Pharmacy-Pharmacist

Pharmacist-Patient Interaction

Pharmacist like many other health professionals will encounter a lot of patients along their journeys starting from their school times and during their career. They will meet patients who are somehow in good conditions, critical conditions, or patients with serious illness. Communication between healthcare providers and any patient is very essential in delivering the best care. Sometimes even if we are about to deliver bad news to patients, our way of communicating that news might help reduce the intensity of the situation. A pharmacist should approach all patients in a very respectful way and treat them all as his or her top priority. For patients with serious illness, it should be taken into consideration their pain and sufferers they are dealing most of their lifetime.

To establish a better interaction between a pharmacist and a seriously ill patient, a pharmacist should first know the patient and their medical and social situation and meet at a convenient place to the patient (E.g. quite place with no distractions). Also, a pharmacist should not deliver any information until the patient is ready. Once the patient is ready, a pharmacist should establish a smooth way in delivering any news and be honest and know the patient level of understanding about their conditions. The news should be delivered in a language that the patient can understand easily (So, no big medical words). Different patients will react differently to the same news, so a pharmacist must be ready to understand patient’s emotions, so the choice of words is essential in this situation. In addition, a pharmacist should respect patient’s emotions and support them, and try to help them exploring their feelings and might provide any kind of help needed. For example, a pharmacist could say “With everything that has happened, this must be difficult for you and I wish I can change it, but our team is here to help you and support you”. This statement including understating of patient’s emotions, responding to them, and supporting. I think the best way for a pharmacist to deal with different situations is to imagine different scenarios with different reactions from patients and choose the best way to react to each one of them before the real meeting. I know reality would be much harder than the imagination, but for me, I think it is the best way to prepare for such interactions.

This is also applicable if you meet with a patient who has already received bad news and not easily able to process them. A pharmacist should know the patients and their situation, approach those patients respectfully and meet with them in a comfortable place. Establish a connection by knowing the feelings of the patient, understanding what they are going through, respecting their feelings and reactions, and supporting them. If we only deliver facts and information to patients, they will be overload and might not care about their own health anymore. Using phrases like “This can be overwhelming for many people, but we can try to help pass this situation together” would be a good approach to patient’s feelings and emotions. Patients will be frustrating and angry if a healthcare provider used the phrase “I understand…” because the reality says that healthcare providers do not understand what the patient’s is going through unless they are at the same exact situation as the patient (which is impossible), so it is better to avoid this phrase. Instead, we can use the phrase “With everything that has happened, I can see why you are frustrated”. This phrase shows that we understand from our perspective that the situation is very hard on the patient, but we cannot imagine how much of a pain they are going through. Lastly, it would be much appreciated if a pharmacist provides level of help and support within their ability and easily acceptable by the patient. For instance, a pharmacist must not say a statement like “I know this is difficult, but I will be by your side 24/7 and help you with anything you want”, but rather saying “This is must be very difficult, but our team is here to help you and support you as needed and we will go through this together”. Even if this statement is somehow general, but it provides a better level of support to the patient, and it will be easier for patients to accept in comparison to the firs one.

In addition to those verbal communications between a pharmacist and a patient, non-verbal communications are also at the same level of importance as the verbal ones. For example, a patient will be more comfortable dealing with a pharmacist who listens carefully to their needs and do not interrupt their talking. Also, eye contact between the two is very important in keeping the conversation running because if the pharmacist is not given his full attention, the patient might not be interest to share information and their feelings, so their condition might worsen due to the lack of interest from the ignorant pharmacist. So, it is always appreciated from patients if their pharmacist listens to them, responding to them, have the appropriate expression to the situation, feeling relaxed and have a good posture, keeping a good eye contact with the patient, and sits at the same level as the patient so the patient feels comfortable and not overpowered by the pharmacist. These all non-verbal communication skills that a pharmacist should have in addition to the verbal ones, so a better care is delivered to patients.