How This Pharmacist Encourages Her Peers to Advocate for Patient Safety

Management

Dr. Jodie Pepin, clinical pharmacy program director at Harbor Health, has dedicated her career to patient safety.

Dec 05, 2023

Jessica Levco, Healthcare Journalist & Pharmacy Angle Contributor

Jodie Pepin, clinical pharmacy program director at Harbor Health, has dedicated her career to patient safety. She’s worked at several hospitals across the U.S. and each time she’s wanted to start a new program or initiative, she was met with skepticism or push-back from the C-suite.

That’s because she believes that pharmacists aren’t seen with the same level of respect as a physician. As a pharmacist for almost 40 years, she says the industry is under-visualized and underutilized.

“No one gives us the same credit as a physician,” Pepin says. “We're still fighting with Medicare to fully recognize pharmacists as providers of care. When I first started at a hospital, we were all down in the basement, with no windows. That’s when I realized just how underappreciated pharmacists are. We’re seen as an afterthought.”

Dr. Jody Pepin, Clinical Pharmacy Program Director from Harbor Health

But Pepin doesn’t want to be an afterthought — she wants to be at the forefront, and encourages her peers to do the same. A few highlights of what she’s been able to accomplish during her career:

A rounding service with a pharmacist: Seeing a lot of clinical errors happening in an ICU, she made it possible for a pharmacist to round with medical staff to help with prescribing, reduce medication errors, and shorten length of stay, which resulted in cost savings.
Transitions of care program: At one hospital where she worked, patients were getting readmitted because of medication errors, such as leaving the hospital with duplicate medications or unable to pick up their prescriptions. She partnered with pharmacy students to do a medication reconciliation on admission and discharge, so there was continuity of care and fewer medication errors and less hospital readmissions.
Meet and greet with a pharmacist: Every admitted patient would have a face-to-face meeting with a pharmacist. The pharmacist would pop by a patient’s room, introduce themselves and ask if the patient had any questions about the medication, side effects or new drug therapies.

It wasn’t easy to create these programs from scratch. Here’s the advice she gives to fellow pharmacists, who would like to do something similar at their hospital:

The C-suite doesn’t accept cost avoidance as a strategy. They want to see hard dollars. “You always have to find some angle to show a hard cost savings to your program to get buy-in or funding to add pharmacists or more resources,” Pepin says. She suggests starting with a pilot program first (along with a retrospective data analysis) to figure out how many dollars were saved. “The pharmacy isn’t a revenue-generating department,” Pepin says. “You always have to justify what you're doing.”
Get your staff excited about what you’re trying to do. Find out each of your team members’ strengths and weaknesses. For example, there might be some pharmacists who feel comfortable talking to doctors or the C-suite about what new program your team started. These are the people who can lend a hand by speaking up about your team’s efforts.
Never stop learning as a leader. She encourages fellow pharmacists to go on leadership retreats, take classes on leadership or sign up for leadership webinars. “Being a leader means working on yourself,” Pepin says. “It’s growing, reading and learning — it’s non-stop.”