Larry Merlo’s presentation on driving more affordable, accessible, and effective health care at this year’s Sebok lecture was both informative and inspirational. His lecture compiled information from his personal experiences as the president and CEO of CVS health with information on public health, giving insight to the road ahead for pharmacists.
While there are many things that I learned from the lecture, there were a handful of points that shined light on actions being done throughout the profession of pharmacy that I was not aware of. The first thing that I was surprised to learn was that CVS had taken cigarettes out of all of its stores a few years ago. This decision was made as a conscious effort to promote healthier living, especially because many of the patients who come to CVS to pick up their prescriptions are also customers of the store. Another thing that I learned was that CVS provides infusion services at some of their clinic sites. While I did know that CVS, as well as other pharmacies, have minute-clinics, I did not realize the extent of treatment that they were able to offer
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Merlo covered will apply direct to my future as a pharmacist. Even though I do not currently see myself going into retail pharmacy, I have been given an idea of the direction that pharmacy is moving in and how it is reforming patient healthcare, as well as the job opportunities of a pharmacist. I believe that the services and systems that pharmacies, such as CVS, have established will open up the doors for pharmacists to be more directly involved in managing the healthcare of their patients, and are ones that will tremendously expand the roles of pharmacists. I am excited to be entering the field of pharmacy at a time such as this, and look forward to being a part of both partaking in opportunities to serve patients that Mr. Merlo mentioned in his lecture, as well as creating new services and systems that will further enhance healthcare as a