LIU Pharmacy - The Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences - offers a six-year Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree program to prepare students for entry-level pharmacy practice. The Doctor of Pharmacy is classified as a doctor's degree-professional practice by the U.S. Department of Education. The program consists of two years of preprofessional studies (offered through LIU Brooklyn's Richard L. Conolly College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and four years of professional studies.<br><br>Dramatic changes taking place in the health-care system are creating many new and exciting roles for pharmacists. The pharmacist is now not only responsible for the safe and effective distribution of prescription and nonprescription medication, but is also assuming the role of pharmaceutical therapy advisor and manager, having increasingly more patient-care responsibilities.<br><br>The entry-level pharmacist is expected to participate fully in the team-based management of the patient, including the rendering of independent clinical judgments. The pharmacist must be proficient in the search for and retrieval of information from the scientific literature, utilization of complex pharmacokinetic models to determine appropriate doses, development of individualized pharmaceutical care plans, communication with patients and health professionals, documentation of pharmaceutical interventions taking into account patients' knowledge, beliefs, and behavior, pharmacoeconomic analysis of alternative pharmaceutical interventions, and justification of services billed to managed health-care organizations and other payers.