ANCC NCPD CE credits

CE Credits for Pharmacists:

Functional Blood Chemistry Interpretation

Step into advanced pharmaceutical care with functional blood chemistry interpretation. This evidence-based curriculum trains pharmacists to extract deeper insight from standard labs, recognize early dysfunction before disease develops, and apply systems-level reasoning to optimize medication therapy in adult patients.

Complete the program to earn 10 ACPE CPE credits while transforming how you approach lab data, patient consultation, and collaborative clinical decision-making.

Why Pharmacists Need Functional Blood Chemistry Interpretation Skills

Pharmacists are increasingly trapped between expanding clinical expectations and limited tools to meet them. You're asked to provide medication therapy management, counsel on supplement interactions, and monitor patient outcomes, yet traditional pharmacy education rarely teaches you how to interpret the blood work driving these decisions.
As a pharmacist, you're uniquely positioned at the intersection of medication therapy and patient outcomes. You field questions about drug interactions, monitor for adverse effects, and make recommendations that directly impact treatment success. But there's a critical gap in most pharmacy education: how to interpret blood chemistry beyond basic monitoring parameters.

When a patient presents labs showing glucose at 105 mg/dL, triglycerides at 180 mg/dL, and AST/ALT ratios that are "within normal range," traditional training teaches you they're fine. Yet that same patient might be struggling with medication side effects, persistent fatigue, or early metabolic dysfunction that's completely missed because no one taught you to recognize functional patterns in standard blood work.
Most continuing education for pharmacists focuses on new drug approvals, protocol updates, or regulatory compliance. While necessary, this rarely strengthens your ability to answer the clinical questions patients actually bring to the counter: Why am I on this medication? What's causing my symptoms if my labs are "normal"? Could nutrients help instead of, or alongside, drugs?

Functional blood chemistry interpretation changes that. It gives pharmacists the clinical reasoning skills to identify early dysfunction, recognize medication-related lab changes, and provide more targeted pharmaceutical care, all while earning 10 ACPE CPE credits through accredited education.

The Problem: Pharmacists Are Underutilizing Lab Data

The Practical Reality

In modern integrative care, many clinicians order advanced functional tests before extracting full insight from standard blood chemistry, often because they were never taught how much blood chemistry can actually reveal beyond basic cutoffs.

Over-reliance on specialty testing can:

Increase cost and complexity without proportional clarity

Introduce variability in accuracy, reproducibility, and validation depending on the test

Lead clinicians to overlook foundational data already available in standard labs

Add financial burden for patients and providers
Most pharmacists receive minimal training in comprehensive lab interpretation beyond drug-specific monitoring (INR for warfarin, SCr for nephrotoxic drugs, LFTs for hepatotoxic medications).

This creates several challenges:

1

Limited Clinical Context for Medication Decisions
Without understanding broader metabolic patterns, pharmacists may miss:
  • Early insulin resistance affecting diabetes medication effectiveness
  • Inflammatory patterns that predict NSAID or statin intolerance
  • Nutrient deficiencies caused by common medications (PPIs depleting B12, statins affecting CoQ10)
  • Thyroid dysfunction patterns that influence medication absorption and metabolism
  • Liver stress patterns that affect drug clearance and dosing requirements

2

Reactive Rather Than Proactive Care
Traditional pharmacy practice often responds to overt abnormalities rather than identifying subtle shifts that predict problems. By the time a medication needs adjustment, the patient may have already experienced months of suboptimal outcomes.

3

Missed Opportunities for Pharmaceutical Care
When pharmacists lack confidence interpreting comprehensive metabolic panels, lipid panels, and CBC with differential, they miss opportunities to:
  • Identify drug-induced nutrient depletions before they cause symptoms
  • Recognize patterns that suggest medication non-adherence or therapeutic failure
  • Provide evidence-based recommendations for medication optimization
  • Collaborate more effectively with prescribers using lab data as clinical justification

4

The Limitation of Traditional Reference Ranges
Conventional laboratory reference ranges were designed to detect established disease states suitable for pharmacological intervention, not to identify the early physiological shifts where lifestyle and nutrient support matter most. These broad statistical averages often include individuals with subclinical chronic conditions, making them too insensitive for clinical consultation work.

When you rely on these ranges, you tell patients their labs are "fine" even as they experience symptoms that drive medication use. This erodes trust and limits your ability to offer preventive guidance.

The Solution: Evidence-Based Functional Blood Chemistry Interpretation

Functional blood chemistry interpretation teaches pharmacists to extract significantly more insight from routine labs by applying evidence-based optimal reference ranges and physiological pattern recognition.

Rather than focusing on memorization or isolated markers, functional blood chemistry restores routine labs to their role as a foundational clinical dataset, one that guides next steps intelligently and economically.

What Makes Functional Interpretation Different?

