By Crystal Shaw, PharmD

Like all healthcare providers working in the field, I feel like I am working non-stop to provide the best care to patients that I can. Our current health care system stresses ever-increasing speed and efficiency while minimizing costs; these emphases compel health care providers across disciplines to push themselves to their limits, and make their time all the more valuable. Under these conditions, it becomes even more important for professionals to recognize when other types of providers can make their jobs easier and their patient care more effective.

Although pharmacists have long been core members of healthcare teams, community pharmacists in particular are frequently underutilized in many practice settings. To illustrate this, I conducted an experiment: over the span of seven days at the community pharmacy where I work, I tracked the number of times I interacted with other health professionals. During that week, I received a total of eight medication- or patient-related phone calls from other health professionals. For scale, I answer on average 150-200 phone calls per week, the majority of them routine calls from patients or doctors calling in new prescriptions. Should medical practitioners more frequently turn to community pharmacists, they will find valuable sources of both technical and community knowledge.

Community pharmacists have extensive knowledge of medication, acquired from years of schooling and study. While filling prescriptions keeps us very busy, at the end of the day we are still pharmacists, experts on medication. Whether there is a question about treating a patient in the hospital or a drug interaction for a new medication prescribed to a patient by their primary care provider, we are trained to answer any and all medication questions. And, if we do not easily have the answer our fellow professionals are seeking, we can draw upon a plethora of resources to find the answer.

Alongside this technical knowledge, our practice location gives pharmacists a unique perspective on patients’ lives; we have the rare opportunity to get to know patients on a deeply personal level. For many, the pharmacy is the health care facility they visit most often: multiple maintenance medications necessitate frequent trips out to the pharmacy for patients or their caregivers. We build relationships with these patients, and we gain insights into their lives that can become important should they become hospitalized and in another provider’s care. We can tell, for example, if they’ve been taking blood pressure medication, or if they recently started purchasing an over-the-counter product indicative of an underlying health issue. And, we can often see earlier signs of health deterioration, at which time we refer them to doctors, dentists, or sometimes even the hospital.

Next time you are working in your medical team and you have a question about a medication or you need medication-related insight on a patient, give your local community pharmacist a call. It may make all the difference for your patient.

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By Rubby Koomson, RN

Mentoring is a central tenet and hallmark of the Urban Service Track/AHEC Scholars (UST/AS) program. A mentor is a non-judgmental individual who is trustworthy, listens, gives constructive criticism, and acts as an overall role model for the student or novice professional. Mentorship is integral to students’ experiences with the UST/AS program from the day they are accepted.

As a first-year student in UST, I looked up to the second-year students as coaches and mentors. These coaches were instrumental in teaching me how to maneuver through the program. From these early days in UST to my professional career today, my notions about what mentoring entails have evolved. I used to think mentoring could only be done when one is at the peak of their profession; I have come to realize the right time to begin mentoring is fluid. After just six months of working as a nurse, I found myself mentoring less-seasoned colleagues and student nurses. That was the moment I learned that I did not have to know everything about the job in order to be a mentor, but rather that I had to be aware of the resources at my disposal and be able to direct others to those resources when needed. This criterion is undoubtedly applicable in both nursing as well as other professions.

One of the key components of mentoring is providing mentees with constructive feedback. Good mentoring requires clear, effective communication between mentor and mentee. Such communication and well-intentioned, constructive criticism are especially important early in the mentoring relationship, as the parties adjust to each other’s teaching and learning styles. It can be quite difficult to gracefully give constructive criticism, and it can be equally difficult to gracefully receive constructive criticism. If mishandled in the delivery or intent, criticism can be one of the factors that sabotages the mentoring relationship. But, once clear, open, effective communication is established, constructive criticism will find its place and value in a mentoring relationship.

Mentoring is an exciting learning opportunity for all parties involved. Mentors have the opportunity to learn new ways of practicing and communicating from their mentees, to gain a deeper sense of self-awareness, and to frequently test their knowledge base. The mentee learns alternate ways of practicing medicine as well, and how to avoid some of the mistakes the mentor may have made as a student or new professional. My advice to you is to be prepared for and open to mentorship opportunities and relationships and aspire to be the type of mentor you needed and wanted as a new professional.

