Susie Jin is a Community Pharmacist with certification in Geriatric Pharmacy, Compression Stocking Fitting, and Diabetes Education, and is a member of multiple committees within Diabetes Canada, in addition to serving on several provincial and national advocacy committees.
“I feel like I’ve been very blessed, after all my years in practise, to have had a lot of really special moments with people in a variety of settings. From providing unique care to a special needs person who needed a yellow fever immunization to travel, to working in a community pharmacy and inadvertently helping a person realize he had an addiction problem, to working on an interprofessional team and providing diabetes education, interacting with people to improve their health has always been a welcome challenge, and very satisfying when successful.
What I found was that, early in my career, I focussed a lot on helping people understand their situation, and what they could do to better manage their condition. But truthfully, when they would come back for their follow-up appointments, there was often no progress. The problem was not that these people were not educated, and it was also not that these people did not know how to care for themselves; I believe the missing link was the lack of self-management support.
In truth, I didn’t fully appreciate the value of self-management support until I recognized that I actually needed this support myself. My hope would be that everyone could recognize this same need and find the support systems that work for them, whether it be in the form of a phone/tablet application or a good set of motivating friends to help them achieve their goals, which will ultimately help them further their progress beyond standard follow-up sessions.
My goal for the future would be to make it easier for people to achieve their healthcare goals. This can only happen if they make goals at all. I feel that when people live their lives goal-free, or in other words, when the healthcare team works harder than the patient themselves, that’s a problem. Helping and motivating patients to recognize and pursue what is achievable, even in the smallest ways is when the healthcare system is able to meet those needs optimally. If not, we’re all just yearning to try to make healthcare equal, even though its not equal, because everyone has different needs.
One analogy I really like is of a group of people trying to peer over a fence; however, they were all of different heights and so some found it much more difficult to see the other side. This expressed how everyone has different needs to be able to achieve the same goal of ‘looking over the fence’ — it is often not any fault of the patient that they have certain needs, but regardless, they need to meet those needs at varying degrees. That is when the healthcare team needs to prioritize needs and provide effective care that will make a difference in health outcomes.
If I had the power to implement one change into the healthcare system that would be effective tomorrow, it would be to support people by prioritizing their needs and promoting self-management education and support through improved collaboration amongst all members of the patient’s healthcare and health support teams.”
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