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What’s innovation? Is it good? Maybe not? I’ve been thinking about this lately, as I talk to pharmacists and technicians throughout the province. Lots of different angles to it.
The entrepreneurial types love it. They are excited and stimulated by it. They see the professional and business reward potential of practice innovation. They are also excited about the learning and challenges they encounter as they maneuver through the necessary steps, including dealing with the College. You can see the glimmer in their eyes, the excitement in their voice as they talk about it. Sometimes their innovations are within the boxes that we operate, other times they want to operate outside of the box or want us to expand it. Sometimes they ask, other times they just do. They innovate and move on. Not much stays the same for these folks.
The clinical types are innovators too. Every day, they are challenged with new therapeutic situations. They innovate in how they approach these situations and use their knowledge, skills, and abilities to help their patients heal, or to keep them healthy. More knowledge and practice experience provides opportunities to innovate around their scope of practice. Or to ask for more scope. They want to do more, and they know what they need to do in order to provide better care for their patients. They are constantly adapting and learning about new drugs, and how and when to use them to meet clinical challenges in patient care. Sometimes the drugs themselves are innovative. Developing new therapies with novel mechanisms of action, or new uses for old drugs can also be characterized as innovative.
The business folks innovate and build their businesses. Pharmacy in the community has both the challenges and benefits of balancing business interests with professional interests. Neither can advance without consideration of the other. Some innovate within the rules, some outside of them. I see those at inquiry if they are significant. There is lots of room for positive business innovation within the rules. Successful businesses know this and thrive on it. They turn the challenges into opportunities and move forward.
Policy and government folks are really innovative. Developing public policies that meet the political, fiscal, and policy needs requires creative minds and motivation. Recognizing and anticipating how some might misinterpret a really great idea in a contrary way is challenging. Public policies have broad impact, affecting populations rather than just people. Innovations in public policy focus on the public interest and weigh benefits and risks across society. PharmaNet is a great example.
On the down side, I’ve heard concerns expressed by some pharmacists about how challenging it is to keep up with the changing landscape of practice while continuing to practice safely. The volume of work and increasing business and patient demands can be overwhelming. They say that expanding the scope of practice to include injections and adaptations is all well and good, but it is pretty stressful to manage the competing time demands to both learn and provide these services when you are in a busy dispensary with few, if any other staff to help out. It can be overwhelming. Innovation in practice isn’t something that you think of when you are up to your eyeballs in patients!
So what does this mean for the College? How do we support innovation while ensuring that professional, ethical, and safe pharmacy practice is maintained? Do we need to be more innovative?
I believe that the best way for us to do this is by staying connected with the practice broadly: the entrepreneurs and the clinical folks, practicing pharmacists and technicians, staff and managers; business and government. We listen and learn; we have a dialogue with the movers and the shakers in leadership positions, as well as the grassroots of the practice. Pharmacy is a small club, so this happens through the informal networks as much as it does through formal consultations and meetings. To this end, we’ve ramped up our communications activities; reaching out through various engagement initiatives including the web, social media, and both individual and group conversations. We’re trying. I hope that you have noticed.
- Registrar
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