I get asked this one a lot. Sometimes it’s by friends, sometimes by patients, but, most of the time by family. They ask me how school is going and if I’m almost done yet and ready to be a pill pusher. I then try to respectfully educate them that being a pill pusher is not everything that I will be doing upon graduation. I try to get them thinking about every place possible that having someone being a medication expert would be useful. Whether it be a university, doctor’s office, sports center, rehabilitation clinic, pharmacy is truly a multidimensional profession.
Pharmacy is also a type of profession that doesn’t discriminate. In this day in age, it’s difficult to find someone that isn’t on a medication themselves or that knows of someone close to them that is. Having such a vast patient demographic, pharmacy can be seen as something others can relate to. Whether it be bad things like patients complaining about those infamous wait times at a chain store or the side effects from a new drug that they’re sure of cause them more harm than good, or the good things about how a pharmacist instructed them to give an antibiotic to their sick child or assisting them in finding a coupon for an expensive medication during a time of financial hardship, pharmacy brings people together.
I believe advocacy to take a profession that already finds common ground among people from all different backgrounds and walks of life to further solidify this amicable characteristic. Advocacy could be the missing piece to a puzzle that our health care system has been lacking since it’s infancy. The United States Health Care System is different from almost all other countries from around the world. Unlike in our country, pharmacists are sought out first by patients in order to reserve physician visits for more serious ailments. I believe there is a reason why so many other countries have adopted this model: simply because it works. Advocacy for the profession of pharmacy will not only help pharmacists perform to their highest ability, but also allow patients to have better access to the care that they deserve.