Mar 16, 2018
A live Nashville APhA 2018 interview with Carleigh Roberts, one of the Generation Rx Co-Chairs. She decided to apply for her position to honor her lifelong friend that lost his battle with addiction last January. Her goal is to go out into the community to educate people on the dangers of prescription drug misuse and addiction. She states, " I will do whatever it takes to relay to people just how dangerous drugs are when they're not taken properly," even if that means facing her fear of public speaking.
Full Transcript:
Welcome to the pharmacy leaders podcast with your host Tony Guerra the pharmacy leaders podcast is a member of the pharmacy podcast network with interviews and advice on building your professional network brand and a purposeful second income from students residents and innovative professionals welcome to the pharmacy leaders podcast I am in Nashville with Carly Roberts from the University of Louisiana Monroe College of Pharmacy she is tremendously connected I think you had what six or seven hundred Facebook Likes anyway she's got a lot of friends she may I might have three thousand Facebook friends but I've never gotten that many people to like anything I've done so I just wanted to welcome her to the pharmacy leaders podcast so what we're gonna do is we're gonna just do a quick interview and talk a little bit about some of the initiatives you got there what you're doing with your leadership experience but let's actually go back and find out a little bit about your leadership Rhoads so how did you get involved in leadership well from a young age my parents have encouraged me to not only be involved but to take a leadership position in these groups that I got involved in a big thing that influenced me was basketball and so coming up playing basketball that it tells a lot of leadership and so when I came to pharmacy school I knew I just wanted to get involved and I got started with APHA and I worked under some girls that held my position last year and just fell in love with it and then eventually leading into taking my position I had some personal things happen that made me want to take this position and truly be passionate about my work I do with generation RX so many of the things we do as pharmacists kind of come from a significant experience and that's where we go to pharmacy school but this happened to you I believe like right before ordering pharmacy school so tell me a little bit about the initiatives that you kind of taking ahold of and you've made national right or you've made some significant progress with them so tell me a little bit about the initiative to begin with and then what you guys are doing okay so what happened was I lost a friend he was addicted to prescription drugs for about five years and so that led me to take my position with generation RX and we're in the past our chapter has used this outreach program as a way to go out and educate children and focus mainly on children I decided me and my co-chair Shannon we decided to take it to the high schools and the college-age students and because these are our students that are really affected by these prescription drugs right now and that are have been misusing and abusing them so we've decided to take it to them we started doing presentations last semester we go out we've talked to over about a thousand students so far we have mainly gone to colleges so far but we have gone to one or two high schools where we have educated about the missed prescription drugs and non prescription drug misuse and abuse so but we actually are in the process of planning a community-wide naloxone training in order to educate our community about how they can step up for these situations whenever it may not be someone they know or are involved with but they can't anybody that they see is it could be happening to them and Oda and overdose they can step in and know their role there so tell me a little bit about you're a p2 and so you're finishing up your p2 year usually these are things that we expect from p3 or maybe even p4 how did you get involved so quickly and how is your college supported you during that Facebook thing that we did I saw they were also on there so tell me a little bit about the college how its supportive I've just seen a number of things come out of Louisiana Monroe that just seemed like they're pretty unique okay so we are a smaller school well my class only has about 80 students in it so just being able to get involved with everyone the relationships that you form so quickly most of our teachers have been there most of them do have tenure but we're able to develop those relationships with them and then they are so supportive of us and so that has just been tremendous for me I know with this naloxone training that we're about to start up my advisor dr. Stephen Hill has been an absolute godsend and getting all of this going he has helped me we actually have some Noxon trainers that we've ordered I've got one with me I know we're on audio MCC the Music City Center yes so this was one of the things that we wanted to do with our no on some training event we're going to have an administration training as well as a lecture but we wanted to order these so that we could get our hands on it and play with it first before we're trying to show people how to use them but this is one of the auto injection naloxone it looks like it's in kind of a no butor all box but it says trainer for MCO and then go ahead and tell me a little bit about it so it's an autumn injection so you'll just open it up looks like a little voice recorder yeah [Music] stay away from my outer thigh you put it on your hand that's it to show more people we also have gotten the Narcan nasal spray to show people how to use cuz that's more of what you can get in the local pharmacies so we have that one too so it's more of that one especially you know you put have two dose in each nostril but it's more of a once you go it's gone but yeah so that'll be great will account for points to give to people whenever we're showing how to use those so have you personally gone into the high school or the colleges to do these presentations so why don't you walk me through a high school