Traditional Lab Interpretation primarily answers one question: 
"Does this value meet criteria for diagnosis?"
Functional Blood Chemistry asks a different, and often more clinically useful, question: 
"Is this marker supporting optimal physiological function?"

Traditional Approach

  • Focuses on disease diagnosis cutoffs
  • Uses broad population-based reference ranges (often including unhealthy individuals)
  • Treats markers in isolation
  • Misses early dysfunction

Functional Approach

  • Identifies physiological imbalance before disease develops
  • Applies narrower, evidence-based optimal ranges that reflect healthy function
  • Recognizes patterns across multiple markers and systems
  • Detects early metabolic stress, inflammation, and nutrient insufficiency

For pharmacists, this approach transforms lab panels from basic monitoring tools into clinical decision-making frameworks that improve medication therapy management.

Evidence-Based Optimal Ranges

Functional interpretation applies evidence-based optimal ranges, which are:

Narrower than conventional ranges

More sensitive to early dysfunction

Grounded in physiology and clinical research

Not just statistical averages

Designed to reflect healthy function

Not merely the absence of disease
Using optimal ranges allows pharmacists to:
  • Detect dysfunction earlier
  • Identify compensatory patterns across systems
  • Understand trends rather than isolated values
  • Support prevention and root-cause care
This shift transforms blood chemistry from a screening tool into a clinical reasoning framework, catching B12 depletion before neuropathy develops, identifying insulin resistance before diabetes requires metformin, or recognizing thyroid conversion issues before levothyroxine doses escalate.

How Functional Blood Chemistry Enhances Pharmacy Practice

#1

Optimize Medication Therapy Management (MTM)

Understanding functional blood chemistry allows pharmacists to:
Predict Medication Response:
  • Recognize metabolic patterns that indicate which antihypertensives or antidiabetics will be most effective
  • Identify insulin resistance patterns that predict metformin response
  • Detect inflammatory markers that may influence statin or NSAID tolerance
  • Understand cholesterol synthesis pathways, insulin signaling, or inflammatory cascades to optimize medication timing and selection
Monitor Drug-Induced Changes:
  • Spot early liver stress from statins, azoles, or acetaminophen before ALT/AST become overtly elevated
  • Recognize thyroid suppression patterns from lithium, amiodarone, or interferons
  • Identify electrolyte shifts from diuretics, ACE inhibitors, or PPIs before they become clinically significant
  • Monitor functional markers for liver burden, methylation capacity, and mitochondrial function
Address Drug-Nutrient Interactions:
  • Detect B12 deficiency patterns from metformin or PPIs (elevated MCV, elevated homocysteine, low-normal B12)
  • Recognize magnesium depletion from diuretics or PPIs (affects muscle function, glucose control, contributes to arrhythmias)
  • Identify CoQ10 insufficiency patterns in statin users (elevated AST:ALT ratio, elevated LDH, muscle symptoms)
  • Detect zinc depletion from PPIs or ACE inhibitors (low alkaline phosphatase, impaired immune function)
  • Recognize iron depletion from PPIs (elevated RDW before ferritin drops, eventual low ferritin and microcytic anemia)
  • Monitor B6 status in patients on certain medications (low AST + low ALT + low LDH pattern)
  • Understand how statins affect CoQ10 synthesis pathways at the cellular level

#2

Improve Collaborative Care with Prescribers

Pharmacists who understand functional lab interpretation can:
  • Provide evidence-based recommendations backed by specific lab patterns rather than generic suggestions
  • Identify when medication adjustments are needed based on metabolic trends, not just disease markers
  • Contribute meaningfully to interdisciplinary care teams by offering lab-informed pharmaceutical expertise
  • Build stronger professional relationships with physicians, NPs, and PAs who value data-driven insights
  • Present physicians with physiological patterns suggesting medication side effects or need for dose adjustments, conversations grounded in systems thinking rather than symptoms alone

#3

Enhance Clinical Confidence and Professional Impact

Mastering blood chemistry interpretation allows pharmacists to:
  • Answer patient questions about lab results with authority and nuance
  • Identify when specialty testing is warranted versus when standard labs provide sufficient data
  • Recognize patterns that warrant provider notification or medication therapy intervention
  • Expand clinical services beyond basic medication dispensing into true pharmaceutical care
  • Validate patient symptoms with physiological data when traditional labs appear "normal"
  • Educate patients on why their medications work or don't work based on their metabolic patterns, improving adherence and satisfaction

#4

Support Preventive Care and Chronic Disease Management

Functional blood chemistry helps pharmacists:
  • Identify prediabetic patterns years before A1C becomes diagnostic (HOMA-IR, TG:HDL ratio)
  • Recognize cardiovascular risk markers beyond traditional cholesterol (inflammation, insulin resistance)
  • Detect early chronic kidney disease patterns (GFR trends, BUN:Cr ratios, electrolyte shifts)
  • Support patients in preventing disease progression through targeted medication therapy and lifestyle modification
  • Anticipate medication side effects by monitoring functional markers before they require pharmaceutical escalation

What You'll Learn in This Functional Blood Chemistry CE Course

This 10 ACPE CPE credit curriculum teaches pharmacists to interpret blood chemistry through physiology, systems-based thinking, and evidence-based functional reasoning, not protocol memorization.

