CEimpact Podcast

Precept2Practice: Innovative Approaches to Student-Led Services

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In this episode of Precept to Practice, host Kathy Schott speaks with Melissa McLean, Sue Cornell, and student pharmacists Nikesh Kumar and Justine Kaminski to explore a unique collaboration between Oswald’s Pharmacy and Midwestern University. Together, they established a diabetes-focused screening service led by pharmacy students, providing patients with critical access to blood pressure and A1C screenings. This partnership highlights the powerful role community pharmacies play in healthcare and the growth opportunities for students to lead and learn in real-world settings.

 
Host
Kathy Schott, PhD
Vice President, Education & Operations
CEimpact

Melissa McLean
Pharmacy Manager
Oswald's Pharmacy
Naperville, IL

Sue Cornell
Director of Experiential Education
Professor of Pharmacy Practice
Midwestern University
Downers Grove, IL

Nikesh Kumar
PharmD Candidate 2025
Midwestern University
Downers Grove, IL

Justine Kaminski
PharmD Candidate 2025
Midwestern University


Get CE: CLICK HERE TO CPE CREDIT FOR THE COURSE!

CPE Information
 
Learning Objectives
At the end of this course, preceptors will be able to:
1. Outline factors for consideration in developing a student-led screening service
2. Recognize the educational, professional, and community-related advantages, as well as the logistical challenges, of involving students in community health services

0.05 CEU/0.5 Hr
UAN: 0107-0000-24-313-H99-P
Initial release date: 11/20/2024
Expiration date: 11/20/2027
Additional CPE details can be found here.

The speakers have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose.

This program has been:
Approved by the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy as education for Minnesota pharmacy preceptors.

Reviewed by the Texas Consortium on Experiential Programs and has been designated as preceptor education and training for Texas preceptors.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to Preceptive Practice, where we dive into the latest ideas shaping pharmacy precepting. I'm your host, kathy Schott, and today we're taking a look at a unique partnership between a Naperville, illinois-based community pharmacy and their local university. Joining me are Melissa McLean, the pharmacist and preceptor from Oswald's Pharmacy in Naperville, sue Cornell, the experiential education director at Midwestern University, and two student pharmacists, nikesh Kumar and Justine Kaminsky. They all played a key role in establishing a new diabetes-focused screening service in Melissa's Pharmacy. Creating student-led, sustainable services can be challenging, especially when IPPE and APPE student placements may fluctuate at your site. Through her collaboration with the school and student organization, she was able to establish an ongoing service that is providing the pharmacy with an important resource and students with a terrific learning experience. Let's listen in, all right? Well, welcome everyone. I'm so glad to have all four of you here I think this is record setting for me.

Speaker 1:

I don't think I've navigated a podcast episode with four people. I would love to start with just some quick introductions for all of you. Everyone is affiliated with Midwestern University in one way or another, so let's get started there, well we're happy to be here, kathy.

Speaker 3:

This is really exciting and thank you for including all of us in sharing our project. So I'm Sue Cornell. I am the Director of Experiential Education, professor of Pharmacy Practice at Midwestern University College of Pharmacy in Downers Grove, illinois. But I also practice and I am a Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist at the Bolingbrook Christian Health Clinic. So you know, as one of the supervisors as well again as advisor for our students, as they do community outreach. So that's me.

Speaker 1:

Melissa, welcome Hi. Do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 4:

Also thank you for having me. My name is Melissa McLean. I've been a pharmacist for 20 years. I worked in my previous 19 years with CVS Pharmacy at different multiple locations and the last year I've been at Oswald's Pharmacy, which is an independent in Naperville Illinois. So it's a family-owned independent six-generation owner right now. So I have a lot more freedom here to really get involved and help my community out more than I did at CVS, which is really exciting. So that is me. I've been a preceptor for the entire time that I've been a pharmacist, so I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. We just had a team member move to Naperville, so I just jotted down the name of the pharmacy, so remember to tell him that that's where he needs to go. Well, I'm thrilled to have two students with us today. So, nikesh, how about we start with you and then we'll kick it over to Justine?

