Heading into 2022, Achor Family Pharmacy plans to revitalize our community health education program called "Teach Me Tuesday." It was a weekly tidbit of health-related info, often connected to the season or theme of the month (i.e. heart health in February, influenza in the fall, etc.), pushed out on our social media platforms every Tuesday. It was a great way to connect with our community, especially as a new pharmacy when we first opened in September 2019. A few months later, the arrival of COVID changed the trajectory for our store like it did for so many, and we shifted our focus to free hand sanitizer production, lots of home delivery, and curbside flu shots, and just trying to stay sane amid the chaos of the world throughout 2020. 2021 brought COVID shots and monoclonal antibody treatments as well as reopening our lobby as our patient base continued to grow. Thankfully, our pharmacy family has also grown this year with more pharmacists, interns, technicians, and clerks, so we hope that we will be able to provide more education services (as much as COVID will safely allow) in 2022 and beyond. Bringing back "Teach Me Tuesday" will be a great way to start involving our student pharmacists in our community outreach efforts as we delegate much of the development of the pearls of wisdom to them to write and push out on Instagram and Facebook.
"Teach Me Tuesday" is exactly what it sounds like it would be. Every Tuesday, an informative photograph and caption is scheduled to post to the pharmacy’s social media pages, which allows us to interact with patients both online and in-person about the topics covered each week. One of the first posts we have scheduled for January 2022 briefly reviews the new oral COVID-19 agents, Paxlovid and molnupiravir. With their new emergency use authorization (EUA) by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), more patients have been coming into the store and calling with questions about how to get them. In this post, we explain the difference between an FDA approval and EUA, how safety data is ongoing, when their use is appropriate, and how they are available by prescription only. Other topics planned for the following Tuesdays include sunscreen and sun protective factor (SPF), lice treatment, and how to manage hypertension with the DASH diet. Kaley and Darby’s goal with sharing these posts is to open the door to conversation about some of the most common questions patients ask their pharmacists, and our patients seem to genuinely appreciate the information the social media posts provide.
Achor Family Pharmacy’s social media presence was not built overnight. To gain the following we currently have, word of mouth advertising and showing up for the community during times of need have gone a long way. Also, our newsletter includes pertinent information regarding any upcoming events, services provided, holiday hours, and showcases the pharmacists that patients rely on for dispensing and monitoring their medications. Overall, building Achor Family Pharmacy’s social media presence has proven to be well worth the effort due to the amount of connections we have made with our patients because of it.