College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists

CPNP Foundation Focuses on Project Implementation

The College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists Foundation (CPNPF) is now in its second year of working to promote state-of-the art and essential treatments for people affected by psychiatric and neurologic illness.

The CPNP Foundation works to accomplish this mission by:

• Advocating for all patients with psychiatric and neurologic illnesses to ensure access to a pharmacist with the knowledge and skills to improve their care.
• Providing resources for research and the dissemination of data, education, and training.
• Securing funds to support the mission of the CPNP Foundation.

After a successful Founding Circle campaign in its first year, the CPNP Foundation is focused on implementing two signature projects and seeking donations to support them. These projects include:

Characterizing the Interface Between Community Pharmacists and Patients

The CPNP Foundation’s tagline, “Extending the reach of psychiatric pharmacists” recognizes that there are only a few thousand psychiatric pharmacists while there are millions of patients taking medication for psychiatric disorders. This CPNPF signature project seeks to find ways to link psychiatric pharmacists with community pharmacists and improve community pharmacist contributions to patient care.

Step 1 of this project will involve surveying NAMI members regarding their experiences with community pharmacists and seeking their recommendations about how that interaction can be improved.

Step 2 of this project will involve review of survey results as a way to inform the organization of how to proceed in collaboration with other partners on outcomes such as educational programming at pharmacy meetings, educational products, written materials, articles in pharmacy journals, etc.

Psychiatric Pharmacy Practice Summit

The aim of this “Summit” is to identify the medication therapy management needs of patients with mental illness and the service gaps that exist between what patient’s are receiving now and what they should be receiving in the future. The “Summit” will serve as a way to begin conceptualizing:

1. what specific pharmacist services should be delivered to patients with mental illnesses,
2. what knowledge and skill requirements are  needed of pharmacists in order to be able to provide these services, and to
3. describe what the standard of pharmacy practice should be for serving these patients.

The summit will involve key stakeholders and will result in an action plan to begin addressing the current knowledge and skill needs necessary for the development of a standard of psychiatric pharmacy practice.

I want to donate to support these CPNP Foundation signature events at the following level: