By Sheila Roberson
“I got an offer I could not refuse,” says Sylvie Poirier about her decision to enter the teaching  profession. “I was in Canada working in the public-health sector, planning programs for the elderly--and I really enjoyed my work. But I could not refuse the offer of the dean of the Université de Montréal to support me while I was getting a Ph.D in pharmacy administration. Very few people possess such a degree in Canada, and the expertise was much needed.”
So the French Canadian packed her bags and set off for the University of Maryland with a very limited knowledge of the English language.
Once her degree was completed she returned to Montreal to teach for two years. When a position became available at the UGA, she joined the faculty at the College of Pharmacy. Although she possessed a better knowledge of English by then, she had to get accustomed to the Southern drawl.
As a faculty member here, she teaches an overview course on the U.S. health-care system to undergraduates as well as part of a research-methods course and a pharmacoepidemiology course. She has become a proponent of pharmaceutical care, a growing trend in the pharmacy profession. Simply stated, pharmaceutical care means having pharmacists take care of all the pharmaceutical needs of a patient, from counseling on medication use to preventing, detecting and resolving drug-related problems.
“Drug-related problems, such as improper use of medications, cost the country $76 billion a year,” says Poirier. “We, as pharmacists, need to help physicians prescribe better and help patients toward better medication use.”
Her research interests revolve around the provision of pharmaceutical care. Problems associated with mail-order prescriptions and pharmacists’ compensation for their professional services are two major areas of concern.
 “Unfortunately, at this time, most pharmacists are reimbursed for dispensing a product rather than professional services,” she points out. “This situation needs to change in order for pharmacists to become more proactive in pharmaceutical care.”
She notes that a major aspect of pharmaceutical care is the necessity of dealing with, and sometimes even challenging, orders by physicians.
“I am interested in gaining a better understanding of the reasons why pharmacists are reluctant to challenge decisions of an authority figure such as a physician,” she says.
Poirier’s enthusiasm for pharmaceutical care took her overseas last summer when she accepted an invitation from three Chinese pharmacy schools to discuss the American health-care system and the concept of pharmaceutical care.
She also visited hospital and community pharmacies and was fascinated by traditional Chinese medicine. “The use of herbal and natural products for medical purposes is becoming a new trend in the United States. We certainly have a lot to learn from China, which has thousands of years of experience with such products,” she says.
“There is the advantage of being a faculty member,” she adds. “The career is changing constantly, taking new and different paths. Different students and different research projects make different dynamics and every day is a new challenge.”
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