For Kelsey Melgaard (fourth from left), self-advocacy has supported her successes and made disappointments easier to move on from.
By Kelsey Melgaard, PharmD, MPH
As a student pharmacist, you learn a lot about advocating for patients and the profession. But what about advocating for yourself? Self-advocacy is often discussed in the context of disabilities, but this skill is applicable and essential for anyone.
As you strive to be an effective health professional, it is important that you develop the ability to meet your own needs so that you can most effectively care for patients. However, this must be done carefully, as there is a delicate balance between advocating for yourself and being perceived as arrogant, lazy, or needy.
According to Google Dictionary, self-advocacy is “the action of representing oneself or one’s views or interests.” To me, this means that I need to have a good understanding of myself, my values, interests, strengths, and needs in order to be able to represent myself. Further, I need to develop these skills in order to adequately represent myself with confidence in order to make progress in meeting my goals.
Why is it important?
Self-advocacy is a key skill in making sure that individuals can identify their needs and wants, and to know how to meet their needs in order to reach their overarching goals. This may be important at different times in each individual’s career, but it is likely going to be necessary throughout. As a student, it will be important to self-advocate if you are running for a leadership position locally, regionally, or nationally, when applying for scholarships, internships, residency, or your first pharmacist job, and even throughout your academic work. As a practicing pharmacist, you will rely on self-advocacy skills in negotiating job benefits and earning a promotion.
How to get started
First, it is important to know yourself. You can get to know yourself better by taking a deep dive in doing self-assessment activities. You might do this by using self-reflection books or seminars, or talking with colleagues, family, and friends about what they perceive as strengths as well as weaknesses that you possess. This is likely one of the most difficult steps in learning to self-advocate while respecting your values, interests, goals, and skills authentically. However, being deliberate and patient with this step will help to uncover any subtleties and establish any overarching themes in these areas.
Next, you need to know what you need. It is important to identify your wants and needs in order to establish your next goal. Establishing clarity in wants and needs is essential in determining the path to reach your next goal, so make sure to dig into your personal priorities and values. In this step, it is important to identify resources available to you through your school, work, or extracurricular activities that may be useful for you. These resources are not out there to meet your goals for you, rather they should be used to help you progress with relevant steps along your pathway. Before moving onto your next step, you should be able to define your goal after taking careful consideration of your wants, needs, values, skills, and interests.
Finally, you have to take the steps necessary to meet your needs. Use resources that were identified in the previous step to help make each step easier. Since your goal has been defined, review all the background information that you collected. Consider talking with an advisor, mentor, faculty member, or colleague to help you set your plan of action, obtain feedback, and practice your skills through role playing.
Persistence pays off
At times during your journey you may need to take a step back and observe, as this is an on-going process to continue reflecting on and meeting your goals while also advancing your professional development. Articulating your ideas and expressing your needs will be imperative throughout, but it will become easier with time.
Adapting self-advocacy into my professional development plan has supported my successes and made my less successful endeavors easier to move on from.
Kelsey Melgaard, PharmD, MPH, is a 2019 graduate of the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy and is now a PGY1 Pharmacy Resident at St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth, MN.