Speaker 2:

My name is Nikesh. I'm actually from Ohio. I moved here for school actually a year ago. So I'm in my second year with the pharmacy program at Midwestern University and I would say my career plan right now is to just get through school and then I would like to pursue some sort of like a residency, something more on the clinical route where it's like more like patient focused. So that's me.

Speaker 1:

Awesome and Justine, that's me Awesome and.

Speaker 5:

Justine, hi Kathy, thank you for having us. We're super excited. I'm Justine Kaminsky. I'm from Chicago and I'm a second year pharmacy student in our three-year program here at Midwestern in Downers Grove. As far as career goals go for the future, I'm heavily leaning towards pursuing a residency and hopefully becoming a clinical pharmacist in the future.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you all again for being here and thank you for reminding me I keep forgetting that Midwestern is a three-year program. So, yeah, and you guys are on your little bit here, so congratulations to both of you. Really fun to see where you land. I invited all of you to come because Sue made me aware of a unique project that you all collaborated on, and I thought it'd be great to share your story with our preceptor listeners, who, I know, also struggle is probably not the right way to write word, but are looking for ways to integrate students into a sustainable new service or project or something like that, and I just think the collaboration that you all have set up is really interesting and unique, so I'm thrilled that you're here to share it with me. Let's start, maybe, by just talking briefly about the collaboration with Midwestern and maybe, Sue, we'll start with you. What prompted you and Melissa to engage, you know, in this endeavor together?

Speaker 3:

Well, it really exciting, kathy, and actually I have to give credit to Melissa because she's really the one who reached out with an opportunity and we connected and then obviously it grew from there. So you know, kind of backing up. Let me just start by saying one of the things we have within our APHA ASP chapter is we have sustainability within our patient care projects. So you know, many of our students participate in Operation Heart, which Nikesh is our current project manager, but he had a predecessor previous to him and now he has a successor that he's training. So we, you know it's a two-year commitment within the projects. Justine is a current manager of Operation Diabetes and so she is training a first-year student to take over for her as she moves on into her APPE rotations, which are coming up quickly. So with that, we believe in the sustainability so that when we do community outreach and that's where Melissa comes in that there's this continuous quality of care that goes on without any hiccups.

Speaker 3:

And so you know what happened is and you know I'll be honest, apha actually connected with Health Mart pharmacies and with that they reached out and said, you know, are there any student chapters for Operation Diabetes that would be interested in partnering with a Health Mart pharmacy. So Justine's predecessor was working at the time as the Operation Diabetes manager and you know she says, oh, I got this email, what should we do? And I said, well, reach out. And then from there APHA connected us to Melissa. So the very first step we had is Amanda, who is Justine's predecessor, as well as Justine and I, took a road trip Not that it's that far, it's only about 20 minute drive from the campus and we drove and we, we set up an appointment.

Speaker 3:

So, you know, melissa obviously could step away from the counter and she wasn't interrupted, you know, or we weren't interrupting her with patients. And so we scheduled an appointment to meet with her and determine, okay, what do we want to do and what can we do, and majority of our operation heart and diabetes projects we actually provide health screenings to communities. So we're in food pantries, we're in housing and secure shelters. Obviously now we're even in independent community pharmacies where, again, we could provide health screenings conveniently and for free to people in the community, especially those in need. So that's kind of a little bit of the background and, like I said, so Melissa reached out and for free, to people in the community, especially those in need. So that's kind of a little bit of the background and, like I said so Melissa reached out to say she would be interested.

Speaker 1:

We scheduled the meeting and almost a year later, here we are. Yeah, that's awesome, that's great background. So thanks for sharing all of that, sue. Melissa, talk a little bit about the scope of services that you developed through this partnership, maybe even what drove you to kind of select or identify the services that you wanted to offer. Was there some sort of a community needs assessment, or how did all that work?

