Pursuing a Career in Health Care

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When a patient walks in to visit the pharmacy they are making a decision about their health care. Patient’s health care decisions should not be limited to choosing their doctor or pharmacy, but should be extended to deciding how that doctor and pharmacist works with them to achieve their personal health goals. Pursuing a career in health care requires a commitment to a long-term formal education, a great deal of debt and a lifelong commitment to continuing education. After completing school a pharmacist has a well-developed set of tools for dealing with patient populations to help them manage their health care. These tools are not acquired to determine patient’s health care needs for them. Often pharmacists and doctors complete their education and believe that education makes them better suited than the patient to evaluate the patient’s needs. No one is better suited to make decisions regarding their body than the patient themselves. My position in health care is one of an advisor rather than a manager. As a pharmacist I will work to educate patients rather so that they can make educated decisions about their health. Educating patients allows them to be more autonomous in their pursuit of health care and also allows them to pursue treatments that are most beneficial to them personally rather than what is most beneficial to the pharmacist, doctor or hospital.

In order to best assist patients we must not only educate patients but we must educate them in a non-persuasive, honest, trustworthy and ethical way. Fidelity is important when working with patients, to win the trust of a patient we must be honest with them and educate them about their condition or therapy without poisoning that education with persuasive or biase...

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...en. If I make a mistake in the pharmacy I take every step possible to remedy that mistake. I educate the patient on the possible adverse effects of our mistake, I inform the provider, I remedy the mistake and log it and the steps that led to the mistake to prevent it from happening again. By learning from our mistakes we hold ourselves to the ultimate standard of one day working without error. While this goal may be theoretically unachievable it is what we must strive for as we are working with humans not just with profit margins.

Pharmacy has opened my eyes to what health care is truly all about. It isn’t about making decisions in the best interest of ourselves, or the company we work for. Health care is about the patient. Health care is about educating people so that they can make decisions about their body and receive specialized, personal treatment.

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