Does being a healthcare professional mean being a healer, asks Niamh Cahill
The 1st of February traditionally heralds the start of spring, proclaiming brighter and warmer days ahead. On Erin’s Isle, the date also marks a day of celebration in honour of Saint Bridget, one of three of Ireland’s patron saints.
Renowned for her compassion towards animals and the poor, St Bridget is patron of many things, including poets and blacksmiths. Of most significance, perhaps, was her ability to perform miracles and heal the sick.
Referred to as a ‘goddess of healers’, she is said to have cured blindness and healed leprosy. And most of us will remember — if we were listening intently at school, that is — the fascinating tale of how she magically spread out her cloak, stretching it far across the fields, ensuring she would gain enough land from the King of Leinster to build a monastery.
Unlike St Bridget, pharmacists are not miracle-workers, at least not in any magical sense. But do pharmacists perhaps possess one of St Bridget’s most important traits? Are pharmacists healers?
The concept is no doubt one that rarely enters the mind ahead of another busy day dispensing medication and helping patients. Indeed, musing on it brings forth more questions. What is a healer?
A quick look at the dictionary reveals words such as ‘repair’ and ‘mend’. Definitions put forward state that healers alleviate stress and anguish. On this basis, pharmacists, as healthcare professionals and clinicians, could easily be viewed as healers.
But the definitions seem to omit an important, perhaps overlooked facet of healing: The skill of listening, which all proficient healers, like St Bridget, must possess. One cannot completely and holistically treat a condition without first listening to a patient’s concerns.
The Greek physician Hippocrates many centuries ago espoused the importance of listening, as have many medical professors since.
The Hippocratic Oath asked doctors to avoid harming patients and to adopt a professional approach to helping and treating patients.
For centuries, apothecaries and medicinal experts, forerunners to pharmacists today, have adopted Hippocrates’ approach when treating patients.
The dictionary describes a pharmacist as being “a person who is professionally qualified to prepare and dispense medicinal drugs”. But as people are waking up to, you are so much more than that.
In more recent times, pharmacists have shifted from being merely dispensers of medications to healers, advisors, and holistic healthcare providers. The role of pharmacist has evolved and changed significantly and will continue to do so in the years ahead.
The demands on GPs and indeed the entire healthcare service in recent decades have meant patients seeking advice and care have increasingly leant on the specialist knowledge of pharmacists.
Following recommendations by the Expert Taskforce to Support the Expansion of the Role of Pharmacy, community pharmacists can now prescribe for a restricted list of conditions, a list which will no doubt rise in the future.
More than ever before, pharmacists are being asked to listen to patients, which has, it can be argued, propelled the concept of pharmacist as healer to the fore.
Are more and more medication errors occurring all the time, or is the rise in harmful incidents due to better reporting?
The role of healer in medicine and indeed pharmacy is often disregarded. But it comes sharply into focus when one considers how an incorrect medication or incorrect dose could have devastating consequences for patients.
The delivery of healthcare takes place in fraught and busy environments. But this does not mean that mistakes cannot be prevented.
Recent data released by the HSE via Freedom of Information legislation revealed that in 2023 nine patients suffered long term disability/incapacity (including psychosocial) harm due to adverse medication incidents.
In the same year a further 244 patients, according to the HSE National Incident Management System (NIMS) for recording safety incidents, suffered injuries that required medical treatment due to medication errors.
Furthermore, in 2022, 193 patients suffered injuries that required medical treatment due to medication errors.
Are more and more medication errors occurring all the time or is the rise in harmful incidents due to better reporting?
Research has shown that medical errors can often be avoided by listening to the patient and making them a central part of the healthcare process.
Evidence has shown that if patients feel they are being listened to and that they are playing a role in the management of their condition, and are not merely passive participants in a healthcare providers plans, they are more likely to adhere to medication regimens and feel satisfied with their care.
Pharmacists are a central component in ensuring patients receive the best treatment possible. It is worth stressing that by listening to patients, even without dispensing any medication, healing is possible. Through listening pharmacists can act like a soothing balm, reducing the suffering and anxiety felt by a person.
How many times in our lives have we felt all the better for simply being listened to?
Niamh Cahill has a Masters in Journalism and a BSc in Communications: Film and Broadcasting
from the Technological University Dublin (formerly Dublin Institute of Technology). She has been a journalist for more than 17 years and has spent much of this time writing about health. She is currently a freelance healthcare journalist.
