4 Ways Pharmacists Can Be Impactful

Lindsay Davis, PharmD, BCPS, ASH-CHC, TTS, and Elizabeth Pogge, PharmD, MPH, BCPS-AQ Cardiology, both professors at Midwestern University College of Pharmacy — Glendale, Glendale, AZ, discuss ways that pharmacists can be impactful in health care. This video was filmed at the 2019 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Summer Meetings & Exhibition in Boston.

Lindsay Davis, PharmD, BCPS, ASH-CHC, TTS: So we want to leave you today with 4 ways you can be impactful. What actions and behaviors can you take to make sure you are providing the best anticoagulation care and being good stewards of patient safety and good-quality outcomes. The first is listen up: When your patients are talking, you need to be silent, you need to listen to them. They'll tell you a lot of things, and that can help you to make sure you're helpignt hem to make the best decision possible. The next is speak up: If you see something, hear something, recognize something that doesn't seem quite right about a patient's regimen, you've got to let somebody know so that we can make changes in therapy. Just being a repository of knowledge isn't going to help our patients. We have to make sure we're being impactful with the information that we have.

Elizabeth Pogge, PharmD, BCPS, FASCP: Number three is study up: This information changes so quickly. It's hard to keep up with all that inforation, so we need to study up. And we can learn from other people, learn from our colleagues, learn from other healthcare professionals, but be stewards and keep learning and study up. And then lastly, follow up. So if we're making great interventions and we're not following up on these interventions and making sure that they're happening for our patients, we're not doing our patients any good. So we need to make sure we're following up and making sure that all of our recommendations, if they're sound recommendations, are getting implemented for our patients so that we can provide the best patient care possible.