My name is Alexandra Santamaria, PharmD, CDCES. As a clinical pharmacist in ambulatory pharmacotherapy, my purpose is to partner with the patient to help get chronic diseases under control (self management), get the latest information about your disease state, improve drug therapy to get the best outcomes and educate the patient on their disease state and medications.
In this blog you will be able to see information bout disease states, medications and research. Everything in the site is from a pharmacotherapeutic prospective and is not meant to substitute your Doctor’s recommendations.
Everything from motivating patients, to communication, to dealing with both medical and pharmacy students; will be addressed in this blog. All from a personal perspective as an ambulatory care specialist clinical pharmacist and insight from years of experience. I welcome your opinions and insights into the different topics, discussion can only lead to better understanding of topics that are very relevant to ambulatory clinical pharmacy today and hope we can further the profession of pharmacy in ambulatory care.
This is a very exciting time in Pharmacy as we are present in more settings than ever, ambulatory care can be found in primary care clinics, hospital based clinics, in specialty clinics, in community pharmacies providing clinical services and many more settings. Other professions such as Medical Doctors, Physician Assistant, Nurses and many others, are beginning to see the benefits of having a clinical pharmacist as part of the health team. More and more patients are also starting to seek services from clinical pharmacist because they see the benefit of the services we provide. While we have some barriers and even some setbacks, it is my belief that pharmacy has a very bright future ahead especially in ambulatory care.