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Many years ago, when my son was in Grade 2, he had a learning journal that parents were encouraged to read and participate in. The concept of a learning journal, where you record something that you have learned every day, was new to me. I thought it was a great idea. As I wrote in his journal, I noted the differences between knowledge — something that we know as information; intelligence — our capacity to process knowledge and information; and wisdom — a greater reflection of knowledge based on broader, lifetime experiences. I drew the computer analogy, where the knowledge is stored in RAM or on the hard drive; intelligence is our CPU processing power; and wisdom — that can only be achieved through a human interface. I’ve thought of this often since then. The importance of adding value to knowledge through wisdom is immense. It is so much more expedient to just process information, perhaps with analysis, but without wisdom. We need to take time to think, to consider, or to ponder. Too often we forfeit the real value of thought and the application of our life experiences. It is far easier to just process things: quickly fire off a response to that e-mail; make a quick decision based on the facts in front of us, even though we know that there are other considerations that we need to make.
How does this relate to pharmacy? I’ve been thinking; pondering actually, about how organizations, groups or even professions act in a similar way to individuals. In this case, how can we ensure that our profession applies wisdom in its decisions? We have an incredible amount of knowledge, and as a group, unbelievable intelligence. We have a lot of smart people who congregate in corporate offices, hospitals and academic centres. How do we access their collective wisdom? We do this through discussions, meetings and conversations amongst our governing bodies, be they regulatory or voluntary. We access the individual wisdom collectively and allow it to build. Then we plan and move things forward based on this collective wisdom. It is a wonderful and powerful system. It is even more powerful when the group is comprised of a diverse and engaging mix of people. Cultural and experiential diversity brings varying perspectives to the table and makes for stronger, wiser decisions. The youth have the energy and current knowledge of the practice, with our elders, who have seen a lot of pharmacy over the years. The challenge is to always improve and advance patient outcomes.
As a profession, we seem to be pretty excited about expanding our scope of practice these days. Is this a good thing? It seems that doing more than what we were originally tasked with doing is viewed positively, as perhaps a societal reward for doing a great job. Or is it the acknowledgement that the skills of a pharmacist are under-utilized, so this is a societal evolution that supports increasing the scope of practice. Perhaps a bit of both as we are finding as we move forward in the initial steps of instituting an advanced practice pharmacist designation. Giving injections is a good case in point. Traditionally, pharmacists haven’t administered drugs to patients, so this is quite a change. Does the administration of drugs improve the quality of pharmacy service we provide? Has this fundamentally changed what we consider to be pharmacy practice? What about prescribing authority? Is this something that is good for the profession? Or more importantly, is it something that is good for patients? I’ve been hearing for many years that pharmacists are drug therapy experts, and I do believe that we are. Does that mean that we have to do everything from prescribing to administering? I wonder about that. Have we applied wisdom to these decisions? What’s next?
- Registrar
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