What Is a Medication Manager?
by Kamran Nisar B.Sc. (Pharm.)
If you have asked your pharmacist about drug information or have talked to your pharmacist about your health, herbal supplements, high blood pressure, how to stop smoking or how to lose weight, then you know that your pharmacist does much more than fill prescriptions. Collectively, our knowledge and expertise can help better manage medications for our patients, improve outcomes (or goals), and explain any drug-related problems.
Simply stated, medication management is a process in which pharmacists work with patients and their health care providers to ensure that medication therapy and/or the condition being treated achieve a desired goal. The outcomes or goals in medication management may be to reduce adverse drug reactions (side effects), improve medication compliance (proper and regular administration), reduce symptoms, improve cost effectiveness of medications, educate patients and their families, monitor patients’ conditions, and help patients monitor themselves.
Your community pharmacist fills, checks, and provides counselling for prescriptions, recommends and counsels for over-the-counter therapies, offers advice for common and minor ailments, and communicates with you and your health care providers. Prescription counselling often includes an explanation of why you may be taking a drug, proper administration, common side effects and interactions, correct storage, and how to dispose of medications if necessary. Prescription counselling can include how to monitor side effects and therapeutic response and when to expect any of either. These are the familiar roles of your community pharmacist.
Currently, pharmacists are also involved in medication management by relaying drug and health information (offering education clinics at the pharmacy and in the community), managing and offering lifestyle advice for conditions such as diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), asthma, obesity, high blood cholesterol, and many others.
Pharmacists collaborate and communicate with other health care professionals to ensure that the medication prescribed is the right medication for you, that it does not interact with your other medicines–both prescription and non-prescription as well as any herbal products you currently take–that you are not allergic or sensitive to it, and also whether the medication is covered by your drug plan or is cost-effective. We provide detailed medication reviews, and if a medicine is not appropriate for any reason, pharmacists will make recommendations to doctors, such as other prescription products or non-drug therapy.
Many pharmacies offer call back programs to see how their patients are coping with their prescription. Some pharmacies offer specialized services, such as home visits, specialty compounding, and blister packing to ensure compliance and medication reminders. Pharmacists can help screen for diseases, such high cholesterol and diabetes.
The range of roles for a pharmacist as a medication manager continues to evolve. As a medication manager, your community pharmacist has an important place in health care and is both essential and accessible. Talk to your pharmacist, and learn how you can work together to better manage your medicines.
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