Amy Werremeyer, PharmD
What is your role in psychiatric and neurologic pharmacy?
I am an Assistant Professor in the Pharmacy Practice Department at North Dakota State University where I teach the neuro-psych therapeutics course and I work on an inpatient psychiatry unit of a non-profit general hospital.
How have you been involved with CPNP and how has CPNP benefited you professionally?
I have been involved with CPNP for about 5 years. I have benefitted most from the networking/information sharing with the CPNP listserv. I have also benefitted this year from the networking and education that I was able to be part of at the Annual Meeting.
Describe your typical day and practice setting?
My typical day involves attending daily treatment updates with the attending psychiatrists on the psychiatry unit in the morning, followed by leading a group medication education session for inpatients, meeting with P4 rotation students and pharmacy residents, answering drug information questions, completing medication regimen reviews or consults on outpatients from our clinic, and generally I end up at the university sometime in the afternoon to work on teaching preparation, committee meetings, etc. I generally try to throw in some scholarship/research activity sometime in there too.
What do you do in your practice that you feel has the greatest impact on psychiatric patients?
I feel that having the medication education group for patients has the greatest impact of all the things that I do. The patients often feel so in the dark about the psychotropics that are prescribed to them, they often don’t know what they’re for, when they’re going to work, what side effects or drug interactions to watch out for, or how long they’re supposed to take these medications…I could extend the list on and on. The patients are so thankful that someone takes the time to listen to their questions and answers them in a way they can understand.
Any advice to patients with mental illness or neurologic conditions?
Get to know as much as you can about your illness and your treatments. Involve your family and friends in this learning as well. The more you and your support system know about what you’re dealing with, the better you can deal with it.
If you could tell the public one thing about your job to have them better understand psychiatric pharmacy, what would it be?
My job is to be a resource to prescribers, patients, and families to help ensure proper psychiatric medication usage. I, and other pharmacists like me, spend much of the day learning about, investigating, and trying to optimize the medications used to treat psychiatric and neurologic conditions. I understand that the host of psychiatric medications available are only part of the solution to treating psychiatric illness, but I do my best to get the most mileage possible from those medications.