Speaker 4:

Well, first thing, being a community pharmacist, I've always been trying to do the best thing I can for each and every one of my patients or my customers, and when we look at a patient with diabetes, they're going to be on so many medications and I feel like that customer is someone that we need to help manage as as best as we can and really follow these patients so that they don't end up getting complications that are prevalent.

Speaker 4:

So I feel like identifying that group of people and being like, hey, these patients need help and if we can offer an extra help for them or even help get people on the right track, answer some questions. And so the owner of this pharmacy actually came to me and said would you be interested in doing any kind of outreach? And I said, yeah, anything to help our community I'm willing to do. I'm putting like anything we can do, I'm willing to be helpful. So that is basically how that happened. So we really didn't do like a review of any need technically, but I feel like the diabetic population, um, anything that we can do to be more helpful to get better health outcomes, is going to be beneficial.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so what did those initial conversations look like with you and Sue? Um, how did you kind of get your arms around what it was you wanted to do, what that would look like, just those initial initial conversations, and I'll let either Sue or Melissa jump in and and address that.

Speaker 4:

Well, we had a zoom meeting and spoke about what they'd be able to offer and what we'd be able to offer here at Oswald.

Speaker 4:

So I know we have a pretty large pharmacy and we have. We do a lot of like community events here, not really health related, a lot of the times, but we have like a large medical equipment side, so they do some community events and we do like events for children and things like that here too. So I think like this is like almost like a natural progression, like we do. We already are used to having these events here. And so when we first talked and Sue said you know, we have those A1C checks done, or if they can't, you know, afford a doctor's visit or anything like that, then we give them another option. Basically we talked about different screenings. We talked about blood pressure screenings as well. So when customers come in, they'll get a blood pressure reading and then if they want to get their A1C checked, then they come back in into a private area for us to do the blood draw for that or the finger prick.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so talk a little bit about, like, how all of that is working, like how are you recruiting patients and then what's their first interaction with your students? And then how does that workflow, kind of you know, go through the what does the whole process look like as far as engaging the patients? And then, you know, having them interact with students Sounds like they're doing blood pressure Maybe. It sounds like the pharmacists maybe are doing A1C Maybe. Just talk a little bit about the specifics of how all that's flowing and exactly what the students are engaged in.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so actually the students do everything. I'm just there to supervise or answer questions if needed. So we set up tables in the front of the store, we print out flyers and before we had the first event, we posted flyers because we're in a little shopping strip or whatever, so we posted them in all, like the local businesses that we were going to do this free screening. We had posters made and did bag stuffers for any diabetic patient or any patient that was interested. We had them at like the checkout and would speak to customers about that as well, and so I feel like that kind of gets it going, just like we're going to be offering this new service. You know, every other month, come on by, so even if people don't see the flyers or don't and we also have a marketing gal who posts on social media, so she does like Instagram and Facebook to post that we're going to do these screenings as well, and then.

Speaker 4:

So when people come in the store, they'll come to the blood pressure screening first and, you know, sit down, we'll speak to them, see how they're doing. The students will check their blood pressure, um, and then ask them if they want to get screened for diabetes like a blood sugar tester, um, also A1C testing. So, and then they, if they do want to do that, then they come back into the pharmacy and the students are set up in, like our little vaccination room, so the room that we're in right now, so it's a private room and then they can do the testing there for a1c and then they give them a result sheet with all the information they need. If they do have an elevated a1c, we talk to them about you know what medications they're taking or their diet, or what they've done in the past to get their get to their goal, or what they're kind of doing in the future, what they're. You know what it's looking like.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, Great. And so it sounds like every every other month. Is that what you're? Is that what you said about every other month that you're conducting these? Yeah Well, let's get the students engaged a little bit and talk about what setting up the service looked like and what your role in all of that was. I think my understanding is that Justine and Nikesh, you both have some involvement in getting this all up and running, so I'd love to hear from each of you. Justine, do you want to kind of jump in first?

