veterinarians may prescribe approved human or animal drugs for extralabel use in animals under specific conditions and within a valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship. FDA also maintains distinct policy around compounding animal drugs from bulk drug substances, an area where errors in formulation choice, route, duplication of approved products, or recordkeeping can create compliance and patient-safety problems. For veterinarians, that means the pharmacist on the other end of the prescription isn’t just dispensing, they’re operating inside a regulatory environment that differs in important ways from human-only practice. (fda.gov)

Industry voices are making that argument more explicitly. In a March 2026 opinion piece republished by dvm360, Cassandra Payne, PharmD, of Chewy Pharmacy argued that veterinary pharmacy education should be treated as a core patient-care issue, not an elective niche, citing limited curricular exposure and pharmacist discomfort with veterinary prescriptions. Earlier dvm360 reporting quoted Brian Bowers, PharmD, of Oregon State University’s Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine, calling veterinary pharmacy “a specialty practice of pharmacy,” and Gary Koesten, BPharm, describing the lack of veterinary training in typical pharmacist education. Those aren’t neutral observers, but they do reflect a consistent message from people working in the field: the work already looks specialized, even if recognition remains fragmented. (dvm360.com)

Clinician’s Brief’s broader recent coverage helps explain why that specialization question may matter beyond dispensing mechanics. In one discussion, the publication highlighted how veterinary access shapes public health, food security, and animal welfare globally, pointing to research that mapped roughly 300,000 veterinary practices across 115 countries to estimate travel time to care. In another, it noted how debt and financial pressure continue to shape the veterinary workforce pipeline. Those pressures do not make pharmacy a substitute for veterinary access, but they do reinforce the value of smoother clinic-pharmacy handoffs and better use of the professionals already involved in medication access and counseling.

The same is true on the therapeutic side. Clinician’s Brief has recently pointed to fast growth in monoclonal antibodies in veterinary medicine, from dermatology to pain management and newer indications, a trend that raises the bar for keeping up with species-specific products and client education. It has also discussed delayed or “wait-and-see” prescribing as a stewardship-minded concept borrowed from human medicine, where studies in pediatric otitis media have shown antibiotic use can drop substantially without worse outcomes. Those are different conversations, but they point in the same direction: veterinary medication management is getting more nuanced, not less, and pharmacists who understand animal patients can help reduce confusion, callbacks, and inappropriate use.

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, this debate is really about reducing friction in care delivery. Better-trained pharmacists can mean fewer callback loops over doses that are normal for dogs but look high by human standards, better counseling for pet parents, stronger antimicrobial stewardship, and safer handling of compounded or extralabel prescriptions. It could also improve relationships between clinics and community pharmacies at a time when more prescriptions are moving outside the hospital. If veterinary pharmacy gains wider specialty recognition, that may create a clearer benchmark for competence, especially in high-complexity areas like compounding, food-animal compliance, species-specific pharmacokinetics, and newer drug classes entering routine practice. (dvm360.com)

There are still open questions. The International College of Veterinary Pharmacy currently appears to be the only organization offering board certification specifically in veterinary pharmacy, which suggests the field has momentum but not yet universal recognition through the largest pharmacy specialty infrastructure. That makes the next phase less about whether veterinary pharmacy exists, and more about whether regulators, educators, employers, and professional bodies converge around common standards. (svhp.org)

What to watch: Watch for expansion of accredited veterinary pharmacy residencies, more pharmacy-school coursework, and any move by larger credentialing or regulatory groups to formally recognize veterinary pharmacy as a mainstream specialty category. It’s also worth watching whether stewardship initiatives, growth in advanced therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies, and ongoing workforce-access pressures create more demand for pharmacists with explicit veterinary training. (svhp.org)