Pam Mazyck, clinical specialist at MUSC

Pam Mazyck R ’00 R ’02 is an inventor. She invents pharmacists.

She starts at a clinic that has never had a pharmacist before, and she creates a new perception of what a pharmacist is and the value one can offer. Oh, so THAT’s a pharmacist. How did we ever get by before?

“I’ve started a lot of clinics in places where they never had a pharmacist,” she said. “It takes a different skill set to build your role so that people rely on you. You have to learn how to show them how to improve the process but not take over.”

An 18-year veteran at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), Mazyck is a pharmacotherapy clinical specialist in the hospital at MUSC, working with patients who have chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure.

Some of her patients face medication bills as high as $8,000 a month. Even with insurance, the co-pay can be $600 or more. Medicare Plan B can reduce that to $200, but it still may be more than the patient can afford. The pharmacist can serve a vital role in finding solutions.

“The best part of being a pharmacist to me is truly being able to help a patient get the medication they need and the worst part is when you can’t,” Mazyck said.

Mazyck also serves a critical role in making sure the patients understand how to take the medications once they get them.

“Everyone’s knowledge base is not the same,” she said. “When you are counseling patients, you have to learn that just because you said it one way, it may not be the way they understand it. There may be a language barrier or an education barrier and the pharmacist may be best suited for dealing with that.”

If she has any doubts that the patient understood, Mazyck will find some way to make it clearer. She may explain the disease state a simpler way, get them to repeat the instructions back to her, or even use a highlighter on one bottle and put a big X on another.

This type of interaction ultimately leads to two of pharmacy’s greatest satisfactions: a healthier patient and a personal relationship.

“Taking care of patients is very fulfilling,” Mazyck said. “You establish personal relationships with some of them, and they might call you just to tell you something that’s happened to them, like they got a new car. Or they’re so excited to tell you they got their blood pressure down or they quit smoking.  When you can truly help someone, it gives you a real sense of fulfillment.”

Her path to clinical pharmacy started from a little bit of a detour. She went to Xavier University (PharmD, 1999) intending to go into retail before MUSC residencies in pharmacy practice (2000) and family medicine (2002) and an MUSC fellowship in pharmacoeconomics research (2002) changed her mind. But the love of pharmacy began in a retail setting.

In high school, she had worked in a pharmacy in the front of the store, not really dealing with pharmacists or patients. Her true path to pharmacy began when she was working in a pharmacy part-time and they needed a pharmacy technician. They asked her to fill in.

“That’s really where my love of pharmacy began,” she said. “Sometimes you have to be in the environment to understand it. Up front, all I saw was the chaos but when I went back there, I found I loved taking care of patients and being involved in their lives.”