So, patients get prescriptions from their PHYSICIANS. Because pharmacists are also "doctors" in the sense that their degree is the doctoral degree, just as PhD, MD, DD, and all other D's are doctors. But, doctor, physician, same thing in lay. And there have been changes in the responsibilities and practices of the pharmacy profession to make it even more critical to the medical therapy of the patient. For instance, though USC was the first to have the PharmD program in 1950, pharmacy programs in the US were all changed to PharmD in 2000. So many of the older pharmacists aren't used to being addressed "Doctor (blah)." Also, only in 1993 were pharmacists required to provide patient consults on new medications. This is important for patients to completely follow the steps to fix/maintain whatever health problems they have. But so many studies find that people don't follow through with their medications, and they end up going back to their physicians because their problems come back or persist longer than expected. Why does this happen?
Pharmacists took up the responsibility to be the one to guide patients properly through their drug therapy. That is why we are required to know everything about every drug out there. We want patients to have the best outcome from their medication regime at the lowest cost. This is where consultations come in to help. Though we can ask questions to determine what medication would help the patient (like detective work!), we don't diagnose (job for physicians). This means that we are at our best when we know the patient's complete medical history (what are they taking now? What have they taken before?), any supplemental drugs, any allergies, health conditions, etc. But there's usually missing information and we can only trust the patient to tell us everything (being honest about not taking a drug as indicated). Most physicians don't find out that patients may be taking blood pressure medication every other day instead of every day as prescribed. They may think that it doesn't work, so they prescribe a higher dose (which could lead to adverse effects). So, as health care professionals, we should work together (like detectives in different departments!!!) to find out what is going on with a patient. It makes sense to be a health profession for a patient right?
Anyway, on top of all the "how are pharmacists involved with patient care" stuff, I have to memorize drug names, dosages, indications, and classifications for the Top 100 drugs. It's crazy because they feel like random words and numbers, which most of them are (brand names...). And I have to learn at what age people get what shots at what dosage. Oh yeah, pharmacists can give shots, and one of my professors predicts that pharmacists will take up the responsibility to provide shots for people. We'll see. The profession is so heavily regulated and feels so "new" compared to the medical profession. As one of my professors said, medical doctors have distinguished themselves very well from each other... say if one family doctor gets sued, the surgeon in local hospital isn't affected. But say if a pharmacist in local pharmacy gets sued, all pharmacists get a bad reputation.
I'll leave this with an awesome quote by my professor: "Patients don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." Can't force patients to take their meds properly, go to check-ups and follow-ups, and return to you for future problems if you don't care if they recover or not.
In other news, I hiked up to the Hollywood sign with a bunch of other pharm students (mostly P1, some P2)!
