Association Perspective
Thomas E. Menighan, BSPharm, MBA, ScD (Hon), FAPhA, EVP and CEO
I hear a lot of distress among pharmacists across the country, but I also hear pharmacists who are providing new services or growing their involvement into caregiving spaces. Are we about to flourish, or are we a profession in peril?
Yes.
Like our health colleagues, we’re grappling with constant disruption in health care, but we’re also becoming more highly evolved. We’re treating chronic diseases that used to be fatal. Digital therapies, pharmacogenomics, robotics, neural networks, and blockchain will change how and what we communicate. Tools that can help practitioners be more effective are becoming available. And it’s all the result of bold innovators.
A concept that originated in Harvard Business Review and is now the subject of a best-selling book, Innovators’ DNA, names the five skills of effective innovators: associating, questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting. As we move forward, we must tap into our inner innovator.
Student pharmacists, new practitioners, and experienced pharmacists alike will need to be innovators as they visualize and create the jobs of the future. Interprofessional education, now an academic standard, will be transformative as our health care peers increasingly rely on expertise only pharmacists can provide. How can we meet that need? Through technology, or a more personal touch? By extending pharmacists into the physician practices across the street? Getting more involved in decisions about coverage and spending? None, some, or all of them? Asking these questions, testing possible answers, measuring our impact—this is how we evolve.
I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but your APhA connections are crucial to your future success. Reflect on the five characteristics of innovators. Professional organization membership helps you develop all of them. Now is not the time to lose that connectivity. Members become familiar with diverse perspectives that enrich their understanding of colleagues, patients, and the world—personally and professionally—because great minds think differently. That helps you not just associate and network but observe how other pharmacists do their work, experiment through partnership and brainstorming, and question your paradigms.
APhA strives to improve patient access and pharmacist well-being while nurturing the innovation of roles we’ll have tomorrow. Check out page 36 of this issue to learn about how we’re doing the work at APhA2020 at the National Harbor in Washington, DC.
Unfortunately, those who disconnect from the growth opportunities experience disruption in a negative way. They may even find themselves examining why they entered pharmacy. Keep talking. Keep collaborating. Stay connected, and keep driving toward our profession’s bright future.