By: Ayo Ajayi
The need for medical practitioners, particularly, the pharmacists to strengthen their communication skills in order to improve patient care and teamwork among them came the fore Wednesday, at the first inaugural lecture for the 2018/2019 Academic Session of the University of Lagos.
The lecture titled, “Take One, Three Times Daily! Simple, Right? was delivered at the University campus by Professor Bolajoko Aina, a professor of Clinical Pharmacy.
Professor Aina, who is also the Dean, Faculty of Pharmacy, noted that proper communication between health workers and patients was important for the rational use of medicine.
“Inappropriate pharmacotherapy may result from the inadequacy of information provided by health professionals or misprocessing of information by patients. A simple and straight forward process becomes complicated.
“Strong communication skills are required of today’s healthcare practitioners. Pharmacists and other health professionals must continue to improve their communication skills. Effective communication may increase patient understanding of treatment, improve compliance and, in some cases, lead to improved health. It can also reduce dispensing error,” she explained.
The lecturer also argued that pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare professional in the world, as undoubtedly, there was no healthcare without drugs. “It is obvious pharmacists contribute to the health of the populace. However, they are underutilised and untapped assets that have an immense capacity to impact public health in our society.
“Take One Tablet Three Times Daily’ sounds simple but the medication use process is quite complex. Where and when the pharmacists are underutilised like our setting, irrational use of medicine will occur.”
Professor Aina highlighted her contributions to knowledge and human resource development which span over 30 years. She had successfully supervised eight (8) PhD candidates while five (5) are still on-going. She had also supervised 60 Master students and over 100 undergraduate projects.
The inaugural lecture was the 328th in the University, first for the 2018/2019 Academic Session, sixth in the Faculty of Pharmacy, the fifth in Clinical Pharmacy in Nigeria and the first in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Biopharmacy.
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