Speaker 5:

Yeah, that's great. How did we get this all started? So in the beginning, as Dr Cornell mentioned, we did set up meetings. We checked out the pharmacy to see where we would conduct these health screenings, right. So, as you know, we did any kind of blood work in the vaccination room and then we had a nice booth set up in front of the pharmacy where we were pretty visible to any patients that were walking in. So we would also we. I think our biggest challenge when it came to that, or like starting this up, was also getting a volunteer pool, because it's just me and Nikesh, but we also needed other volunteers in order to work with the patients. We just we couldn't do everything alone. So, as you know, we are currently working at other sites and we do have a volunteer pool. So initially we just kind of asked around to see who would be interested in volunteering at another site. So that's how we kind of got that started.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, awesome, yeah. So how has ongoing staffing, how has that gone for you all as far as keeping the service staffed and getting enough volunteers and all of that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'll chime in on this. It's been pretty good. Actually, we usually like to tell like our current volunteers no, there's another opportunity for you guys to be in an independent pharmacy or work with a different patient population. You'll be doing the same things as you usually do at the other sites that we do our screenings at. So, as of now, it's been great. We actually just accepted a huge group of volunteers from our first year class and then our class as well in the second years. So we're really excited to basically just get those people onboarded, get them trading and just I don't know just see what a great experience it's going to be. But yeah, staffing them trading and just I don't know just see like what a great experience it's going to be. But yeah, staffing has been like pretty great so far.

Speaker 2:

I think that we have a strong team. So we usually have like two to three volunteers and people kind of just like tag team and team up with like who's gonna do blood pressure, who's gonna do blood sugar, a1c's, things like that. Sometimes we have people like standing at the door. I remember the first day we actually went to the trader drawer trader jo's next door. We talked to the manager to see if some of the staff can kind of like we gave them a flyer. We're like can you guys, just like you know, market a little bit that we're holding these like greetings and stuff? And they were more than happy to send them over. So I remember the first day was like a huge success, so it was like the busiest we've ever been. So that's.

Speaker 1:

that's great real estate to be located next to a Trader Joe's, that's awesome. So going a little bit further with the staffing question for you students how are you training up new folks as they volunteer? What does that look like for you?

Speaker 5:

So as of right now, most of the P2s, they are trained in how to do blood pressure and blood glucose. A lot of them aren't aware of how to use the A1C machine, but you know that's usually on hand training. It's very easy to use. Our challenge now is going to be with the P1s, since they haven't taken a class on how to take blood pressure yet. But we are going to have like a mandatory a training session for those P1s so that they're aware.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's great that you're recruiting them at that. At that phase too, they're hungry and eager and B this is. It sounds like a great experience for them to begin getting their feet wet as they're starting with some of their introductory experiential learning assignments and stuff too. So that's awesome. How does the any other, I guess, any other considerations that you all took into consideration as you were getting things set up? You know relatives, either physical space or traffic flow. I don't know, students, if you were involved in promotion at all or if that was something that Melissa led.

Speaker 5:

As far as promotion goes, amanda my predecessor her and I collaborated on creating the flyer and then we sent it out over to Melissa and one of her technicians has been very helpful with keeping that flyer updated and and that's Melissa's really in charge of marketing. And they also have a social media page, I believe an Instagram page, where they do promote that as well. So, really all on Melissa's end.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome, but maintaining them as a sustainable service and it just sounds like this collaboration has really helped in doing that, because you now have a steady stream of students coming into the pharmacy have there been any challenges from your perspective in all of this?

Speaker 4:

The only challenge would be that, like making sure that there's a pharmacist here to work and then making sure I can get here for that dedicated time as well. So I need to make sure, like everyone has to be on the same page as far as timing goes, and I think one of them, or one of the times I totally I did not remembering anything, and then I got an email from Justine like six days before. So we didn't, I didn't market as well as I should have, for sure. So that has been a little bit of a challenge. But other than that, like making sure that I can be there and and and be helpful, that would be my only like challenge.