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By Owen Kahn, MD

Now that I am a resident physician, the difficulty of achieving a work-life balance has been pushed to the extreme, as many of you in health care fields have experienced or will. In dark times, during stretches when my schedule keeps me at the hospital every day for long hours, I fantasize about a future time when I won’t be as busy:

“When I’m an attending, things will be better and I’ll be happy.”

Then, I recall similar thoughts I had as a student in medical school. We were either studying, endlessly it seemed, or rotating from site to site, where we were always the least-experienced team member around. Stress, frustration and burnout were commonplace. We often fantasized about a future time when we wouldn’t be as busy:

“I can’t wait to graduate and be a resident. Maybe I’ll be happy then.”

I find myself in a familiar spot, with the same feelings, once again with unrealistic expectations of the future.

Granted, some things already are or will be better. As we medical professionals become more experienced and confident in our positions, the work itself becomes easier and each day stresses us less. Completing our training also allows us to reach our financial potential. However, attendings, supervisors, practitioners, all those who have reached the peaks of their careers, are usually no less busy than we are. Once training concludes, the safeguards put in place to protect trainees from overwork and burnout disappear. Unprotected, we acquire new professional roles and responsibilities as well as new personal roles and responsibilities as we start families.

At this time, I am still a resident-in-training, so I cannot speak from experience. But I hypothesize that my life will never necessarily get easier. Instead, it will likely become harder and more complicated. And that is okay. Accepting that life is and will be complicated permits us to prepare for it effectively. To best prepare, we need to be capable of successfully uniting work and life–now; we need to be able to find happiness in and outside of work–now. Because, just as our lives will become more complicated, the linkage between personal and professional lives will become more tenuous. Its maintenance is a skill and an art, rather than a science. We must learn and practice it as trainees so that we may be consummate professionals when we graduate, just as we learn and practice our individual disciplines of medicine, nursing, or pharmacy, among others.

I dislike the phrase work-life balance. Balance implies that two elements are at odds, opposing each other from different ends of a spectrum. Instead, our professional and personal lives must co-exist in a healthy relationship. Thus, I consider work-life union to be a more appropriate phrase. And we all need to be better at it.

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By Lisa Vallee, LCSW

Misunderstandings abound among medical professionals regarding the role of social workers, even among professionals who pride themselves on their involvement with and knowledge of interdisciplinarity. Many professionals believe they understand the function of social workers on their team, but do not fully grasp the technical knowledge and training that social workers possess. By explicating social workers’ knowledge and capacities, I hope to open up new opportunities for interdisciplinary engagement between social workers and their medical teams.

On a medical team, the social worker is typically seen as a resource guru, the professional who knows important phone numbers and works with local organizations capable of supplying basic needs and transportation. Medical social workers are often known to be responsible for discharge planning and coordinating aftercare. But social workers pick up this logistical knowledge over the course of their careers; their education and training prepare them to be more than logisticians.

The social worker possesses an understanding of human behavior and development within a broader social context, and of cultural differences among social groups. The topics social workers are educated on to this end include physical and mental illness, substance abuse, violence, grief and loss, homelessness, poverty, discrimination, aging, and spirituality. One of the central principles instilled in social workers is to pursue social change, particularly for vulnerable or oppressed individuals and groups.

For social workers operating at a systems level, the client may be a larger group, a community of people, or an organization; clinical social workers more typically work with individual patients or smaller groups, and these latter social workers are the ones found on medical teams. In their practice, social workers begin by assessing the level of fit between the client and the client’s environment. Social workers begin their assessment by collecting information about their client, organizing this information, and analyzing it. They carefully listen to the client and help them identify any problems or issues with their situations. They identify their client’s strengths and mobilize those strengths towards dealing with stressors having an adverse effect on their client’s life.

Following their assessments, social workers plan and carry out their interventions. Providing resources and coordinating care is essential to most interventions. However, social workers perform a number of other, crucial functions: they can diagnose and treat mental illnesses and substance use disorders; conduct psychotherapy with individuals, groups, families, and couples using a variety of evidence-based approaches; and work with community groups to build coalitions that work to promote or advance a social cause. In the political sphere, social workers engage in lobbying, testifying, or grassroots organizing to support legislation that advances the needs and rights of vulnerable groups.

Social workers can help clients change dysfunctional patterns of behavior and can improve communication between people. Their knowledge and understanding of human behavior uniquely position them to solve particular medical problems and to provide insight that other providers might lack on critical medical questions. The social worker is a critical player in the health care field and a vital member of any interdisciplinary team.

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