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I remember the day I realized I was caught in the prescription mill and it seemed there was no way out. I was standing in the pharmacy, just a couple years out of university, with some of Linda Strand’s writing in my hand. I knew without a doubt that “Pharmaceutical Care” was what I should be doing. I also knew that I had no idea how to “do” medication management. I didn’t know any pharms who were doing it, was not really taught it in university, and I had ALL these prescriptions to deal with non-stop all day.

Okay, so that was 1996… but I know I’m not the only one who had a rude awakening once they started their professional practice. Wasn’t I supposed to help patients manage their medications and optimize their therapy? Make sure patients who needed drug therapy received it and those that were receiving unnecessary drugs were identified?

Yup, that’s really our job. The prescription mill? A trained tech can produce an accurate Rx from a hard copy. As a matter of fact there’s probably a computer out there that can read an Rx and spit out an accurate product. It’s not rocket science.

But looking at the over all picture of a patient from their labs, self reporting of chief complaint, previous response to meds and current drug therapy, etc. and deciding whether the Rx in front of you is really the BEST therapy for that patient…or if they really even need drug therapy at all? That’s the art and science of Pharmacy. Making the clinical decision to adapt (change) that prescription or prescribe for that patient, when you know therapy can be improved, then following up on that care…no machine can manage that. It takes knowledge, clinical experience, triage skills, sourcing of info, patient interview skills, ability to refer and knowledge of your own personal skill set and boundaries.

In considering all that, what I often hear from colleagues is that it isn’t possible. We have no time, not enough support staff, our software isn’t capable of what we need it to do, it takes too much paperwork, etc.

And really…when you’re stuck churning out hundreds of scripts a day it’s easy to slowly drift into apathy, or feel burnt out…tuck your head down and do a great job of at least searching out drug interactions (or assessing the clinical validity of the ones the computer caught), checking doses that look way out there, answer patient’s questions… Just be accurate, make no mistakes and go home.

Over the years as I worked at top speed in the mill, I lost a lot of my clinical skills. What you don’t use you lose, right?  I hadn’t looked up an A1C on a patient or applied the newest Otitis guidelines in so long I was afraid to start.

If I was given the perfect circumstances, all the time I needed, the ideal practice setting…would I be able to do the job I wanted to? Could I take responsibility for a patient’s medication management, make recommendations on drug therapy, solve complex drug related problems? Well…I wasn’t sure.

We know that care of the patient is our primary task.  Pharmacists have no problem putting patient’s first. I see it every day. We’ve never been paid to talk to patients or assess medical issues and make recommendations, but we do it.

Where we can be our own worst enemy is in lacking the confidence to make the shift into medication management:  to take responsibility for clinical decisions, make the call, sign our name to the decision.  And sometimes we know that our skills need to be sharpened and our knowledge refreshed but we don’t know where to start.

Mentorship and good learning opportunities are essential for practice change;  Assessing for yourself what you need in order to shift your practice and feel comfortable doing it, and finding the energy and passion to embrace change.

We now have the framework, have a start at being paid to manage patients’ medication therapy, not just handle prescriptions; and it’s up to us as a profession whether we take it up, change our mind set, our focus and move forward.