Professor Jerry Cable has incorporated outreach to the community by including 10 hours of community service as a requirement for each fourth year PharmD student. Pharmacy Interns have been involved in myriad events and services to their community. Among these are drug and herbal presentations to the public, answering questions at health fairs and helping a pharmacy redesign its prescription filling process in order to decrease patient wait times.

A Service-Learning Clinical Rotation that Delivers Rural Medication Access

Service-learning provides an ideal pedagogy to bring the University and College missions of community outreach to the classroom. Service-learning is “the intentional linking of community service with specific learning and development outcomes that is valuable to students, colleges, and communities. Our aims for this fourth year experiential rotation located in a rural Appalachian setting were to:

• Develop and implement a plan for medication access that incorporates the collaboration of a physician, the county heath department and a pharmacist.
• Consider issues and express thoughts about rural and indigent health care.
• Apply patient counseling skills and point of care services in a rural healthcare setting.
• Learn how to refer patients in this particular setting to appropriate community, state or federal programs and services that might improve their healthcare or utilization of health services.

Medication Access Program

Because of the high prevalence of uninsured citizens, development of a medication access program was chosen by a community focus group as their project of choice.

• The medication access program will be developed by faculty and students from The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy over a 12-month period.
  
• The program will be housed in and maintained by the local physician’s office.
  
• The College of Pharmacy will continue to oversee the program, seek ongoing funding, and involve students in its support.
  
• In time, the program may be expanded beyond the physician’s office in order to offer medication access to other physicians’ patients.

Aims of the Medication Access Program are:

• Increased medication utilization compared with before the development of the program.
  
• Reduced incidence of health problems related to inconsistent medication use.
  
• Increased patient comfort with asking health providers for assistance.
  
• Improved communication between patient and health care provider.

 

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