Pharmacy Technicians Roles in Collaborative Patient Care

• In 2010 the World Health Organization called out to the healthcare community to collaborate to improve health concerns

• They strongly encouraged efforts to develop and integrate interprofessional education into all healthcare programs.

• A Pharmacy technician must learn how to collaborate and work closely with pharmacists, nurses, doctors, and other pharmacy technicians.

• Pharmacy Assistants must also learn how to collaborate and work closely with pharmacists and other pharmacy staff.

• Because pharmacy technician is such a new profession, a duty we have is to educate our fellow healthcare professionals on who we are and what we can do.

Barriers and Facilitators to Collaboration

• Potential Barriers

  • Attitude: Some healthcare providers have reservations about giving pharmacy
    technicians a greater role as well as giving pharmacists a greater role in
    drug therapy decision-making

• Cost: Some insurance companies don’t pay pharmacists for their services

• Not enough resources: Some areas don’t have enough resources to employ pharmacy
  technicians and pharmacists to be on their healthcare team.

• Potential Facilitators

  • Teams

    • Collaboration within disciplines

    • When people work together there is usually an increase in productivity and innovation.

    • Successful collaborations = synergy occurs

    • Two heads are better than one

Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies

1. Value and ethics for interprofessional practice: Work with individuals of other professions to maintain a culture of mutual respect and shared values

2. Roles and responsibilities: Use the knowledge of one’s role and those of other professions to appropriately assess and address the healthcare needs of the patients

3. Interprofessional communication: Communicate with patients, families, communities, and other health professionals responsively and responsibly that support a team approach to the maintenance of health and the treatment of disease

4. Teams and teamwork: Apply relationship-building values and the principles of team dynamics to perform effectively in different team roles to plan and deliver patient-/population-centered care that is safe, timely, efficient, effective, and equitable

How to Develop Collaborative Arrangements

• Collaborative arrangements are built on mutual respect and trust

• One way to accomplish that is to know the following:

  • Healthcare practitioners who have an interest in the proposed partnership

  • Patients or patient groups (broad-based and influential) who may benefit from your

  • Individuals willing to share time and resources to make your collaboration work

  • Community agencies and media interests who would like to see your collaboration succeed and contribute to your community and are willing to support your effort

  • Examples of other collaborative relationships that have worked, along with descriptions of their structure and governance

  • Obtain advanced certification or credentialing in the area(s) you are asking to collaborate

    • Examples include MTM certification for MTM program collaboration, board certification in diabetes or ambulatory care for diabetes or primary care clinics, etc.

• Also, ask yourself if what you are doing is worth everyone’s time

Building Trust: The Cornerstone to Successful Collaborative Arrangements

• How to build trust:

  • Sought input from one another

  • Allowed each other to do their jobs without unnecessary oversight

  • Openly discussed and learned from both successes and failures

• Trust is the knowledge of predictability one can count on

• Other professions have to know that the pharmacist will do what is best for the patient

• How is trust influenced?

  • Consistent behavior over time reinforces positive or negative feelings about trust.

  • Common goals or vision help strengthen trusting relationships.

  • Mutual respect should exist.

  • How do the individual parties react when the relationship is strained?

    • Such as when a medication error occurs; could weaken or strengthen the relationship.

  • Mutual understanding of any economic gain from the partnership.

Using Communication Skills to Enhance Collaborative Relationships

• Everyone must be willing to work towards a common goal

• Things that may help assure your goal

  • Does this person share my goals?

  • Does this individual recognize that we are creating opportunities for change as like-minded individuals to tackle an issue important to our patients?

  • Does this person have the required knowledge and ability to help us reach our goal?

  • Will this person stick to his or her commitments and be reliable?

  • Will this person share with me information that I need to know?

  • Does this person want me to be successful as a partner in this intervention?

  • Is what we are doing creating real value that will serve our patients?

Five Critical Behaviors Within Collaborative Partnerships

• Long and short-term goals

• Non-hierarchical and based on equality

• They should both consider patient perspectives

• Trust and shared vision are crucial in a working relationship

• Should demonstrate respect for each profession’s culture