Speaker 4:

I want to make sure cause we have another one scheduled for December 7th that I'm doing like, like promoting, like crazy, cause I want to see I want to see the same people come back. I want to see these people come back and tell me stories about how they went to their doctor and told their doctor that they were doing this. We already have a really good reputation in Aprilville as far as from like doctors recommending us for being, like giving that extra help, like going the extra mile or whatever for our customers, and I feel like this is another opportunity to do that, another, you know, another good thing that we can do to help other help other people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I love it Not to put you on the spot. Do you have any sense of how many patients have participated, you know, to date, in, in or taken advantage of the services I?

Speaker 4:

mean so far, I think probably around 50 or so, maybe a little bit under. I think the first day we had around 15 or 16 people, cause we only do it for a two hour time window, right, so the first day was definitely the busiest and that was when we did the most promotion. So I feel like I need to get back to that like really promoting this, and now we do have like a solid month to get that promotion out. I was even talking to our marketing gal about even going to businesses that are not just in our little little area and just kind of going even to doctor's offices and saying, hey, I know that that you guys do your thing, but if you want to send a patient here where we're willing to help and we can send them the numbers and give the doctors information from the visit too, yeah, a great way for them to keep a pulse on where they are and to get monitoring, you know, in between those visits.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, that's awesome. Outside of the obvious value that you're bringing to patients, you know, melissa, what would you say has been most valuable to you? Maybe personally, but but then also, you know, for the pharmacy.

Speaker 4:

Well, when we first started doing this, I was still pretty new to this pharmacy and I feel like it's given me a way to connect with our customers like another way. I also because the students do manual blood pressure checks. When we were doing blood pressure checks, we were always just using the automatic one, and so I'm like you know what, I know how to do that too, like I can get you know a sphygmomanometer and get stethoscope and I'll do it like. So now I've been doing I got my my little blood pressure kit here and you know, if someone's not feeling well and needs to get a blood pressure checked, or someone even wants to just come by and do it, like I'm happy to help them. So it's something that they've kind of made me want to learn more and to do more, and I feel like my knowledge base has increased just from having them them here to be helpful.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, I love that. Yeah, we say that all the time that you know we learn from the students just as much as they learn from us. So I think that's a great, a great reminder. Sue, how about you? What do you from the university perspective and from you personally as an experiential director? What have been the highlights from your perspective?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm just very proud of everything our students have accomplished. I think the highlight is having the sustainable program and you know we want people to know when we're coming. So, as we say every other month, it's the third Saturday of even number months. So it's very specific because then that way the people in the community know this is when they're going to be there. We'll connect, as I mentioned, we're also, you know, we are, in a food pantry. You know we're in several food pantries as well as some housing and secure shelters, but we have a regular schedule. So, again, this is where the people that are coming to Oswalt's pharmacy they know. The screenings, the health screenings, are occurring on the Saturday. Now, granted, with the holiday coming up, we've kind of changed the date which happens across the board. But I think for me the most rewarding is just watching the growth, not only of our students but of our collaboration with our community partners.

Speaker 2:

You know so.

Speaker 3:

I'm thrilled to hear that Melissa is actually taking this to the next level now by working with her patients and doing blood pressures. And you know, and like she said, we learn as much from the students as they do from us Students. You force us to keep, you know, keep up and keep current, which sometimes, you know, is challenging to do. So we're grateful for that and you know, again, I just it's rewarding to see the collaboration.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome, Nikesh. How about you? What are some of the highlights from your perspective as a? As a student, being involved from the beginning, but then also participating in the ongoing collaboration?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So a few like things are like pretty vibrant, like personally, I would definitely say, is like just my professional development, because this is my first time having like a leadership position.

