CPNP’s Journey on the “Road to Relevance”: The Story of our Strategic Plan

Julie Dopheide, PharmD, BCPP
CPNP President, Board of Directors

CPNP Strategic Plan

January of 2013, twenty-two CPNP members gathered to brainstorm and lay the foundation of a new strategic plan aimed at positioning CPNP firmly on the road to continued success. This strategic planning session involved a great deal of reflection on CPNP’s strengths while envisioning future goals and aspirations. We considered plans built around the core values of CPNP members and began to focus on 4 goal areas: Establishing synergistic partnerships with other organizations, improving the quality of care for all psychiatric patients, reinforcing the financial underpinnings of our organization, enriching the value of membership, and improving the connections between our members. 

As a group of neuropsychiatric pharmacists, you can imagine that we came up with some grandiose ideas such as, “CPNP should make sure that every pharmacy school includes curriculum in neurology and psychiatry” and “CPNP needs to make sure that Am Care and Community pharmacists have the knowledge and skills to care for patients with neuropsychiatric disorders.” We wanted to be as impactful as possible, putting our patients first in every idea.   

The second phase of our work involved meeting within four work groups around the identified goal areas. Over the course of the summer of 2013, these work groups went from the grandiose ideas and broad brainstorming down to a set of priorities they advanced to the CPNP Board.

In the third phase, the CPNP Board studied a tremendous amount of membership feedback, statistics and external trend data all while reading “The Road to Relevance”, a book that challenged us to think about aligning goals with our strengths, setting realistic goals, and focusing on what CPNP can do as an organization without having its success being contingent on actions of other pharmacy organizations or external groups. 

Through this book we learned that successful organizations build upon their strengths and have the courage to purposefully abandon efforts that expend energy and resources but provide potential benefit for only a small segment of the organization. This took us back to the reason that CPNP formed in 1998…other organizations were not meeting the education and networking needs of neuropsychiatric pharmacists. CPNP members consistently identify educational programming and networking as CPNP’s major strengths. CPNP’s members are largely clinicians and educators who strive to improve their knowledge and skills in order to provide the best possible care for their patients. This caused us to refocus our vision, mission and core goals on the neuropsychiatric pharmacist and aspiring neuropsychiatric pharmacist as our core constituency with the knowledge that when CPNP advances the knowledge, skills and practice of its members, there is direct benefit to patients. 

As a result of these in-depth efforts, CPNP’s new vision and mission are:

Vision

Every individual living with a psychiatric or neurologic disorder has a care team that includes a neuropsychiatric pharmacist accountable for optimal medication therapy.

Mission

As the voice of the specialty, our mission is to advance the reach and practice of neuropsychiatric pharmacists.            

This issue of CPNP Perspectives is authored by various members of the CPNP Board explaining the five core goals of our strategic plan which we believe have the potential to transform the organization and the specialty.

1. Our Profession: We will actively promote inclusion of neuropsychiatric pharmacists as an important component of the health care team in improving outcomes for those living with mental illness.
2. Our Expertise: We will advance our various educational products to remain innovative and to provide the best value to our members.
3. Our Organization: We will maintain a fiscally and operationally effective organization as well as cultivate new leaders, improve committee structures, and enhance the member and volunteer experience through involvement and participation.
4. Our Membership: We will focus on connecting members with the peers and resources most important to them.
5. Our Voice: We will improve our visibility by establishing the Mental Health Clinician (MHC) as a respected peer-reviewed journal.

Along the theme of transforming, Dr. Sarah Melton was featured in the May edition of “Pharmacy Today” showcasing how her daily work with patients has transformed lives. The feature article describes Dr. Melton’s successful collaboration with nurse practitioners and family practice physicians to improve access to care for patients and make sure health care workers and students receive the necessary education and training on psychiatric and neurologic pharmacotherapy. Sarah Melton, PharmD, BCPP, BCACP, CGP has been CPNP’s recertification editorial board chair since 2008. We congratulate Sarah for being recognized for practice excellence and the transformation she is bringing to the practice of psychiatric pharmacy in her corner of the world.