letter to a legislator

We hope this letter finds you well. We are first year student pharmacists at Notre Dame of Maryland University and we wanted to take some time to tell you about what pharmacists do. We would also like to advocate for what we feel pharmacists should be qualified to provide in the future to enhance patients’ quality of life.  Pharmacists are the care providers that patients see the most, in comparison to physicians and dentists. According to The National Association of Chain Drug Stores, roughly 90% of Americans live within a 5 mile radius of a pharmacy and that distance decreases to less than 2 miles in metropolitan areas. Pharmacists can provide many services to ease the load of a physician’s duty. For example, they can provide rapid lab tests for infectious diseases, cholesterol checks, and various other tests for people diagnosed with diabetes to help them monitor their glucose levels. This is important for patients’ medication adherence and keeping them up to date on their current health conditions.  Comment by Culhane, Nicole: Qualified isn’t the correct word….allowed maybe…. Comment by Culhane, Nicole: Good strong opening

Did you know that according to the American Pharmacists Association, almost 50% of people prescribed medications for chronic diseases do not take their medications correctly? Patient education can help increase not only adherence, but also non pharmacological factors, such as exercise, smoking cessation, a balanced diet, and socioeconomic factors, that can contribute to their wellbeing. This helps decrease the urgency and amount of time patients must wait for appointments with their primary physician. Patient education also helps to inform the patient on the dosage of their medication, how to take it, the side effects that can occur with it, and when to seek emergency attention. This particularly can be helpful when a patient is taking controlled drugs or using devices such as inhalers, which require proper administration and instruction. Another thing pharmacists can do is prescribe birth control, so instead of a patient having to go to their primary care physician, they can go to their local pharmacy, making it much more convenient. It can be very hard for patients to get an appointment with their primary care provider in a short time period, so pharmacists prescribing birth control is very helpful for patients and also eliminates unneeded stress.   Comment by Culhane, Nicole: You could have expanded a little more about how this could affect population health and compare it to immunizations, etc.

To summarize, pharmacists are a vital component of patient care and we believe they can provide more care to educate and help patients. As student pharmacists, we hope to provide many of the services we talked about and more to benefit the community in the near future. We aim to provide you with information about the pharmacist’s current scope of practice and look forward to speaking more about this topic with you and/or your representatives on legislative day in the Spring. If you have any questions and/or concerns, please feel free to contact  Student name and email address.

Sincerely,