1. What is your essential question? What is the best answer
to your question and why?
EQ: How can a clinical pharmacist best provide quality
patient consultations?
I defined "best provide quality" by being able to
best benefit the patient leading them to the best health outcome. My best
answer is aiming for the patient's adherence rather than compliance. By
preparing for the consultation, a pharmacist will be able to be confident going
to the patient. However, just by preparing for the consultation and being
confident about the information you're giving them doesn't necessarily mean
that'll be the best for the patient. Performing the process of medication
reconciliation could not be as effective if the patient doesn't fully adhere to
it, there's only so much a pharmacist can adjust and follow up with. Therefore,
aiming for the patient's adherence rather than compliance is the best answer
due to the fact that in order to have the patient have the best outcome, you
have to have the patient fully understand to the medication.
2. What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
My mentorship really helped me figure out what I wanted to
focus on. Through watching everyone at the pharmacy, I knew that I wanted to
focus on the patient aspect of pharmacy. With that focus, I was able to figure
out which specialty of pharmacy had that focus. Clinical pharmacy deals only
with the patient. According to American College of Clinical Pharmacy, they
define a clinical pharmacist as, "Pharmacists providing patient care that
optimizes medication therapy and promotes health, wellness and disease
prevention." With that definition and my essential question, I was able to
drive my research into what a clinical pharmacist did. Based on what a clinical
pharmacist does, what are the things that they do to really provide a quality
consultation. I made this realization halfway through senior project. I was
honestly completely lost. I had spent all my research checks at that point
based on just pharmacy. Through the third interview with a clinical and retail
pharmacist, Robert Ngo, he was able to guide me to my all answers. Based on his
guidance, I was able to really delve into my research to support my answer.
Through research I found numerous sources from the American College of Clinical
Pharmacy, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the Institute of
Medicine that supported the fact that adherence is so imperative to a
consultation.
3. What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
Finding my last answer was one of the problems I faced. I
feel that I couldn't find an answer that I was able to find sufficient research
for. I was able to resolve this problem by looking back on my research and
realized that there was a lot of research with medication reconciliation. Once
I found this research I talked to Robert Ngo and was able to then focus my
research more on it. I was able to find an answer I was able to fully support.
Independent component had to be one of the biggest problems.
I knew that doing more mentorship hours would not be possible due to my
scheduling. Being part of Young Scholars was able to give me that opportunity
to take a class for my independent component. However, as a Young Scholar, you
can only take 100 or 200 level division classes. I had emailed a professor of
nutrition to take his class. He had told me to check in with the head of the
board of the Food and Nutrition Department. When I went to go speak to him, he
was nowhere to be found and I only found his email. After emailing him, he
advised me to take a 300 level class. I knew it was possible, I just had to
overcome great lengths. Everything was a waiting game and a slim chance of
luck. But after it all, I really got out of my comfort zone and just went to go
talk to the board and I was able to take a nutrition class that only 3rd and
4th year students at Cal Poly get to take.
4. What are the two most significant sources you used to
answer your essential question and why?
The most significant sources I used was Robert Ngo and one
major research piece.
Robert Ngo really introduced me to what clinical pharmacy is
and what my answers should be. Without his help, I really wouldn't have as
solid answers as I do now. Through his input, I was able to find more research
to support my answers. Whenever I had questions about anything related to
pharmacy, he was able to answer it and refer me to other sources.
The other source that really helped me refer to numerous
sources was an article from the American College of Clinical Pharmacy,
"Process Indicators of Quality Clinical Pharmacy Services During Transitions
of Care," gave me support for all three answers and talked about certain
job duties that can really make a difference.
5. What is your product and why?
One of my products is that I have grown more willing to go
out of my comfort zone. Through my independent component I felt that I jumped
through great lengths to make it happen and really get out of my comfort
zone My other product is participating
in the science fair and improving my researching skills. In retrospect, I feel that participating in science fair was
one of the most rewarding experiences of the senior project. Now that I look back
at my research binder and what I actually did for my science component, my
researching skills slowly became more in depth. I was looking forward to
research checks because of the articles I had found. My researching skills is
something I will carry throughout my college career.
