Hello all!
I would just like to share some of my thoughts and ideas that came out of my brainstorming as I applied for the ASHP Student Leadership Award this year. In general, I tend to focus more on how to help others accomplish their goals rather than coming up with the ideas myself, so I doubt you will find anything too revolutionary below. If you are already familiar with these ideas though, I would really love to hear about how you're implementing them and how that has benefitted you and your pharmacy community!
As students on our way to becoming practicing pharmacists, I believe we ought to have a special interest in the Practice Advancement Initiative (PAI). Our careers will be most dramatically impacted in the long run by the expansion of the profession of pharmacy. The Practice Advancement Initiative seeks to more fully integrate pharmacists into direct patient care, increase the value of pharmacist training, and promote pharmacists as leaders of medication use. I believe students have a unique responsibility to not only be aware of the Practice Advancement Initiative but to actively participate in the promotion and development of pharmacy practice. We owe it to the pharmacy leaders who have gone before us and who have worked so tirelessly to bring the profession of pharmacy to where it is today. We cannot merely ride the coattails of these exceptional leaders; we must also take the lead in maintaining that momentum and expanding the pharmacist role.
One thing I would like to do as a student leader to promote the PAI and help pharmacy students stay engaged is seek their input through ASHP Connect and the Pharmacy Student Forum Advisory Groups. From my experience trying to familiarize students with the PAI as an executive member of the University of Kansas Student Society of Health-System Pharmacists, most students have never heard of the PAI. Rarely could they name more than one initiative or goal. I believe the ASHP PSF Advisory Groups could create resources to educate students and develop programs and handouts for student chapters to promote the PAI more aggressively. Webinars or boot camps are potential methods of equipping students to be mavens and advocates for the advancement of pharmacy practice. To my knowledge, various SSHP chapters already host a PAI week, a trend that I believe might need to become a requirement for SSHP chapters to remain recognized student affiliates of ASHP.
Increasing the amount of PAI-related programming at the Midyear Clinical Meeting could serve as another helpful method of promoting the PAI and engaging students. Seemingly more and more P2 and P3 students are attending the conference in hopes of gaining a competitive edge when applying for residencies. PAI workshops could be promoted as residency preparation sessions to emphasize their value to younger students, with the potential for these workshops to be student-led.
Additionally, each state affiliate should be encouraged to create a PAI task force that includes students. Numerous groups around the country have already created such a team and are actively promoting the PAI across their state. I believe the important thing now is to share those ideas and provide incentive for others to follow this example.
Finally, during my time at KU, the Pharmacy Forecast Student Workshop was one of the most effective activities I could find to engage students with these topics. It provided a helpful overview of the PAI to familiarize students with the basic concepts and then allowed them to dialogue through the various areas toward which pharmacy is expanding. I would like to see SSHP chapters host this event annually as the new ASHP Pharmacy Forecast is published. I believe SSHP chapters could also host roundtable discussions with local pharmacists who are currently pushing their practice forward. I trust that anything we can do to encourage students to address the issues in a personal way will go farther than simply providing the information and hoping students internalize it. As students enter the workforce and become the future of pharmacy it is vital that they understand and value where the profession has come from and where they want it to go.
I would love to hear your thoughts and comments! Thanks for reading.