By Michael Mui
In September, the BC Pharmacy Association launched the See Your Pharmacist campaign to encourage British Columbians to use their local pharmacies as primary community health-care centres.
The campaign’s objectives are simple: to encourage the public to consider pharmacies as their first stop when seeking health care. To get the message out, the BCPhA has partnered with a highly experienced marketing firm to launch a series of television and online advertisements, expected to reach more than 1.2 million British Columbians over the course of two months.
The BCPhA’s messaging emphasizes that pharmacists are available when walk-in clinics and family doctors are not—during evenings, weekends and holidays. And while our more than 4,000 colleagues are practicing in nearly every community in B.C., the public is not currently taking advantage of the full extent of services pharmacists offer.
This campaign seeks to change that lack of awareness by promoting less publicly known services such as prescription adaptations, renewing prescriptions, medication reviews and vaccinations.
The public’s demand for health care is only increasing as the population ages. Research conducted by the BCPhA finds British Columbians want pharmacists to perform more health-care services.
By reinforcing the public’s understanding that pharmacists can be their first stop for health care, we can demonstrate that we are ready to step in as part of the solution in caring for a growing aging population expected to consume more health-care resources with each passing day.
We know that pharmacists are the true experts in medication. Help us spread the word. With each positive memory and interaction a patient shares with a pharmacist, with each
additional patient educated about the services offered by pharmacists, the standing of pharmacists in the eyes of the public will only grow.