As noted elsewhere in this issue, 1981 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the first American
Pharmaceutical Association chapters on the campuses of our schools and colleges of pharmacy. It is an appropriate time, then, both to look back at the significant achievement of our chapters since 1931 and to assess where we should be heading in the next half century.
Without a crystal ball, it is impossible to accurately predict the course the profession of pharmacy will take in the next 50 years, but there appear to be some areas of activity in which SAPhA chapters could involve themselves in the future which would both help to influence the profession’s course and help to ensure that our future practitioners are viable participants:
• lnterprofessional Relations. If the pharmacist’s role in the delivery of health care is to be significantly enhanced, it will only be with the support and concurrence of other health professionals with whom the pharmacist must interact. SAPhA Chapters can have a signific ant positive impact by establishing and participating in campus programs and activities with other student health professionals. Through these joint activities, the professions involved can achieve a better understanding of and appreciation for the knowledge and competencies of other health professionals, a situation essential for maximum interprofessional respect and mutual support.
• Promoting the Profession to the Public. No expansion of the pharmacist’s current role will be possible unless the public, which is the recipient of pharmaceutical services, is knowledgeable about the nature of those services and is willing to accept and pay for them. SAPhA Chapters should therefore take a close look at their current community health activities to see how they might be changed or enhanced to better promote to the public the value of the pharmacist in maintaining the public health. Presentations on venereal disease and poison prevention are important and provide a definite service, but the question must be asked whether they are effective in demonstrating to the public the true nature and value of the services provided by pharmacists.
• Changing the Quality of Pharmacy Practice. A too common complaint of pharmacy graduates is that many of the positions available to them do not afford them the opportunity to provide the services to the public for which they were trained. It is often chain pharmacies that are cited in these instances, but graduates soon discover that there are as many, if not more, independent community practitioners who are not willing or able to provide a high level of pharmaceutical service. SAPhA Chapters should look to develop programs that will both educate chain management and less progressive independent pharmacy owners about the nature and value of contemporary pharmacy practice and influence them to institute changes in their practice settings that will permit the provision of comprehensive services.
• Influencing and Initiating Policy. SAPhA Chapters should develop a greater interest in and exert a greater influence on the organizational policies that are and will influence the course of the profession. Chapters, and young practitioners after graduation, should take an active role in the policy development procedures of their local, state, and national organizations; students should identify and work for the adoption of policies that will make the profession more the way they want it to be.
• Influencing Education. SAPhA Chapters and students already have a significant influence on pharmaceutical education—through passage of national SAPhA policies on curricular matters, through service on college curriculum committees, and through interaction with educational organizations. However, during the next 50 years, students should look for ways of increasing their involvement and influence. Student Chapters can play a role in assuring that the educational experience equips them for the real world by insisting that faculty members have a pharmacy background and regularly participate in programs that require that they actually practice pharmacy. Chapters can also volunteer their services as an advisory committee on curriculum matters and they can urge that pharmacy practitioners be actively involved in curriculum development. Other specific ways of involvement will present themselves over the years, and SAPhA Chapters should regularly reaffirm the educational area as one of major priority.
One need not look back far during the last half century to recognize that the stature and influence of the pharmacy student has been significantly enhanced, and students truly have some influence on their chosen profession; there is no reason that that impact should not increase just as significantly in the future.