By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD-The front-line person in your healthcare chain is probably the pharmacist.

That person does far more than take pills out of the big bottle and put them into the little bottle. Brandi Strader, director of pharmacy services for HSHS St John’s Hospital in Springfield, says there’s far more education involved – and some pharmacists are even operating their own clinics.

And once you get inside a hospital’s doors, she says, things can get even more intense.

“I think the role of a pharmacist right when you come in the door of a emergency room is something most people don’t know about,” Strader says, “and I think that having nurses, pharmacists, and physicians working together to take care of a traumatic patient is really amazing to see.”

And, Strader says, the pharmacists generally dislike it when someone comes in to ask for a drug simply because they saw a television commercial for it.

“The pharmaceutical industry does not always help us, that’s for sure,” she adds. “A lot of times, the pharmaceutical industry is really marketing to the providers’ offices and things of that nature. But we are mainly just looking at the guidelines and what is right for the patient – and whether it’s cost effective, too.”

Dave Dahl can be reaching at [email protected].