Increasing Pharmacist Participation in Patient Care

Lindsay Davis, PharmD, ASH-CHC, BCPS, TTS and Elizabeth Pogge, PharmD, MPH, BCPS-AQ Cardiology, both faculty members at Midwestern University College of Pharmacy-Glendale, Glendale, AZ, discuss how pharmacists can be active participants in the management of patient care. This video was filmed at the 2019 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Summer Meetings & Exhibition in Boston, MA.

Lindsay Davis: It’s a great question to figure out: how can pharmacists be involved with the management of patients in the direct patient care level or at the stewardship level, which is a little bit more global at the system level policy level. When I think about direct patient care, I think about taking really good care of the patient that is in front of me. Making sure I’m listening really carefully. Figuring out what’s going on with them, what their needs are, what their concerns are and making sure that we choose a regimen that makes sense for them to keep them safe and also to get the best outcomes that we’re looking for. And when I think about policies, I think about all the different ways we’ve been involved with policies. That could be creating protocols for our practice to make sure we’re doing the right thing by doing continuous quality improvement work to find out where our gaps are and how we can make them better. When I think about global policy, things like writing white papers or being involved with research or in evidence- based guidelines to make sure that globally we’re taking care of the population.

Elizabeth Pogge: From a patient standpoint some of the things I also think about with anticoagulation is we need to make sure that there an effective therapy, but also make sure that it’s cost effective and that oftentimes with some of these newer agents it can be difficult to get them the right medication at the right dose at the right time at the right cost to make it useful for them because a medicine doesn’t work it they’re not taking it. And from a system level that way in the hospitals or in the ambulatory care clinics, I love being involved with providers to make decisions on what is the best medication that we should suggest on a system level to use for our patients. And so, whether or not it’s developing stuff for formulary management, whether or not it’s developing protocols on how we dose aegis from anticoagulation, I know that there is a lot of nuances within that we need to think about from a system level that a pharmacist can be involved in this world is changing so quickly with anticoagulation, and we need to stay on top of that.