Health Care Collaboration: Pharmacists and Social Workers Working as a Team for Patient Advocacy
By Rae Anstett
On Thursday, March 21st, CHaSCI Managing Director Bonnie Ewald was a featured speaker in a panel discussion series held by the Navigation Nation Training Program by Komen, alongside Walgreens Specialty Staff Pharmacist Juline George, PharmD. The discussion, titled “Health Care Collaboration,” was facilitated by Kelly Moultry, CHES, the Program Manager of Community Health Training at Susan G. Komen.
The discussion focused on establishing connections with Pharmacists and Social Workers to gain a better understanding of their unique roles and the advantages of working together as a team for patient advocacy.
Speakers Ewald and George emphasized the necessity of communication between care teams as a key ingredient in quality patient care. They highlighted key strategies and outcomes to leverage toward collaborative healthcare and answered the overarching question: “How do we align our strengths, address silos, and not duplicate efforts but instead collaborate effectively?”
Key takeaways from the panel discussion:
What are some of the challenges and solutions to providing quality care?
For pharmacists?
Copays, financial assistance, and prior authorizations. Patient navigators provide support through signing patients up for foundations and financial documentation, and they act like glue in communicating about physical and social care toward patients’ whole needs.
For social workers?
Misconceptions about who social workers are and what they do
Psychosocial challenges that evolve alongside treatment, like family and caregiver burden
What are strategies to collaborate toward seamless care?
Communication, trust and faith in one’s team. Drop-off in communication is a huge deterrent.
What information can pharmacists share with navigators to facilitate collaboration?
Under HIPAA, patients sign off information-sharing between team. That said, prior authorizations are a huge pain point
On the ground communication and role clarity between family caregivers, mental health workers, psychotherapists, community health workers and nurses, social workers, financial assistance team, who each uniquely follow up depending on needs, are critical.
Testing and cocreating a bidirectional escalation system, implementation of processes to streamline and troubleshoot
Unified team chat, chart reviews, pager systems, three-way calls/warm hand-offs with patients, and social worker consults with team/knowledge-sharing
How do pharmacists contribute to medication adherence, and what are key questions a navigator should advise a patient to ask their pharmacist?
A specialty pharmacist will do an initial consult to educate and counsel patients about their cancer diagnosis, which can leave a patient “shell shocked.” Their work helps a patient move toward self-efficacy/control/empowerment
Questions include: how to take medication, side effects to look for, storing medications, eligible for payment help? Advice that “It never hurts to ask” a pharmacist about concerns
How do social workers advocate for change and against systemic challenges?
Social workers have creative solutions, being plugged in differently at the backend of healthcare policies
Challenges are in inclusion and trust in getting social care in the first place and a lack of representation in the clinical workforce
Social workers and care coordinators are critical in telling patients’ stories and influencing patients’ lives through quality care. This includes capturing patients’ confusion with the system and lived difficulty of cancer diagnoses.
Questions include the right way to capture data responsibly and respectfully and the body to address to move toward change (inside institution, externally, as statewide coalition?)
Undoing misconceptions about social workers’ roles and pitching how they can help with long-term challenges like stress management and end-of-life care
What are strategies to familiarize team members with one another’s role?
Shadowing: taking an hour to look at interface, interventions, go-to questions, and what to listen for
Informational interview-type conversations can work across institutions if there’s no easy social worker access
How do social workers prioritize well-being, and how might other team members do this?
The social work field has concretized how to do this throughout its history. Social workers have tools other healthcare team members can use to cope with burnout and compassion fatigue
Dedicated one-on-one or group setting to reflect on role and vicarious trauma
Asking questions among team about resilience, team dynamics, inclusion and respect
Normalizing and modeling that it is okay to say that your cup is not full enough, maybe leading to a lack of empathy and quick judgements rather than steady allyship
The onus is not on an individual to seek or create supports; instead, support should be part of the team or workplace culture
Learn more:
The Susan G. Komen Patient Navigation Training Program is a supportive, interactive learning community designed to empower trainees, including those traditionally underrepresented in healthcare careers. The training program gives navigators the tools and resources to overcome barriers for those experiencing breast health inequities and provides a peer network and support system. Learn more and join the program here.