Sarah Ward, PharmD, BCPP, Clinical Pharmacy Specialist, Mental Health, VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, Chattanooga, TN
The CPNP Consumer Relations Committee works to highlight the volunteer activities of CPNP members as a means to increase awareness of these activities and to provide insight and guidance to other CPNP members that may be interested in getting involved in volunteer activities in the future. This month, CPNP would like to highlight the volunteer efforts of Suzanne Harris.
Suzanne Harris is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy, director of the UNC Hospital Region Experiential Program, and a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in psychiatry with UNC Hospital and Clinics. Suzanne is an active member of local NAMI chapters and has spoken at the Annual NAMI North Carolina Statewide Convention several times. Suzanne also serves as the faculty advisor for the UNC CPNP student chapter and teaches a psychiatry elective to PY3 students.
Through her role as a faculty advisor for the CPNP student chapter, she oversees and helps coordinate different outreach activities with the students. The students have been active with the annual NC NAMIWalks since 2012. NAMI consumers are invited to present as “In My Own Voice” speakers to chapter meetings. Through the psychiatric elective, the PY3 students have the opportunity to provide medication education groups to the NAMI Durham chapter in addition to psychiatric inpatients at the UNC Medical Center. More recently, these medication education groups have extended to a local Clubhouse International called Club Nova. Suzanne first learned about Club Nova while representing pharmacy at an UNC Mental Health Fair. The medication education groups are mainly patient-driven and can focus on mental health related topics such as sleep hygiene, herbals, diet, exercise, and/or prescription medications.
Suzanne states the most rewarding aspect of these volunteer activities is getting the pharmacy students involved and changing their perceptions about the mental health population. She says the students report feeling more prepared in medication knowledge and patient interactions after these experiences. They have evaluated the change in the pharmacy students’ stigma levels with mental health patients in the past and found stigma was decreased after increased opportunities to interact with this patient population.
For those CPNP members that are faculty and would like to get more involved in the community, she encourages you to reach out to local mental health organizations such as NAMI and form a symbiotic relationship. Discuss how pharmacy students can help provide their consumers with more education and how in return they can promote their organization within the pharmacy school. Outside of NAMI there are other local groups that could benefit from CPNP member involvement including Mental Health America, Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, and local Clubhouse Internationals.
Suzanne provides a great example of how to become personally involved in these organizations and how to involve others while providing hands-on education for pharmacy students.