Hello everyone! I am very honored to have been selected as one of the recipients of the
2014-2015 ASHP Student Leadership Award. As a part of the application process, we
were asked to write an essay on "how, as a student leader, you would
increase awareness and understanding of the Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative
among student colleagues" and now have been asked to post it here for
further discussion. From my experiences, I have learned that the approach of
making something fun and interesting also results in greater student involvement
and greater impact overall. This is my first time blogging, so please let me know if
you have any insight regarding my ideas on further PPMI student engagement
efforts. Thanks!
Making the Pharmacy
Practice Model Initiative (PPMI) Fun!
By Amy Joy Yanicak,
PharmD/MPH Candidate 2016
As American comedian Groucho Marx said, “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong.” In 2014, increasing awareness and funding for ALS succeeded because of the innovative Ice Bucket Challenge, and similarly, in 1985, the collaboration of many recording artists singing “We are the World” brought huge attention and support to famine in Ethiopia. What sets these campaigns apart is that they were unique and involved an element of fun. It’s unusual to view the Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative (PPMI) through a whimsical lens; however, to excite students and implement new practice models extending pharmacy services, a little bit of fun is just what we need.
This past year, I worked with fellow students to make a music video, entitled “The Fresh Face of Healthcare.” Originally created to promote a video competition, it spread quickly through social media and showcased how pharmacists could work with other healthcare professionals to improve patient care. Student viewers were not only entertained, but they also listened to our message and created submissions demonstrating how inter-professional care improves patient outcomes. Subsequently, we had teams of students from pharmacy, nursing, medicine, and social work collaborating to make their own inspiring videos. This one project started to change the dynamic of how other healthcare professionals view and work with pharmacy, and I believe that the use of a similarly innovative model will affect how students view the Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative.
The vision of the PPMI Summit in 2010 was to “create passion, commitment, and action among hospital and health-system pharmacy practice leaders to significantly advance the health and well being of patients by optimizing the role of pharmacists in providing direct patient care.” PPMI was started with the intention that, as health-systems expand their pharmacy service models, every patient knows who his or her pharmacist is and what he or she does. Now, the next step is to ensure that every student pharmacist understands the role he or she plays in patient care. It’s so important that students understand this because on advanced pharmacy rotations, they will be extenders of pharmacy care, and as pharmacists, they will be responsible for furthering PPMI.
In the past, I have organized shadowing experiences for our students to go and see how pharmacists have incorporated PPMI into their daily practices. As president of the Student Society of Health-system Pharmacy at my college, I also created another fun video with all of my officers to Taylor Swift’s hit song “Shake it off. ” This footage was originally intended to help raise awareness of Sanfilippo Syndrome, but we then used it to promote PPMI and showcase the efforts of students in our organization to ‘shake things up’ in the world of healthcare. We highlighted the role of pharmacists in transitions of care, medication reconciliation, and discharge counseling in the hospital as well as our student efforts to talk to patients in the community about immunizations and medications.
Students enjoy participating in video projects, shadowing pharmacists, and service learning because such experiences expose them to new viewpoints and challenge them to think outside the box. To further engage students in PPMI, I plan to focus my efforts on interactive, state-wide events that will promote collaboration between our schools of pharmacy and also connect our students with practicing pharmacists. As Junior Board Member for the South Carolina Society of Health-system Pharmacists (SCSHP), I have proposed a mentorship program where students will learn from pharmacist mentors about their roles in impacting medication-related outcomes and expanding pharmacy services. Furthermore, I will be working with other Junior Board Members on educating students about PPMI as a part of our Perfectly Professional series in SCSHP. This would include student-led discussions at state meetings and visiting the pharmacy school campuses to introduce students to PPMI and then facilitate interactive PPMI-focused projects that could even extend into real practice settings.
Through the success of past endeavors, I’ve learned that social media platforms are powerful tools for creating awareness of what pharmacists provide in the patient care process. It’s collaborative and forward-thinking efforts in pharmacy that have brought national attention to provider status legislation over the past year. Not a day goes by when I don’t see a “tweet”, post, or article about expanding pharmacy services, and all of these singular occurrences add up to a collaborative conscience that’s affecting change in our profession. Students will soon become the next big thinkers and leaders in pharmacy; hence, exposing them to PPMI now will assist in furthering the model’s goals in the future, and by having fun along the way, they will be inspired to reach even higher in their efforts.