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Be a travel agent
By Kevin Frost
I was faced today with a patient who had an infection that we've all heard of, and I'm pretty sure that I once gave a talk on, but which I could not recall at all what drugs they should be on. Admittedly it'd been about 4 years since I'd dealt with a patient with this disease, and there's been plenty of other things that I had needed to know more of in the interim.
A few years ago, perhaps I would have really annoyed that I'd let my knowledge slip away. These days, I'm increasingly fond of the analogy that I came across perusing the Information Mastery site of the NPC . They call on pharmacists to be travel agents rather than encylopaedias.
Pharmacists could memorise arcane facts ready for an instant answer. One could spout out in a moment how the pharmacokinetics of rifampicin change with altering liver function test, but is that what our customers, patients, nurses and doctors want?
No, they want someone who knows where to find answers and tell them what it means. A travel agent should have a good grasp of geography and tourist customs, but not a complete list of hotels in Madrid in his head. Likewise a pharmacist should have a good grasp of pharmaceutical science and medicines management, but not have every ADR to fluvastatin in their head.
(That is of course unless your job revolves around ADRs in statins...)
Both pharmacists and travel agents need to know where to access up-to-date information to answer the specifics, and the skills to interpret that to what's needed in the specific instance. In addition, the information we process changes so frequently now, anything you commit to memory will possibly be out-of-date or wrong by the time it's needed again.
So be a travel agent, not an encyclopaedia, and feel good that it's not essential to know everything.
A few years ago, perhaps I would have really annoyed that I'd let my knowledge slip away. These days, I'm increasingly fond of the analogy that I came across perusing the Information Mastery site of the NPC . They call on pharmacists to be travel agents rather than encylopaedias.
Pharmacists could memorise arcane facts ready for an instant answer. One could spout out in a moment how the pharmacokinetics of rifampicin change with altering liver function test, but is that what our customers, patients, nurses and doctors want?
No, they want someone who knows where to find answers and tell them what it means. A travel agent should have a good grasp of geography and tourist customs, but not a complete list of hotels in Madrid in his head. Likewise a pharmacist should have a good grasp of pharmaceutical science and medicines management, but not have every ADR to fluvastatin in their head.
(That is of course unless your job revolves around ADRs in statins...)
Both pharmacists and travel agents need to know where to access up-to-date information to answer the specifics, and the skills to interpret that to what's needed in the specific instance. In addition, the information we process changes so frequently now, anything you commit to memory will possibly be out-of-date or wrong by the time it's needed again.
So be a travel agent, not an encyclopaedia, and feel good that it's not essential to know everything.
