Your local independent pharmacist sponsors your daughter’s softball team. He counsels your uncle on smoking cessation products, then remembers when he comes in next month and asks him how he’s doing with it. She calls you up the week after your son got a round of antibiotics for that nasty bronchial infection to check and see if he’s feeling better. He might even be the mayor of the town, serve on the city council or PTA, and he’ll absolutely buy your nephew’s fundraiser candy bars. She cares deeply about your community because your community cares deeply about her practice…in 2019 if it didn’t she’d have to close the doors and turn off the lights.
Now more than ever, on World Pharmacist’s Day, we here at Pharmacy Proud need our readers, both pharmacists and patients alike, to appreciate that fact. The success of your practice and the overall health of the community in which it is located have never been more firmly linked to how much you care about your patients…your friends. If your friends don’t fight to keep their insurance company from forcing them to use mail order pharmacies or forcing them to use the Three Letter Chain down the street you can’t survive in the brave new world of DIR, GER, BER, LMNOP, RSTLNE, FML, and SOS (some of these acronyms may not actually be pharmacy-specific, of course). If your friends don’t recognize and appreciate the fact that you care more not just about them but about your town they won’t fight for you…and if they don’t recognize and appreciate this maybe they SHOULDN’T fight for you. Think of World Pharmacist’s Day as World Community Day, World Empathetic Care Day, World Neighbor Day, and World Friend Day. Be a champion for your community every day and when you need it most…your community will be a champion for you.
Raise that trophy!
-Dave