Patients' Experiences with Illness & Roles of Pharmacists

Patient care is arguably one of the most important aspects in pharmacist's roles which involve various steps and actions that ensure safe, rational and effective use of medicine to improve the patient's therapeutic outcome and quality of life.1 To be a responsible pharmacist, one has to play various roles such as care giver, teacher, leader and more so as to implement steps that would provide the patient with the utmost care available.

A male patient interviewed at 58 years old diagnosed with hypertension following a GP general check up at 52 years old.3 He was on various medications of which there were two that gave him adverse effects3. The patient experiences dizziness all the time when he took Covesil and claims that it is strong, even in small doses.3 According to him, he also experienced blurred vision and had difficult reading newspaper which could possibly be one of the negative side effects of Isinopril that he was taking. As a communicator and care giver, the pharmacist has to actively listen to the patient's concerns monitoring response. Therefore, the pharmacist should consider liaising with the patient's doctors to review and verify the patient's prescription. With the Medicine Management Pathway1(MMP) in mind, the pharmacist could suggest a few alternate drugs such as Diltiazide,3 that would be appropriate and safe for the patient, after all intentions made by the patient's doctor is cleared. Diltiazide is more compatible with him as he experienced considerably less side effect as compared to the other drugs. Provision of medicine information1 should then be given to both the doctor and patient by the pharmacist to increase their awareness to the information regarding the drug.

A 59 year old daughter is a carer for her mother who suffer stroke at the age of 83. Her mother suffers from vascular dementia and some visual loss and is on a number of medication to cope with the disorder. She is unable to safely self medicates and require her daughter to assist her, however her daughter is not always able to administer the medication and her sibling would attempt help out but they are unsure of the administration information even though it was written down. The pharmacist displayed his responsibility as a teacher by undergoing provision of medicine information1 which is highlighted in the MMP, providing and discussing all the prescribed medicine details to the carers involved.1 In addition to ensuring the safety of administration of medicine, the pharmacist demonstrated qualities of a leader2 such