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A Renewed Focus on Resilience Pharmacy schools are taking a closer look at addressing mental health and well-being among faculty, staff and students. By Jane E. Rooney Well before the recent coronavirus pandemic began, addressing mental health and well-being in the pharmacy community and among healthcare students and professionals had taken on some urgency. A study published in April in the American Journal of HealthSystem Pharmacy that assessed the risk of burnout in critical care pharmacists found that the risk is high and comparable to the risk in other critical care practitioner groups. Burnout was assessed from three aspects: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal achievement. Out of 193 critical care pharmacists, 64 percent reported at least one syndrome of burnout, and 14.5 percent reported burnout in all three scales. In July 2019, recommendations from the National Consensus Conference on “Enhancing Well-Being and Resilience Among the Pharmacist Workforce” (a collaborative effort from the American Pharmacists Association, the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education, the National Association
of Boards of Pharmacy, the National Alliance of State Pharmacy and AACP) jumpstarted the need to more formally address the stresses and strains of pharmaceutical practice as well as the mental health of future pharmacists in pharmacy schools. Among the 50 recommendations the group approved, 12 specifically address pharmacy education, including incorporation of well-being education and training.
of Pharmacy, reached out to other schools to determine the interest level and find out what wellness initiatives were already in place. The positive feedback—39 schools responded— prompted Vogt, Buckley and AACP to move forward with the new Connect Community. Responses from schools indicated a wide variation in approaches, from incorporating mental health topics into the curriculum to offering electives to co-curricular activities.
This led AACP to launch the Community for Well-Being and Resiliency this past January in “While the gradient appears wide, cerConnect, a members-only online tainly there is a growing momentum. resource. The group’s creation was There are schools that are just putting based on a “common need for quality their toe in the water, so to speak, with resources and ideas to infuse the individual faculty who are addresswell-being science into pharmacy ing mental health in their own classes, education,” according to the vision while a number of some schools (like statement. The Connect Community my own) that have been offering organizers, Dr. Eleanor Vogt, professor coursework and training for several emerita, University of California San years, as in our Certificate in Resiliency Francisco School of Pharmacy, and Medicine,” explained Vogt. “My dream Dr. Beth Buckley, associate professor, is to have a Pharmacology of Resilience Department of Pharmacy Practice, course as a legitimate required course Concordia University Wisconsin School within the core curriculum, and that
Academic Pharmacy NOW 2020 Issue 3
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