Interprofessional communication is a common but complex practice that is essential in providing health care for the patients.

Enhancing collaborative relationships between pharmacists and other health professionals is therefore important in terms of improving patients health outcomes and providing cost-effective and quality health care. In real practice, the process of medication prescribing, dispensing, medication administration, monitoring drug therapy can be disjointed. This is where drug-related problems occur and pharmacists beyond doubt have a significant role in not only medication but also disease state management. Once a medication is prescribed by a doctor, the patient needs to know how to take that medication correctly and safely so that the therapeutic outcome is achieved. As most patients do not have a clear picture of the medications they are taking, pharmacists can help them manage their own drug therapy by building better understanding about their medications and enhancing adherence to drug treatments via appropriate and comprehensive counselling. For example, a patient was prescribed Symbicort inhaler but his doctor did not explain how to use the inhaler to him. In this case, the pharmacist plays a more active role in the patients asthma management in terms of demonstrating the correct inhaler techniques, which most patients fail to perform. Another example is the role of pharmacists in identifying and solving drug-related problems, such as major drug-drug interactions, which the doctors can be unaware of. Although interprofessional approach is commonly adopted in health care, it still has some limitations regarding the differences existing between health professionals. For instance, the patients history taking, which is the most basic step in health care, is carried out and perceived to a different extent by health professionals. The doctors tend to focus on the patients medical condition history without considering the current regular medications, which may be a cause for other problems such as drug-induced renal failure or falls. Conversely, the pharmacists tend to focus on the patients medication history and current regular medications without taking into account other medical problems and social factors, which may worsen the disease state. Because of these differences, health professionals should work in a collaborative way in order to obtain a comprehensive patients history. Nowadays, patients are encouraged to get actively involved in decision-making process with respect to their treatments. Pharmacists can also contribute to patient management decision-making by providing information on treatment options e.g. treatment efficacy, cost of treatment, treatment-related adverse effects. Based on the information given by the pharmacists, the patients can make their own informed decisions. The contribution of pharmacists to patients decision-making process is significantly noted on oncology wards, where a wide range of chemotherapy is used to target many types of cancer. A patient with recurrent tumours or poor prognosis can decide to stop her chemotherapy due to serious side effects and erratic efficacy. In general, pharmacists are a crucial component in an interprofessional health care team, facilitating the drug therapy and disease management processes. Since health care consists of many aspects, each health professional not only is considered equally important in a team in terms of improving patients health outcomes but also has specific roles in each aspect. (Word count: 520 words)

Kim Ngoc NGUYEN (21859825) Reflective essay PAC4482