Meet Pam Tarlow, PharmD.
Bridging
Conventional and Natural Medicine
It’s important to collaborate,
if the patient is the goal.
In conventional medicine, you wait for symptoms and then treat those symptoms.
In natural medicine, you support the body’s physiological pathways.
As an integrative pharmacy mentor, I’ve learned how to remain open to both of these frameworks and the possibilities offered by both to support health and healing. I dealt with the confusion and contradiction that oftentimes arises at that liminal space. I was willing to be called a fraud (how can you deal with this unregulated stuff?) I learned the facts, assessing and discerning the benefits and downsides over the last 25 years across both modalities, so that I can expand the scope of how I help patients.
Why? I believe this is the true path to collaborative care. In a world in which our clients can Google a question and receive 100 pages of results with the click of a button, I believe we have a responsibility as healthcare providers and pharmacists to know how to navigate this new terrain in a proactive, collaborative and rigorous way. Otherwise, we are doing a disservice to the very people we are committed to serving (not to mention risk burning out or feeling overwhelmed by confusion and knowledge gaps).
There’s a different way
Here’s my vision for a more integrated healthcare system. I help my clients across conventional medicine to natural medicine step forward with these skill sets, in support of offering the best patient care possible.
Expand Beyond
Expanding the options for the patient, whether the provider suggests those outcomes or refers them to a specialist. I offer you ways to register what’s possible without having to know everything.
Increased job satisfaction
When you get to the root of the frustration you experience as a health care provider, and feel empowered and supported to meet your client where they are, this closes a HUGE energy leakage that can oftentimes cause burnout, ongoing resentment or low retention. Tap into the satisfaction of feeling confident in your approach, and equipped to support your client with their goals while keeping them safe.
Connect with patients
This is fostered with greater collaboration, curiosity and openness. When you’re open to your patients’ health path and recognize that they are consulting different approaches, this quality of acceptance extends into greater trust.
Time and energy
Without context, gaining confidence with integrative medicine can take up a lot of time and energy. Starting with broad context can actually SAVE you time in the long term, leading to optimal learning and patient interventions.
Jump through the hoops
Move through uncertainty with real confidence, ease and resources to align with a patient-centered approach. No need to constantly be derailed by frustration, overwhelm or anger. Learn a blueprint for helping your clients (which does NOT require that you have all the answers).
Refer patients to specialists
Do you feel a heaviness and internal friction because of NOT knowing how to communicate with your patient and what they’re sharing? I teach my clients how to communicate skillfully with their patients, and refer them to specialists within different domains, as needed. This can truly lift the weight that may be burdening your relationship with patients, and empowers your patients to seek the support they need in targeted ways.
Hi, I’m Pam Tarlow, PharmD. I’m glad you’re here.
I’m an Integrative Health Pharmacist with a passion for positively impacting the people who are impacting people’s health: medical and natural medicine doctors practitioners alike.
With over 40 years of professional experience as a pharmacist and over 30 years of experience with natural medicine, I offer my healthcare professionals an evidence-informed, patient-centered and collaboration-forward approach to bridging the knowledge and conceptual framework gap that creates roadblocks with their patients.
My primary objective is to help you keep your patients safe, keep the lines of communication open, and navigate the liminal spaces of modern medicine and health with equanimity, curiosity and an open-mind.
In my 15th year of pharmacy practice, I couldn’t answer my clients’ questions (and I was tired of being frustrated). This is where my journey as an Integrative Medicine Mentor began.
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act law was passed in 1994, and herbs and vitamins were promoted starting that year. This completely changed the landscape within which pharmacists, conventional medicine doctors and natural doctors worked.
My clients were asking questions about products that were outside of my scope of training and knowledge. I wanted to support my clients and understand the interventions they were pursuing and the products they were investing in for their health, but my scope felt incomplete. I found myself saying “I don’t know” too often.
That’s when I started to educate myself about natural medicine. The more I dove in with curiosity and openness, the more it made sense to the pharmacist and chemist in me. I didn't think it should be right, but there I was starting to see that it DID make sense. I realized that the body in a symptomatic, disease condition CAN help itself.
From there, I started working at a Compound pharmacy in 1999, building a specialty with women’s hormones. I came to see health as a web, rather than being linear.
Thereafter, I began working with Santa Monica Homeopathic, moving into a non-dispensing role in the industry of pharmacy.
From 2001 to today, I have been teaching Pharmacy students through 6-week interactive programs, helping them hit the ground running from the start of their careers of pharmacists.
Today, I am passionate about educating conventional medicine doctors and natural medicine doctors about the integrative model. I offer a group training called Integrative Health 101, as well as private consulting with pharmacy students, conventional medical doctors and natural medicine doctors.