Speaker 2:

So being able to manage like another site and alongside like my coach or Justine, who we work so well together, I think that's been like very valuable Because I've seen how much my skills in so many different ways have like just enhanced like since like starting these like types of projects and just being able to like take like what we've learned from our program in terms of diabetes, actually, also like a non-traditional student, so I took some time between you know undergrad and like pharmacy school, I realized I love patient education. So being able to like implement that and like this type of a setting is just like. I just feel like so happy because it's like you take a break from school and then get to practice in the real world like it just like puts you in such a different mindset and it gives you a sense of purpose. So I definitely say like those two things for sure have definitely been the most valuable.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, love that. Call out that it gives you a sense of purpose. You know it's easy to get mired down in the academics and all the requirements and all the things. It's nice to put yourself in a real, a real life situation where you're helping patients.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, so kind of along what Nikesh said, I feel the same way. It's just been really rewarding and I think the most valuable thing that I've gotten out of this project was the feeling of knowing that I'm making a difference in patients' lives knowledge that I've learned in the classroom to real life settings and, as you all know, patients are not textbook patients, so everyone's different. Just like, I guess maneuvering that and there is a particular case that comes to mind that we just had at Oswald's. There was a patient that was visibly disabled and we all kind of jumped into help and I think that was just really rewarding being able to jump into situations and just, you know, making sure that every patient feels comfortable with coming up to us and talking to us and getting the care that they need. So that's, yeah, that's one of my favorite memories and most valuable things that I've gotten out of this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's great. Thanks for sharing a particular personal story. Any other I know. I asked Melissa about challenges, any other particular challenges that stand out for any of the rest of you, or, on the flip side of that, maybe, what are the key ingredients or factors that y'all think made this come together so well?

Speaker 5:

I do have a particular challenge. I think the biggest challenge for Nikesh and I has been that time management but the two of us have been able to manage that and we do set aside time and get our volunteers in and everyone gets gets the experience that they need.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And when you talk about a three-year curriculum, you're, you're packing it in, for sure.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think you know. Something also is that that I'm really happy about is we're working with an independent community pharmacy and something I think that is, I don't want to say missing, but often not it's overlooked, especially for students and working with you know, students in their introductory as well as advanced practice rotations their introductory as well as advanced practice rotations you know, not many of them are really familiar with the inner workings of an independent, privately owned community pharmacy.

Speaker 3:

So, I think this offers an opportunity to see the value of the connection of the pharmacist to the community. I grew up in an independent pharmacy, I moved on to a chain pharmacy, I moved into academia. You know I still practice in a clinic, but there is definitely a patient relationship in the community pharmacy area that is very strong and I think that's sometimes overlooked. And so to be able to let students experience this while in school, you know, I'm hoping that it supports the growth of independent community pharmacy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that, sue, and you know I was thinking about that earlier in our conversation too. What a great way to showcase the important role community pharmacies play, you know, within our communities. And by bringing you know some of these and supporting some of these clinical, more clinical type services really helps, I think, change that perspective or open people's eyes to the healthcare hub that the independent community pharmacy can be and that applies to any pharmacy, obviously, but I think this is a unique way to showcase that, so that's a great call out, unique way to showcase that. So that's a that's a great call out. Other input from from the rest of the group as far as you know, key ingredients here are factors that that made this all come together so well. Sounds like we have two great partners in the, in our students that we have with us, so that is certainly a standout to me.

Speaker 4:

But anything else, Everyone's just been so willing to help, like even the volunteers that they have. They are so eager to speak with customers that they'll like stop people in the aisles. Hey, do you want to get your blood pressure checked today? How are you doing? And I mean for me, when I was a student I was so timid I would. I would never have been able to do that. I would have just been the one like standing in the back, not talking to anyone. So just having having them be so outgoing and so willing and like wanting to be, you know, to make that difference is is pretty amazing, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome, melissa. What's the patient feedback been? Have you had any any? Anything in particular come to mind comments from from patients who've engaged in the services that the students are providing.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah, I've had several people that have wanted to return again and every time I'm like, oh, it's coming up, let's come up the next weekend, like, oh, we're going out of town or we have plans or whatever. But I would like to see, like those returning customers but they really the ones that I've talked to have really, really enjoyed the screenings, happy that they're off, that we're offering this service to them, um, that they can just go grocery shopping and then just pop in here for an A1C check, so, so that that's something that's, that's, um, that's different than you know anywhere else. And then, like no appointment necessary. We're not making people wait the as far as everything being streamlined. Even the first day, when it was like crazy and everyone came right when we opened, we still had a really good workflow. People still got in and out in a timely fashion. No one was like waiting for a substantial amount of time. So, yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's that just speaks to good organization and planning. So, yeah, that's awesome. I have one final question for Melissa, but before I do that, any any last, like nuggets from from any of you students advice for any student listeners that we might have, or their preceptors yeah, um, I would definitely recommend, just you know, get involved, I mean, in our program.

