A Challenge to Script Your Future
As a third-year pharmacy student, I’m amazed at how much I have learned over the last few years; how to treat a community-acquired MRSA infection; the name of the hypertension guidelines for treatment; the maximum quantity of pseudoephedrine that can be purchased from a pharmacy in a day.
My knowledge has certainly expanded since that first day of school, when I struggled to say “metoprolol.” And yet it feels as if there’s something crucial lacking in my curriculum, through no fault of my respected professors.
It’s just not something that can be easily taught. It’s the ability to connect with patients to help them realize for themselves how their daily medications can save their lives.
As health care professionals, we know where to look for evidence-based medicine, and we dispense prescriptions and counseling accordingly. However, we often forget that perhaps the most powerful capability at our disposal lies not in scribbling on our prescription pad or in targeting numbers on a lab printout. It’s recognizing that in order to truly provide optimal care, we need to find a common language that will help our patients make their own health a priority.
UCSF is participating in its first-ever interprofessional competition, called “Script Your Future.” As part of the 2013 Medication Adherence Team Challenge, we will compete against other pharmacy schools and collaborate with medicine, dentistry, physical therapy and nursing schools across the nation to get our message out.
Our goals are to increase awareness of medication adherence issues through a variety of means: social media, community outreach, person-to-person education and public relations. We’ll be making videos, silly online memes, and getting our voices heard (literally) on the radio. You’ll find us at the Embarcadero every Saturday this month talking to the community about these goals.
At the end of the month-long challenge, select schools or colleges will be recognized nationally for their efforts to improve medication adherence.
All health professional schools at UCSF are welcome and encouraged to join us in our efforts. As future health care providers, we all have a professional obligation to act in the best interests of our patients’ health. Perhaps the first steps we can take are to share this responsibility with patients themselves.
To learn more about our competition, visit www.scriptyourfuture.org or contact a member of the UCSF Script Your Future team: Nichol Baxter (P3), Tiffany Chung (P3), Timothy Mok (P2), Tracy Trang (P3), Lien Truong (P1), Charisma Urbiztondo (P1), Stephanie Wong (P1), Yuumi Miyazawa (P1) or our advisors Drs. Jennifer Cocohoba, Pharm.D, and Kirsten Balano, Pharm.D.
