Kara Mudd, PharmD, is a PGY-1 General Practice Resident at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, WI.
Hello, “Grace!” Thank you for sharing what you’ve learned from your recent rotation experiences. It sounds like you were able to gain exposure in settings that allowed you to enhance your communication skills and broaden your clinical knowledge.
Rise in telehealth
Telehealth was already offered in a variety of pharmacy practice settings prior to the COVID-19 pandemic; however, its use has increased more recently. This shift has required pharmacists and student pharmacists to recognize the differences in effective communication skills between face-to-face and telephone visits. Many of my preceptors shared advice on how to maintain effective communication during these visits, so don’t be afraid to ask your own preceptors or fellow student pharmacists how they have best navigated telephone visits.
Here are a few tips that I have found beneficial when leading telephone visits with patients.
1. Dedicate your full attention to the patient. As a student pharmacist and a pharmacy resident that it can be easy to get distracted with other tasks, such as wanting to respond to co-worker messages or check e-mails while on the phone. However, it is important to not engage in those activities and be fully present during your conversations with patients to demonstrate respect for their time and to ensure that you do not miss key information that may impact your clinical decisions.
2. Provide the patient with opportunity to fully respond. Often it can be easy to get in a “routine” with phone visits when collecting and providing the patient with information. One piece of advice I received from a preceptor as a student pharmacist was not to be afraid of pauses in the conversation, especially after asking the patient a question. This lets the patient think about the question and potentially provide more information when answering.
3. Ensure patient understanding. One of the biggest challenges of phone visits is the inability to assess a patient’s comprehension through their nonverbal cues. During phone visits, you are unable to assess the patient’s facial expressions or body language, making effective communication even more important. One method I have found extremely useful to ensure patient understanding is the “teach-back method.” At the end of patient visits, I will try to pick one or two of the most important points of our conversation and ask the patient to repeat that information back to me. Or, if I am providing a lot of new information to the patient, I find it helpful to verify understanding throughout the visit.
At the end of the day, the primary goal of telephone visits is to ensure you are providing the patient with the best possible care. This may require more attention to your own communication skills—at least, it did for me!—but it’s amazing to see how much of an impact pharmacists continue to make on patient care using telehealth.
Draw from your rotation experience during interviews
For many student pharmacists, selecting clinical rotations can be challenging given the wide variety of practice settings and specialty areas. I highly recommend student pharmacists select a few clinical rotations in less-familiar areas; you never know what may spark your interest and, regardless, they will be excellent learning opportunities.
For those of you active now during residency interview season, I encourage you to spend time reflecting on your clinical rotations, as those are great experiences to draw from during interviews. Wishing all the best of luck!