Nick Dorich Elected APhA ASP Member at Large

The 2010 American Pharmacists Association yearly conference made two signifi-cant inaugurations this past St. Patrick‟s Day weekend. The first was the opening of the new site for the APhA national headquarters, built on pharmacist-owned land in the nation‟s capital. Fundraising for the construction of this building began in the late 1990s, back when the URI College of Pharmacy‟s own Ronald P. Jordan

served as president of the APhA.

The second inaugural event introduced a vision realized by student pharmacists across the nation for both pharmacy and healthcare, championed by URI‟s Nick Dorich, a P3 in the College of Pharmacy and the newly elected National Member-at-Large for the APhA Academy of Student Pharmacists. “His whole vision is centered on where the profes-sion is going, and that is collaborative healthcare,” said Andrew Bundeff, fellow P3 and campaign manager for Nick. “He says that if we want to advance as a profession, we have to begin working with doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Part of our oath as pharmacists is to improve patient care; how are we going to improve patient care unless we‟re able to better work with doctors?”

Andrew began working on Nick‟s campaign with other URI students this February. Preparations were made for the trip and shirts were ordered, each bearing the campaign slogan, “Pick Nick!” As the winter snow turned to rain, Andrew had only one regret: “Had we known about the weather in advance, we would have put the slogan on umbrellas!”

Nick was one of about 25 students from the College who attended the conference representing URI. Roughly 2500 pharmacy students gathered at the conference from 109 schools across the nation. All campaigning was done during that weekend in D.C., but the attention Nick garnered was no surprise to Andrew.

“Seeing how much Nick loves the profession—it’s infectious.” (continued)

(Continued from front)

Nick is a native to Narragansett, where he is employed as a student pharmacist at a local Rite Aid. His involvement ranges from his work as a student representative to the Rhode Island Pharmacists Association (RIPA) to his position as president of the URI chapter of the APhA ASP. Asked what inspires him to remain politically active, Nick replies: “I know that rules and laws involving my profession are being enacted constantly. It's up to me to have an influence, and to quote former APhA-ASP President Brent Reed, „Be the agent of change.‟ That message has inspired me for over 2 years now and it's something that I live by, especially in my professional development.”

Chad Lamoureux, Pharmacy Class of 2015

Full Text of Nick’s Election Speech Henry Ford, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of this country, once said: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working to-gether is success.” Having been to multiple meetings for APhA I can see that we‟ve come together, I know I‟ve kept up with my many friends and that we still work together. So can we call APhA successful? Sure. I however, want to look at the bigger picture. We have a health care system in shambles, and the baby boomer generation is about to hit the age of 65. Are we successful then? Going back to what Henry Ford said, maybe we need to readdress who it is we work with.

As student pharmacists, we are the future of our profession. Therefore the ques-tion I ask you is this, “are you happy with the current state of healthcare?” When we look at healthcare reform we see there is a problem, yet some still resist changes to the system. When I tell people I‟m a student pharmacist, I generally get two re-sponses: “wow, that‟s really great for you,” and “why do you go to school for 6 years to count pills?” This is just a microcosm of the problem facing pharmacy currently. The general public doesn‟t understand our education and training, other healthcare providers are unwilling to potentially lose some stake in the healthcare field, and even the government doesn‟t fully recognize our degree and the capabilities of it.

Now I know that we have all been working to promote health care reform but it should not stop there. What we really need to do is promote the profession of pharmacy. We need to continue to push for legislative efforts that recognize pharmacists as health-care providers, that stress the importance of medication therapy management, and we need to stress to patients the importance of their medication and their relationship with their pharmacist. This is not an issue just about being reimbursed for our efforts, or being recognized as the medication experts-rather this is an issue that helps pro-mote patient care-the staple of our profession. As members of APhA-ASP we each have our own strength-patient counseling, leadership, policy or maybe just passion for helping others. As we talk about healthcare reform, we ask you to write your sena-tors and congressmen. Maybe it‟s not enough to do this as one organization. For many of us, collaborative practice across the board would be a dream come true. I suggest we work with other medical professions and associations to help reach our goal. I‟ve worked with nursing students at blood pressure clinics, and at URI we‟ve run labs with medical students from Brown University. By getting other healthcare students involved in what we do, I feel we can shape our future. In a few years we will no longer be students, nor will the medical students, or nursing students. They will be our colleagues in the medical field. In order to operate as a medical team, you must understand and respect the expertise held by each member. What better time to do this than when you are a student, when you are actively learning in the field or in class? Currently no medical profession requires training about teamwork or leader-ship. In the medical community, how can we expect to advance patient care if we cannot advance past the old system of medicine, where the doctor prescribes, phar-macist dispenses and nurse administers? We know we can do more than that. The doctors and nurses will say the same things about themselves. In order to advance patient care, we the students must start operating as a team in order to see the change that we have envisioned.

Seven-time NBA champion Pat Riley had this to say about teamwork: “Great team-work is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers.” I now ask each and everyone here to make APhA 2010 the moment in which they define their careers. Regardless of how I leave this meeting, and regardless of what you come away with, I hope that your efforts now will push the boundaries of current healthcare. American Pharmacists Association holds the slogan: Improving Medication Use. Ad-vancing Patient Care. This slogan is not exclusive to our profession-so why should we contain it? I hope to see APhA not as an organization itself, but as part of a health-care team consisting of many organizations and professions that strives for better health outcomes. Let us promote patient care, push for affordable and accessible health care, and get others to join us in this journey. I know I will never forget my ex-periences here at APhA 2010 and where it is going to lead me in the future. My real dream however, is that APhA 2010 will be the start of something that forever changes how we practice pharmacy. Thank you and Pick Nick.

Nick Dorich, Pharmacy Class of 2015

More From APhA 2010

More than 40 URxI students attended.

Our APhA ASP Chapter placed first in Opera-

tion Diabetes

Ashley Pincins served as the APhA/ASP Dele-

gate

Molly MacDonnell represented URI in the Na-

tional Patient Counseling Competition

Nicole Gerosa was the Phi Lambda Sigma

Leadership Society Delegate

Rho Chi Honor Society Delegate was Andrew

Benson

Podium Presentation: Dr. Kerry LaPlante pre-

sented “Battling a Superbug: Community-Associated MRSA,” co-author Dr. Jason Galla-gher, Temple University.

Poster: Dr. K. Kelly Orr, “Availability and Accu-

racy of Information of Nonprescription Emer-gency Contraception in Rhode Island Pharma-cies,” poster presentation #188, co-author Dr. Margaret Opydo.

Poster: Dr. Celia MacDonnell, “Active Learning

of Self Care Through Yahoo! Health,” poster presentation #178, co-author Dr. Kelly Orr.

The University of Rhode Island

College of Pharmacy

Kingston, RI 02881

401-874-2761 uri.edu/pharmacy