Speaker 2:

You know they do advise us to get involved like very early on and I like completely empathize with how overwhelming our program can be, especially when just you know we're recruiting for from the p1s they did say like the main thing was like this seems very overwhelming, like I don't know if I have time, and I said, like you know, I in your position, I started out as a volunteer transition to like a manager position. I can say it's completely doable and, like I said earlier, like it will give you a sense of purpose, like you will enjoy it so much you'll be to apply your knowledge, make some connections. But I would just highly advise this because it can really enhance not only like your clinical skills but your soft skills as well.

Speaker 2:

You know, in our future as pharmacists. Like communication is important, with patients being able to express, like empathy and stuff, so I think that's just a really, really great way to just enhance your skills as overall, as we, like you know, perfect ourselves as professionals.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. No, that's great advice, I think, sue. How about you Anything from the university perspective? You know, I know that we have listeners out there who are in academic settings, like yourself. This is potentially an opportunity for them to partner with, you know, pharmacists in their community.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, I think every university should partner with their pharmacist in the community. You know, again a big shout out, in this case to Health Mart for putting the call out. So you know, by them putting the call out, working with APHA, we were able to connect and collaborate. So I'd hope they do that again and continue to do that. But I think too, sometimes some pharmacists are hesitant and I've seen this in experiential education, where they're hesitant to have a student because they're afraid that they won't know what to do or they they're not up to date enough.

Speaker 3:

And so it's this fear of the student will come in, knowing more than me, and it's that fear that's holding them back. So you know my, my request to pharmacists out there is take a chance. Take a chance on a student. Students, be open-minded, but take a chance and just see what that collaboration can help you to grow personally, professionally, and the value you bring to again students as well as the profession.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, awesome, yeah, I love that. Take a chance, but now I have an ABBA song in my head. So thanks for that, sue. Melissa. Let's let's go ahead and wrap up our discussion. Share with me what the one thing preceptors could do today to investigate opportunities for collaborations like this. You know you've done it and it's been a really successful endeavor. So any final words of advice?

Speaker 4:

Well, it has to do with what Sue and Nikesh were saying is just saying yes and like be willing to, to try something new. That's my boss came, or my, my, uh, the owner came to me and said, hey, we have this opportunity. Is this something you'd be willing to do? And I might. There was no hesitation. It was like yes, let's, let's do it.

Speaker 4:

Anything we can do, um, just to help bring something new to the community, bring something new to Oswald's Um, we're always looking for ways to build our patient population, to build trust in the community. And just saying, just saying yes. And even that's same thing with students too, because students, the students that I've had, have been so diverse, their knowledge base has been so diverse, and it's it's all every I've learned from every single one of them. So it's. And then watching a student too, from, like, the beginning of a rotation to the end of a rotation, and watching them grow, watching them get more comfortable, counseling, watching them do those things, it's, it's rewarding for you too. So like just saying yes, get putting yourself out there and and and like allowing, you know, allowing something to happen.

Speaker 1:

I love it. That's great. Well, thank you all very much. It's been a pleasure to talk with each of you and Justine and Akesh. I wish you all the best as you're wrapping up this phase of your preparation and getting ready for that next phase of your career and your professional life. I'm excited to see what happens. I hope my conversation with the Oswald and Midwestern team leaves you with some ideas about how you might collaborate to integrate student-led services at your site. Remember to check out previous episodes of Preceptor Practice and don't forget to visit the full library of Preceptor by Design courses available for preceptors on the CE Impact website. Be sure to ask your experiential program director or your residency program director if you are a member so that you can access it all for free. And if you are a member, don't forget to claim your CE for this episode. Thanks again for listening in and I'll see you next time on Precept to Practice. You.