Elin Lehnbom: "We need to increase the professional pride among our future pharmacists"

“I have really been looking forward to this autumn semester and to welcoming the Faculty of Pharmacy's new students to BMC. Now, here we are and I am just about to introduce the participants to our course Drug Utilisation Research. My ambition is to show them how valuable it is to participate in campus-based activities, and above all, to help increase their professional pride in being Sweden's future pharmacists,” says Elin Lehnbom, Associate Professor in Social pharmacy.

Just under four years after Uppsala University recruited Sofia Kälvemark Sporrong to the newly established professorship in Social Pharmacy, the team has taken on both structure and direction. Today, the research team gathers close to twenty colleagues with broad scientific experience and great commitment to the Faculty's education.

“Last week, I participated for the first time at the Faculty of Pharmacy's Education Days: A meeting characterized by a shared desire for continued development – and with recent experience of education in Norway and the USA, I believe that we in Sweden can get better at continuously demanding more from the students, but also at clarifying the many career paths that a degree in pharmacy opens up and how fun and inspiring our profession actually is,” states Elin Lehnbom.

Elin started her own journey at Linköping's Bachelor of Science Programme in Pharmacy. A profound interest in clinical pharmacy brought her to Australia and Sydney, where Elin conducted her PhD thesis on electronic health record systems and begun a research career. After nine years, she returned northward, now for the position as Associate Professor at UIT - The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsö where she combined research with teaching.

“In Norway, we conducted several interesting studies which we are now starting to see the results of: For example, we studied the effect of having clinical pharmacists at emergency departments, and our early data indicate that patients who receive the correct medication from the start have shorter hospital stays. I am also involved in a project in Wisconsin, USA, where we see that pharmacies that use colour scales to indicate which over-the-counter medications have the highest risk of side effects create increased safety for older adults.”

But today Sweden is in focus, and in the corridor at Uppsala's Biomedical Center the last moving boxes now being unpacked in the new interdisciplinary environment that unites the team in Social Pharmacy with Björn Wettermark's research group in Pharmacoepidemiology and Elisabet Nielsen's newly started research group in Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacotherapy.

“We are all part of the Faculty of Pharmacy's long-term commitment toin better use of medicines, and sharing premises undoubtedly strengthens our space to take the next step. We already joint grant applications out, we identify great potential for collaboration in education, and it really feels like Social Pharmacy after a good start at Uppsala University is ready to take off.”

Text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Karin Svensberg, Mikael Wallerstedt a o