Dean R. Pete Vanderveen presides over the School’s ceremony attended by over 2,000 graduates, faculty, family and friends.
"Patients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care," advised School of Pharmacy Commencement speaker Paul Gregerson at the May 15th afternoon ceremony held at the Health Sciences Campus Quad.
Gregerson, the chief medical officer at the JWCH Institute, welcomed the 176 new Doctors of Pharmacy to their new careers. The school works closely with Gregerson at the JWCH Clinic at the Weingart Center where faculty, students and residents provide clinical pharmacy services to patients.
Many of these new pharmacists will likely to provide medication therapy management to patients with chronic diseases much like those offered by the School of Pharmacy at the JWCH Clinic. These pharmacists, working under protocol, typically treat the most difficult-to-manage patients who are not reaching therapeutic goals. The pharmacist works with these patients, ordering lab tests and changing medications and dosages as necessary.
Gregerson is an avid supporter of using clinical pharmacy services in this way, "Here at JWCH, we’ve created a kind of national model using a health-care team approach resulting in improved patient outcomes while saving health-care dollars".
In addition to PharmD recipients, the School awarded 29 Master of Science and eight Doctors of Philosophy degrees as well as 38 certificates to those completing residency or fellowship programs. Gregerson, who holds both MD and MBA degrees, reminded the graduates of the responsibilities that their privileged educations bring them.
"For those to whom much is given, much is expected," said Gregerson. He recounted conversations with some of the graduates over the past years when they worked in the clinic. "Many of you were surprised to hear some of stories that caused our patients to end up on skid row. In some cases, you could directly relate to the patients, and their problems seemed strikingly similar to your own."
The students had told him that common hardships, such as divorce, a car accident or the loss of insurance had started some of these patients on a downward spiral toward homelessness. On the other hand, he remembered how students found it very difficult to identify with some patients – especially those confronting inordinate challenges — like a young woman hopelessly living on the street or a one-legged Iraq veteran at the mercy of heroin addiction.
"Many of you entered the clinic convinced that your humanity was all you had in common with these people." However, Gregerson remembered how students learned that a bond of trust is an essential link that must be forged between health-care provider and patient.
Finding a way to that bond, a way to begin that trust, usually requires some common thread. Gregerson explained how his love of sports provides him with that thread, as he has found many of his patients are also sports fans. Whether talking about the Lakers or the Trojans, Gregerson noted that “the daunting gap created by our vastly different experience is suddenly and instantly gone”.
Citing the example of his colleague at the clinic, School of Pharmacy associate professor Steve Chen, Gregerson said Chen is brilliantly successful with his patients because he "meets them where they are", generating trust and strengthening the provider-patient bond. With Dr. Chen as a role model, Gregerson challenged the new graduates to avoid complacency in their careers, seeking the highest standards of skill and knowledge as they embark on their careers.
The School of Pharmacy held its graduation ceremony on May 15 at the Health Sciences Campus Quad.