Your leading medication advocate:
Ready to help wherever you look
You have just taken your mother to an assisted living facility and in the process have identified the 14 prescription vials stored in various places around her former home. Or perhaps your employer has switched insurance carriers and you are learning that your prescription benefits have changed as well. Possibly you, who are never sick, have suddenly contracted the worst cold with a persistent cough that is preventing the sleep you so desperately need. What do you do? To whom do you turn?
The answer is simple and the solution is-wherever you look. The nation’s pharmacists stand ready to address these and many other issues the modern consumer has navigating the changing world of medicines, health care, and self care.
The pharmacist’s most visible role is certainly in the community. Quite a bit of attention has recently been directed to the fact that growing volumes of prescriptions and the increasing hassles of insurance coverage have caused pressures to mount in the community pharmacy. Nonetheless, consumers can turn to these pharmacists for more than they might realize.
After six years of college education largely focused on medications and how they work, pharmacists are truly medication experts. In what may seem like a simple act of filling a prescription, pharmacists do a lot. They check patients’ records to make sure that one prescription doesn’t duplicate another or interact badly. They may sometimes ask questions to monitor whether side effects are occurring and to avoid giving medications to which patients may be allergic.
Pharmacists can also be allies in getting the most value out of medication. When appropriate, pharmacists can recommend lower-cost generic alternatives or even over-the-counter medications. And they have information about programs that can help consumers access lower-cost medicines. Most important, pharmacists help consumers make the medicine work — so patients get the effect they are expecting. While consumers also need to inquire of their employer and/or insurer about how their prescription coverage is designed, pharmacists can help identify those medications that are and are not covered. They can discuss these issues and alternatives that will cost patients less money. Mostly, they can advocate for the very best medicine for your health.
Pharmacists aren’t only in traditional pharmacies. They are everywhere you look and even in places you might least suspect. Recent research studies have highlighted the life-saving role pharmacists can play in our nation’s hospitals. Supermarkets, health centers, and doctors offices are increasingly hiring pharmacists. In all settings, pharmacists are consulting directly with doctor’s and patients about selecting and using the right medications and monitoring patients’ progress on medication therapies. Pharmacists are consulting with assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and other residential care settings where some of the most vulnerable older people reside.
October is American Pharmacists Month. So remember that when you have a question, problem, or even just a curiosity about medications, look around! You are not ever very far from one of the nation’s practicing pharmacists.
Christopher R. Gauthier, RPh is the executive director of the Maine Pharmacy Association.
