Pushing your pharmacy stress threshold is good for you!

For the third time in my triathlon career, I arrived at the Wasaga Beach triathlon ready to race. This time however, Mother Nature was angry along the world’s biggest freshwater beach. It was overcast with rain on the horizon and 35km/h wind gusts. There were whitecap waves far out and three-foot swells holding our swim course hostage, but it was waiting to be conquered.

There is no word to describe the difficulty of this swim. It was one the hardest physical competitions I have been in so far. We breastroked with our heads above the water line, each relentless wave pushing us almost backward with each body-tiring blow. Like many others, I was coughing and swallowed water when it was time to inhale.

Around me, two swimmers were pulled out by rescue boats and other swimmers turned around a few minutes in.

After a season of training, eating well, going to bed on time and a World Championship qualification on the line, I could not turn back.

When I got out of the water and transitioned to the bike, I had been given a gift. I had a new confidence and a new threshold for what is hard. Suddenly, I was a swimmer. I possessed a new level of resilience that I could take with me in life and into the pharmacy.

When the next challenge presents itself, I will be able to say: “Well, it’s not a Wasaga swim.”

Pharmacists have come a long way over the centuries

Gone are the days of a "druggist" using leeches or being the only druggist in town. Gone are the product-driven experts solely paid for dispensing. Pharmacists have stretched the limits of their horizons before us and now it is our turn. It’s time to prescribe!

Within a limited healthcare system thinly stretched, we are a significant part of the answer and we will be taking on more than we can imagine in the years to come. For now, we must stretch into the world of initiating drug therapy.

This will not go away. In fact, the list of conditions, drug classes and conditions will continue to expand until the pharmacist is the first point of contact in many patient interactions over other primary healthcare providers.

We must find new challenges that raise our threshold for stress. We must venture out of our comfort zones and do dangerous things safely. Move your goal posts, begin finding your revised normal and prescribe like a pharmacist.

Jump in, the water is fine.