Core Competencies:

How Pharmacists Use This Training in Real Practice

Case Example

Statin Intolerance

Patient presents: 58-year-old on atorvastatin 40mg, complaining of muscle aches.
Recent labs show:
  • Total cholesterol: 195 mg/dL
  • LDL: 118 mg/dL
  • AST: 42 U/L (high-normal)
  • ALT: 38 U/L (optimal)
  • AST:ALT ratio: 1.1 (suggests mitochondrial stress)
  • CK: 195 U/L (mildly elevated)
  • LDH: 185 U/L (high-normal)
Traditional approach: Monitor CK; if it rises significantly, recommend discontinuation.
Functional blood chemistry approach:
  • Recognize AST:ALT ratio >1.0 suggests mitochondrial stress (statins impair mitochondrial function and CoQ10 synthesis)
  • Identify mildly elevated CK as early statin myopathy indicator
  • Note elevated LDH supports tissue/muscle damage pattern (LDH rises with muscle breakdown)
  • Note metabolic pattern suggesting CoQ10 depletion (statins inhibit CoQ10 synthesis via same pathway as cholesterol)
  • Recommend provider collaboration to consider: dose reduction, alternative statin, CoQ10 supplementation (100-200mg daily)
  • Provide lab-based evidence for intervention before severe myopathy develops
This proactive approach prevents adverse outcomes, improves patient satisfaction, and demonstrates pharmaceutical care value.

Additional Practice Applications:

Medication Therapy Management (MTM): When reviewing a diabetic patient's labs, recognize patterns suggesting early renal stress or B12 depletion from metformin therapy, allowing you to recommend specific monitoring or nutrient support backed by data.

Functional Medicine Pharmacy: Guide patients through supplement protocols with blood-based validation. Instead of guessing which antioxidants a patient needs, interpret oxidative stress markers to justify specific recommendations.

Patient Consultation: Move beyond the dispensing counter into evidence-based clinical consultation, validating supplement recommendations with blood chemistry patterns.
Clinician's code

CE Credit Details for Pharmacists

ACPE CPE Credits

10 credits

Accreditation

Jointly accredited by ACCME, ACPE, and ANCC

Delivery Format

Online, self-paced with applied clinical examples

 Certificate

Certificate of Completion provided upon curriculum completion

 Patient Population

Adult populations (pediatrics not included)

Prerequisites

Active pharmacy license; no prior functional medicine training required

How Credits Are Earned:

Pharmacists earn CE credits by completing the Blood Chemistry Interpretation curriculum through your chosen learning pathway:

Blood Chemistry Interpretation Course

Focused, self-paced foundational course ideal for pharmacists new to functional lab interpretation

Clinician’s Code Foundations

Comprehensive 6-month functional medicine training (hybrid format with instructor support)

Clinician’s Code Advanced

Advanced mentorship-level program for experienced clinical pharmacists mastering complex cases (hybrid format with instructor support)

ACPE CPE credits are awarded upon successful completion of the blood chemistry curriculum, regardless of pathway.

Steps to earn your credits:

Step

1

Choose your preferred learning pathway

Step

2

Complete the Blood Chemistry Interpretation curriculum

Step

3

Apply concepts using functional clinical frameworks

Step

4

Receive your Certificate of Completion and CE credits

Why This CE Is Different from Standard Pharmacy CE

Understanding Over Memorization

This curriculum prioritizes clinical reasoning over protocols, teaching clinicians how to interpret labs through physiology and systems thinking. Most pharmacy CE focuses on drug information updates or disease-state management protocols. This curriculum teaches how to think clinically using lab data, a skill that applies across all therapeutic areas and patient populations.

You'll learn how statins affect CoQ10 synthesis pathways at the cellular level, not just that you should recommend CoQ10 with every statin prescription.

Evidence-Based Optimal Reference Ranges

Be the first in your practice to apply narrower, physiologically grounded reference ranges that detect early dysfunction, positioning you to catch nutrient depletions and metabolic shifts before they require pharmaceutical escalation. Learn to apply research-backed optimal ranges (not just population averages) to identify dysfunction earlier and make more precise recommendations.

Pattern Recognition Across Systems

Develop the ability to see connections between metabolic markers, inflammatory indicators, and medication effects, transforming isolated data points into clinical narratives. Master pattern-recognition skills across metabolic, inflammatory, thyroid, nutrient, and cardiometabolic markers, grounded in real-world scenarios and frameworks that translate across specialties.

