Patient Perspective on Pharmacist-Patient Interaction

In an interview with Specialty Pharmacy Times, former NFL placekicker, Rolf Benirschke, CEO of Legacy Health Strategies, discusses how pharmacists can be there when counseling a patient who may have IBD or Crohn disease.

Rolf Benirschke: Specialty Pharmacy is huge in the IBD space. We depend on you to get us the right drugs, to counsel us. You know, I think there’s a transactional side which is really important. You gotta get us the right drugs, got to be timely, gotta explain stuff to us. But there’s also the emotional side that I think is often missed. It’s not just a transaction to us; this is our life. So, to the extent that you can understand what we’re going through and empathize with us, recognize that it’s a chronic disease that we’ve been sick with for a while. It’s not a fun disease.

So, the ability to connect with us empathetically is huge. You have to earn our trust, you can lose it quickly. You have to care about us. If you can get to know us, what we’re struggling with, and if you could give us hope that there’s a reason to stay on this medicine and keep on this medicine, even when it may take weeks to start to show its impact is huge. You’re important to us. You’re a critical part of our care team and we rely on you.