One of the most pressing issues facing the profession of health-system pharmacy is the lack of awareness by the general public about pharmacists as heathcare providers. Most people have no idea of the level of care that pharmacists can provide their patients. Nowhere was this more evident than March 2009 when the Obama administration assembled a panel of healthcare experts to discuss overhauling the nation’s healthcare system. Represented on the panel at the White House Health Reform Conference were doctors, union leaders, business groups, hospitals, insurance companies, and consumer organizations; pharmacists were conspicuously absent.
Pharmacists must accept some of the responsibility for antiquated public notions about our profession. Many of us are uncomfortable in the public forum. We do our jobs and live quiet lives when we ought to be asserting ourselves to correct inaccurate public perceptions about who we are and what we do. Our reticence has had consequences: it has left lawmakers and the public largely in the dark about the role of health-system pharmacists in patient care. We need to be more willing to educate the public about who we are and what we do so that we can continue to be in a position to make the best possible decisions and provide the best care for the patients that we serve. I believe I can do my part, as a practicing pharmacist, by ministering to the patients I see every day, ministering to the patients I do NOT see every day, and by advocating for the profession on state and national levels.
The most important thing we can do to educate the public about health-system pharmacy is to care for and about the patients that we see every day. The more patients we come into contact with, the more we can make a difference in patient perceptions about pharmacists and the more we can positively influence patient attitudes about their own health. Many of the patients I interact with at the hospital where I work or the clinics where I volunteer do not know that pharmacists can perform physical assessments or give immunizations. “I didn’t know that pharmacists DO that,” is the usual wide-eyed response I get from patients during my anticoagulation lectures at the hospital or during health screenings. I love my interactions with patients, and I enjoy teaching them about the things that I am learning as a student in the context of answering their health questions. These conversations help me better serve my patients and help dispel the notion that pharmacy is only about counting pills.
The second thing we can do is to reach out to the people that we do NOT see every day. These are the people on the fringes of society that do not come into the hospital or the clinic unless they are extremely ill. Doing this work requires a commitment to the communities in which we live and work. Asking busy pharmacists to sign on for additional hours beyond their usual workweek might seem like a tall order, but we, as a society of professionals, must rise to meet this challenge. We must be willing to minister to people who do not reside in the same circles that we do. I started volunteering at the VA Medical Center and at the free clinic outside of pharmacy school because I wanted to use my clinical skills to make a difference in the lives of patients who require special care. This work has been some of the most meaningful of my career, and I mean to continue it as a practicing pharmacist.
Third, we must be willing to advocate for the profession (and ultimately the patients that we serve) on both state and national levels. Although the specifics of health reform and how they will relate to the pharmacy profession are yet unknown, the March 23, 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act offers pharmacists unprecedented opportunities to step up and become leaders in the health care movement. We need to reach out as practitioners and as students and make the most of this historic opportunity to take care of the chronically ill, increase the quality of care provided to patients while decreasing costs, and promote team-based care. I became involved on a statewide level as a student chapter president and board member of my statewide ASHP affiliate. We have started to lobby the legislature in our state, to find our voice as a profession, to make sure that laws don’t pass that could compromise the care that we provide our patients. I will continue my involvement with both my state affiliate and ASHP after graduation, because I believe that it is important that pharmacists speak with a collective voice on issues which affect the way we practice and care for our patients. By choosing not to advocate, pharmacists are making a choice to let other, more vocal, groups decide how we will be able to care for our patients. We must make our voices heard or lose this momentous chance to expand pharmacist’s roles under health care reform.