Real-World Application

Education is grounded in pharmacy-relevant scenarios: medication therapy optimization, adverse effect detection, drug-nutrient interactions, and collaborative care recommendations. Learn through applied clinical examples relevant to pharmacy practice rather than theoretical protocols.

Applicable to Any Practice Setting

Whether you work in community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, ambulatory care, specialty pharmacy, clinical pharmacy, compounding, or functional medicine pharmacy, functional blood chemistry interpretation enhances your clinical impact across all settings.

Who This CE Is For (And Who It's Not)

Ideal for Pharmacists Who:

  • Want to expand clinical services beyond basic dispensing and medication counseling
  • Practice or aspire to practice in functional, integrative, or preventive healthcare
  • Provide medication therapy management (MTM) or comprehensive medication reviews (CMR)
  • Work with complex or chronic disease patients
  • Seek CE credits that translate directly into improved clinical decision-making
  • Are frustrated by surface-level lab education that doesn't apply to real patient care
  • Want to collaborate more effectively with prescribers using evidence-based data
  • Gain confidence interpreting labs beyond oversimplified "normal vs abnormal" interpretation
  • Strengthen functional/physiology-first clinical reasoning
  • Desire to understand the physiological "why" behind nutrient-drug interactions
  • Want evidence-based frameworks for supplement recommendations

May Not Be a Fit If You:

  • Are only seeking the easiest or fastest CE credits to meet licensure requirements
  • Don't interact with patient lab data in your practice
  • Prefer protocol-driven recommendations over clinical reasoning
  • Are not interested in expanding pharmaceutical care services
  • Do not want to learn functional blood chemistry interpretation
  • Are not interested in physiology or running an evidence-based practice

Accreditation Statement

In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by High Order Health LLC and Pinnacle Conference, LLC. Pinnacle Conference, LLC is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be practicing in a clinical pharmacy role to benefit from this CE?

No. While clinical pharmacists may see immediate applications, community pharmacists, specialty pharmacists, and hospital pharmacists all encounter patient labs and can use this knowledge to enhance pharmaceutical care.

How many CPE credits do pharmacists earn?

10 ACPE CPE credits.

Will this course teach me how to diagnose conditions?

No. This course teaches lab interpretation within a pharmacist's scope of practice, recognizing patterns that inform medication therapy decisions and collaborative care recommendations, not medical diagnosis.

 Is the course online and self-paced?

Yes, online, self-paced, with applied clinical examples. Select programs also offer hybrid, instructor-supported learning formats.

How is this different from the therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) I learned in pharmacy school?

TDM focuses on drug-specific markers (digoxin levels, vancomycin troughs, INR). This course teaches comprehensive metabolic assessment that informs broader medication therapy optimization, adverse effect prediction, and drug-nutrient interactions.

What's the core focus of this training?

Physiology-driven interpretation, pattern recognition across systems, and evidence-based optimal ranges, so routine labs yield significantly more clinical insight.

Can I use these skills for medication therapy management (MTM) documentation?

Yes. Understanding functional blood chemistry provides clinical justification for MTM interventions, making your recommendations more evidence-based and defensible.

How long do I have to complete the course?

Access varies by learning pathway. The self-paced Blood Chemistry Interpretation Course provides extended access. Instructor-supported programs (Clinician's Code Foundations and Advanced) follow specific cohort schedules.

Is this course focused on supplements and natural products?

No. While nutrient deficiencies are discussed (especially drug-induced depletions), this course focuses on interpreting lab data to optimize pharmaceutical therapy. It's not about replacing medications with supplements, it's about making better medication decisions using comprehensive lab analysis.

Will I receive a certificate for my pharmacy board?

Yes. Upon completion, you'll receive a Certificate of Completion with your 10 ACPE CPE credits, suitable for submission to your state pharmacy board.

Ready to Earn Your Functional Blood Chemistry CE Credits?

If you're a pharmacist ready to go beyond basic medication counseling and build true pharmaceutical care expertise through lab interpretation, this 10 ACPE CPE credit Blood Chemistry Interpretation curriculum offers an evidence-based, clinically relevant path forward.

If you're looking for CE credits that strengthen clinical reasoning, reduce unnecessary testing, and elevate how you interpret labs, moving you from dispensing to clinical consultation, this accredited curriculum provides the laboratory interpretation skills modern pharmacy practice demands.

Stop missing the critical lab patterns that inform better medication decisions. Start interpreting blood chemistry like a clinical expert.
Female practitioner smiling

Additional Resources:

See how this curriculum applies to physicians, nurses, dietitians, and other healthcare professionals
Find the right program for your clinical goals and schedule
Full information about joint accreditation
Preview course modules and learning objectives
Comprehensive overview of functional blood chemistry CE credits