Pharmacy Times<\/em> to create continuing education programs for pharmacists on various skin conditions; contribute to \u201cThe Pharmacy Corner,\u201d a website for pharmacists, technicians and students to learn about skin care; and guest lecture at pharmacy schools across the country.<\/p>\nEducating the public on health care has been part of Melillo\u2019s mission since he began as a community pharmacy technician at age 17, then as a pharmacist and teacher at the University of Houston, and now as a social media celebrity.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times people can\u2019t afford to see a doctor, so they\u2019re getting advice online or from social media, which is a little scary,\u201d Melillo said. \u201cThey really trust these people who have no medical degree and no medical background, and they\u2019re buying these products they don\u2019t need. When I see something that\u2019s really trying to mislead the general public, I have no problem trying to debunk it, and I\u2019m very blunt about it, which is probably why I have such a big following. I really want people to be aware that there are so many scams online.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Melillo\u2019s videos are informative and educational, as well as entertaining, he points out that one of the best teachers any patient can have is at the local pharmacy. People should feel comfortable talking to their pharmacist even after seeing their doctor, he said, as pharmacists have specialized knowledge about medications that physicians may not consider.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a slew of antidepressants, for example, and some people think because that\u2019s the one their doctor prescribed, they should take it even though it may have side effects or doesn\u2019t make them feel good,\u201d Melillo said. \u201cThey might not feel comfortable talking to their doctor. So having that open communication with their pharmacist, the pharmacist can say you can try another one. By showing the knowledge pharmacists have, I hope I\u2019m helping open up the communication between patients and their pharmacist, and really showcasing our profession on a larger scale.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ethan Melillo has amassed nearly 500,000 followers of his educational, entertaining videos The public\u2019s perception of a pharmacist used to be a reclusive scientist in a white lab coat dumping pills in a bottle and slapping on a label for a cashier to hand to a customer. That perception has drastically changed, as patients increasingly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":53721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1279,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landingpagepharmd","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53722,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53720\/revisions\/53722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}