presentation first and then a college presentation okay what's that like so far they've been pretty much the same with what happened to my friend he you know he was addicted to Adderall so stimulants have been kind of my focus as far as where we've been going with this because it is so prevalent and high schools and college campuses but so basically I made up the entire thing not made it up but I've made my PowerPoint presentation and so we start out describing you know what is addiction definitely want to make sure that these kids know that it truly is a disease this isn't something that you would make fun of someone for just like you wouldn't with someone with blood pressure diabetes so we describe addiction and then we talk about popular drugs popular stimulant drugs popular opioids and how these drugs can affect you how they actually work I think a lot of people they just hear drugs are bad drugs are bad don't do drugs but until you actually sit down and have a conversation with them and tell them how it's going to affect your brain and just you know eventually over all your entire mental health they just don't understand that so that's really what we're trying to do we're trying to go to them take the conversation to them and really make sure they understand their consequences behind using prescription and non-prescription drugs so I'm a 45 year old so tell me what it's like going as a 20-something into the high schools are they pretty receptive they are they're you know your normal teenagers and younger twenty year old people that at first they don't really pay attention but because I have a personal story and I'm not one that really likes to be emotional in front of people but because this is so important to me this is something that I'm able to take into these presentations and really show them that it can happen to anybody you know I never thought it would happen to somebody I knew or would affect me but it did and so usually when I get emotional they you know they perk up and they'll get on the edge of their seats and they get excited to listen and even have a few tears sometimes from crowd members that's braver than me I had to give CPR to my daughter and every time I talk about it I lose it so I can't make it even through that many sentences so tell me a little bit about what's like going into a college so you go into a high school they're teenagers what about a college where some of them might even be using the Adderall right now to do better on exams it's one of those things that teachers can't find out but obviously there's a affects that could come from it and the pressures may be you know we talked about addiction as a disease because if we talk about it as something that's punitive then we can't reach people but if we talk about it as a disease that's something we can treat and so they've got pressures from parents and everybody that they've got to do good grades or get good grades and in here you know they find out they can get Adderall from the roommate or whatever tell me a little bit about the college and the difference between college and high school well it does seem that there's a few more students in the colleges who are using it without a prescription but it's probably about 50/50 most of the time most of them don't really like to ask questions or be too involved in the actual presentation but will come up to me after and to ask me questions personally about you know I've been taking this for so and so long how is this affecting me or should I stop taking it or are there any natural called natural remedies I could use and so I've been able to provide them some of that information but no with the colleges my actually my very first college presentation was about it was right at 300 kids I was involved I went to UM for my undergrad as well and was involved in the Greek life there and so I had connections through them to set up this was all two sorority and fraternity members at um sure and yes it was about 300 kids and I could not have done it without my sidekick Shannon she is awesome when things get a little too emotional for me or I just need a second to step back she she's great about stepping in there and really she's awesome so what is your role actually here at APHA like what-what are you doing and then what's the rest of the crew from you LM doing well like here at though yeah well we all just came I wanted to come and try to learn some more about Generation or X not only that but our first we're going to at 3:15 as a leadership training workshop I love any kind of opportunity I can get for leadership training I'm taking a leadership class at school so that's one of the big things that I'm looking forward to and also connect with all the other pharmacists and pharmacy students throughout America and so I think I'm really going to enjoy that a lot of my classmates feel the same way we've got peaches and Peter he's here I don't think we have any P wines so I think it's mostly about connections they they teach us that in school like you can never know too many people true I've asked you a bunch of questions there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to tell everybody that's here at the meeting I think we've pretty much covered about everything I just kind of want to stress again you know how important it is that we get out there is not only pharmacy students but pharmacists and take our role in the community as the medication experts and really go to these kids but not only the kids their parents two grandparents and really stress how serious this opioid crisis is and you know we can't do anything about it unless we step up and start the conversation about it so that's my big thing Carly thanks so much for being on the pharmacy leaders podcast support for this episode comes from the audio book memorizing pharmacology a relaxed approach with over 9,000 sales in the United States United Kingdom and Australia it's the go-to resource to ease the pharmacology challenge available on audible iTunes and amazon.com in print ebook and audiobook thank you for listening to the pharmacy leaders podcast with your host Tony Guerra be sure to share the show with a hashtag hash pharmacy leaders
