Pre-Prescribing and the Sports Pharmacists Role

Duties of a sports pharmacist will be determined, in large part, by the setting in which they practice. For the primary care setting (ambulatory care) pharmacists have a better opportunity to steer prescribing decisions following the doctor's work up and diagnosis of the patient-athlete. 

The interprofessional team approach helps keep a patient-athlete safe from medication harm, avoid inadvertent doping, efficiently consider alternatives if a prohibited substance is the typical drug of choice, and identify cost-effective options.

Pharmacovigilance begins with selecting the most appropriate medication for the diagnosis, based on the individual patient's needs. Personalized medicine might take more time up-front but is worth the effort and cost-saving for the patient-athlete who might lost time, performance, and reputation through trial and error with medications.  Adding a sports pharmacist to the team, to find the best match in treatment, might involve 

comparing WADA Medical Guidance documents to Consensus Statements, patient-athlete pharmacogenomics results, athlete's lifestyle/sport and probability of medication compliance, interactions with medications or other supplements, prescriber preferences, and monitoring parameters.

Sports Pharmacists work as consultants or may be hired as an employee by the clinic. While the cost of a qualified sports pharmacists might appear to be a significant annual expense for the medical office, it is off-set by the time-saving measures experienced by other healthcare providers in the office, cost-savings through medication selection or avoidance of costs, and patient-athlete satisfaction.

Before a patient-athlete has a prescription written by a prescriber, contact the sports pharmacist.