Student pharmacist wins U.S. Public Service
Janel Shoun-Smith |
Student pharmacist excels at health education and patient consultation for the public
Rachel Brunner, a third-year student pharmacist from the city of Mahnomen located in northwestern Minnesota, came to Lipscomb in part to get her body away from the harsh winters of her hometown. But she left her heart at home, on the reservation where she grew up, and she has returned there for the past two summers as a pharmacy intern in the White Earth Indian Health Services Clinic to serve her home community.
As a descendant of the White Earth Ojibwe Tribe, Brunner has been a patient at the White Earth Indian Services Health Clinic her whole life. She came to know many of the staff there, and she had friends who completed pharmacy rotations at the White Earth clinic.
She decided to follow in their footsteps. After entering pharmacy school at Lipscomb in 2014, Brunner applied for a civil service externship at Indian Health Services to work at the clinic during the summer.
The White Earth Clinic is a full-service clinic providing a number of medical practitioners and providers in areas such as optometry, audiology, dentistry, mental health and nutrition, Brunner said. The clinic also operates satellite clinics at smaller villages on the reservation, and the staff does a great deal of public health education in areas such as tobacco cessation, anticoagulation and diabetes care, she said.
“The pharmacists here have a larger role on the health care team than I usually see while on my pharmacy rotations through school,” said Brunner, noting that she and the clinic pharmacists do patient consultations, medication adjustments and a lot of public health education. “I’m using much more of the patient counseling techniques that I’ve learned in school than I might use in an urban community pharmacy.”
As in any area with a high poverty rate, many patients on the reservation suffer from heroin use, alcohol abuse, obesity, diabetes and heart conditions, Brunner said. The clinic works to combat those problems through education sessions and a patient-centered approach to care. In addition, the clinic pharmacy was recently approved to dispense the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone, Brunner said.
In addition to combating societal issues, the health care staff at White Earth must also take into account the fact that some of their patients use traditional tribal medicine, such as ingesting teas and herbs or fasting for a time. “So you have to be able to balance traditional and modern medicines in your prescribed treatments,” Brunner said. “It’s patient-centered, and you have to work the patients’ beliefs and their traditional practices into their plan of care.”
Brunner also helps the pharmacists with public health education during special events such as the annual elders’ picnic and the clinic’s regular “diabetes day” events where a small group of patients come in on one day to get relevant lab work done in the morning and then receive diabetes training as a group.
“This is like public health 101 in a lot of ways,” said Brunner. She has created and presented at the tribe’s elders’ picnic a poster to educate on safe medication disposal, sun protection and tobacco cessation. She also helped host “diabetes bingo,” a White Earth Diabetes Project initiative, where attendees learn about diabetes management and the winners receive prizes.
For her work at White Earth Clinic and various leadership roles on campus with the American Pharmacists Association Academy of Student Pharmacists, Brunner won the U.S. Public Health Service’s Excellence in Public Health Pharmacy Award this past spring.
“Looking forward, our student pharmacists will be those local pharmacists who are pivotal in advancing public health,” said Commander Robin Bartlett, area clinical applications coordinator, when she presented the award on campus. “This award recognizes a student pharmacist who has demonstrated a commitment to public health, who is active in developing innovative approaches to current health challenges to further advance public health and to help lead our nation to a healthier future.”
In both Nashville and Mahnomen, Brunner has participated in scores of immunization clinics, blood pressure and glucose screenings and educational presentations on smoking cessation, safe use of medication, sun protection, HIV prevention and treatment, and diabetes prevention and treatment.
Some of the ways Brunner met the awards criteria is through her role as regional member-at-large for the American Pharmacists Association Academy of Student Pharmacists. There are only eight regional members-at-large from across the nation, and they work to develop and implement patient care projects for student pharmacists in their communities. She has helped coordinate initiatives such as Operation Heart, Operation Diabetes and Operation Immunization.
She also serves as the president of Lipscomb’s chapter of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists’ student society.
Brunner came to Lipscomb after attending North Dakota State University and earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Minnesota. Upon graduation, she said she hopes to eventually join the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and continue working in Indian Health Services, perhaps even at White Earth.