community note publisher’s impact
Dear Colleagues: As I reviewed the lead stories for this issue of Academic Pharmacy Now I could not help but reflect back on my own experiences, now aged approximately 40 years, with pharmacy school recruitment activities. The recruitment that worked in my personal case was the enthusiastic response from my family’s pharmacist when I asked about attending pharmacy school. “Oh yes, Lucinda! Pharmacy is great. You study for five years and when you graduate you’ll make $20,000! Oh, and if you want to have a family, pharmacy’s flexibility lets you do that.” I was sold and the rest is history.
nity colleges and other public gatherings. Their message platform is “Pharmacy Is Right for Me” (http://pharmacyforme.org/). AACP has created a network to enable the sharing of recruitment strategies to make it easier to present new and creative information about pharmacy and the exciting career pathways awaiting future graduates. Champions were provided the messages from our #Healthystartshere campaign last spring and summer. Clearly, our preceptors and alumni are also important audiences so that they spread our positive message to encourage young people they meet to study pharmacy.
The number of years and dollars have obviously changed over the decades, but what would today’s pharmacist say to a Gen Y or Z bringing the same question? I hear rumblings in social media and in professional meetings that our frontline practitioners are not encouraging young people or the parents of rising college students to consider pharmacy. Payment systems that are terribly broken, lack of properly trained help in the face of rising volumes of prescriptions filled and immunizations delivered, poorly designed and compensated MTM programs, and other challenges confront many of today’s community-based practitioners.
There are so many reasons why high school and college students who seek a profession that impacts peoples’ lives should consider pharmacy. Medication use and the optimization of patients’ regimens is central to safe, high quality healthcare. Policy makers at all levels of the public and private sector are coming to the realization that pharmacists are vital to achieving our triple aims of patient satisfaction, positive outcomes and cost effective care. Sincerely,
Colleges and schools of pharmacy must consider how these attitudes of our frontline ambassadors can influence our own recruitment efforts. Our 130-plus National Recruitment Champions are ramping up their efforts to reach new audiences in middle and high schools, commu-
Lucinda L. Maine, Ph.D., R.Ph. CEO and Publisher
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Academic Pharmacy NOW 2017 Issue 4
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