Pharmacist and mentor for over 25 years at Santa Monica Homeopathic Pharmacy
Lecturer and innovative experiential educator for pharmacy schools including but not limited to: University of Southern California (USC), Western University, Chapman University, South Carolina College and University at Buffalo, University of Arizona; Howard University College of Pharmacy Washington DC; St. John Fisher University Wegmans School of Pharmacy Rochester NY
Faculty member and mentor of the Healthy Aging doctorate program at Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and lectures at Emperor's College.
Mentor for medical residents at UCLA and Cedars-Sinai.
Board of Directors - Greater Los Angeles Pharmacists Association (GLAPhA)
Member of Dietary Supplement Quality Collaborative
American Botanical Council
American College of Apothecaries
American Pharmacists Association
California Pharmacists Association
National Community Pharmacists Association
International Society of Cannabis Pharmacists
USC School of Pharmacy Alumni Association.Education:
Pharm.D. at USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
B.A. in Chemistry at UC Santa Barbara
My credentials
How to mindfully navigate the liminal space
Mindfulness meditation and daily life practices offer a potent way to go from agitation to greater ease, openness and trust. I help healthcare providers move through uncertainty with real confidence, ease and resources to align ultimately with a patient-centered approach - equipped with mindfulness practices that map easily onto their current work functions and daily rituals.
My clients who practice mindfulness report that they can hear their patient share something that they don’t understand, but remain confident in their process for supporting them through that. Not only that, but mindfulness can help you open to new learnings, insight and traverse the intersection of natural and conventional medicine with minimal confusion or frustration. Being more mindful offers this possibility, and can equip you with the skill to hold both methodologies (conventional medicine and natural medicine), seeing the ‘and’, in support of your patient. If you’re tired of shutting down every time you face an unknown, or receive a question that you aren’t equipped to answer, then I invite you to explore this integrative medicine path.
my philosophy
Here’s what I stand for.
A patient-centered, collaborative approach
My goal is to address the growing disconnection between the patient and the medical provider. Do you stop listening once someone starts talking about a prescription, supplement or intervention that you don’t recognize (or respect)? If so, you’re not alone! I offer you the opportunity to build trust with your client and collaborate with them in meaningful ways that address their goals and health needs, and ultimately help them stay safe and avoid certain drug interactions.
Never delay needed, proven medical treatment
I offer ways of enhancing the body’s healing mechanism in lieu of optional, “delayable”, questionable or unavailable medical treatment.
An open and accepting attitude
I believe that delving most deeply into our client work, requires an open, accepting, encouraging quality of guesswork and inquiry. It’s perfectly okay to make mistakes in a learning situation so that we do not make mistakes in clinical practice. I invite my clients to ask questions, remain teachable and retain curiosity as a healthcare provider. It only benefits your clients, who are out there seeking interventions across conventional medicine and natural medicine.
Personalized, precision medicine
A medicine is not always needed. When it is needed, I believe that you can provide the right medicine for the right patient, at the right dose, in the right delivery form for the right amount of time. This may or may not align with conventional medical guidelines. (Example: Medical guidelines may indicate statin drugs, though looking at the situation through my lens, statins may or may not be indicated - or there may be nutrients to add or exclude to help the drug work better). I’ll equip you with an approach that is more customized to meet your client’s needs.
Agile and buildable knowledge
I acknowledge and utilize your current level of training as a healthcare provider. I meet you where you are professionally and I respect the training you’ve received and which informs your greater scope of work. I help you build upon your medical training to expand and include integrative health. They co-exist and build upon each other, all in support of your clients.
My approach is not for you if…
You’re looking for a certification program.
Someone who wants extensive, detailed, comprehensive training that results in a certification. I provide a certificate of completion, but currently it is not recognized by any licensing board
You’re close-minded.
If you are close-minded and unwilling to struggle with concepts, then my approach is not aligned for you. I bring together concepts and approaches from multiple frameworks, which requires curiosity and openness in order to navigate those intersections. My primary objective is to help you keep your patients safe, keep the lines of communication open, and navigate the liminal spaces of modern medicine and health with equanimity, curiosity and an open-mind. That’s why I offer the training, tools, resources and mentorship to help you jump through the hoops of medical and natural medicine, and support your patients with confidence, ease, and clarity. But the foundation of this learning and development approach is curiosity.
Depends on your relationship with RCTs.
We are not a great fit if you base your practice exclusively on RCTs (large, randomized controlled trials) OR if you do not value RCTs at all.
You lack self-initiative and thrive more in a teach-led or live cohort-based environment.
Do you lack self-motivation and time management skills, and need a structured classroom experience to most optimally learn and development skills? If so, my approach may not be the right fit for you. My courses are self-paced and require the capacity to independently implement with minimal hands-on support.
You have black-and-white thinking.
Do you have an “either/or attitude (or approach)” to health care? Do you subscribe to either all conventional or all natural health related strategies? If so, my approach may not be the right fit for you. At the intersection of natural and conventional health, we occupy a highly nuanced and liminal space.
Ready to get started?
Learn more about my services, including private 1.1 consulting and the Integrative Medicine 101 group training and online course. Click below to learn more and get started.