Here's Something for APhA To Do

If you get bored some time, run a little experiment with the general public. Ask them what a doctor, dentist, optometrist and pharmacist do on a regular basis. I bet all could describe the first three quite accurately. Furthermore, I would wager that roughly 9 out of 10 would describe pharmacists as ‘The person who puts my medication in a bottle.”

Is this an incorrect statement? No, generally it is not, but it describes only one small facet of the life of a pharmacist. In fact, I do not think it is farfetched to say that the public generally has no idea what a pharmacist does and/or what they are capable of.

If the APhA and other organizations really want to make a difference in the profession, why not address this fact? In twenty-first century medicine, pharmacists have become an integral part in patient care. That is not to say they were not so in the past, but they are much more dynamically involved than ever before.

Patients simply do not know what pharmacists can do on a daily basis. They are not robots who merely count by five all day. Nor are they able to only give suggestions on the best type of cold medication for a patient. Pharmacists are a fountain of information that is often not used to its full potential.

Do patients really know how many times we fix prescribing mistakes their doctors make? Do they realize that it is the pharmacist who is often correcting a dose or inputting suggestions on different, yet similar, treatment options based upon side effects or contraindications they see? Or that a pharmacist plays a key role in the treatment of whatever ailment they possess in a hospital?

How about pharmacists who save patients money by finding less expensive alternatives to their current drug therapy? Or the pharmacists who can relay complex medical conditions into laymans terms, something many doctors struggle with. Or the pharmacists who can more closely monitor your diabetes or blood pressure problems simply because they see you on a regular basis.

If you ask those ten people will they mention any of those facts? I venture that maybe one of them will hit one or two, but no more than that.

So why isn’t this being addressed? Why are there not ads, if that’s what needs to be done, showing what the profession is really about?

What sparked this thought was in my last interview there was a session involving some of the professors of the school who described what they did. While they did this I scanned the room at the other people there and, not so much to my surprise, the vast majority (I would venture 85% or higher) sat with their mouths slightly awry. One of the professors, noticing this fact, quipped, “Pharmacy is not really what you thought it is, isn’t it?”

And that is entirely truthful. During all of my interviews I have been rather surprised at how little the other applicants know of the profession. Sure you could attribute that to their inability to research their future job, but when looking in a larger scope you notice that really very few people know what a pharmacist does.

That is something that truly must be addressed. Of course I am not the person to lead such a charge, nor am I sure what should be done, but I realize that it is a problem. If we want pharmacy to realize its true potential, people have to realize what we have to offer.

Or am I completely off base here?