THE PEOPLE WHO ARRIVED in the emergency department on April 15, 2013, had injuries unlike any Nancy Balch had seen in her 12 years as an emergency department pharmacist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Their injuries were severe. At least one person had had a limb blown off. “I’ve seen a lot, unfortunately,” she [...]

ON THE HEELS of ASHP’s Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative Summit in 2010, Cleveland Clinic Florida (CCF) set the goal of giving all patients at the 155-bed academic institution the opportunity to interact with pharmacists as part of their care. It was a lofty goal, one that would stretch the pharmacy department’s staff and resources. In [...]

DIABETES MANAGEMENT can be tricky, especially for patients who have been diagnosed and prescribed oral agents or insulin to help them control their blood glucose. Those with type 2 diabetes often also grapple with hypertension and dislipidemia and must take additional medications. The juggling act these patients face inspired Zachary A. Weber, Pharm.D., BCPS, BCACP, [...]

DISCHARGE FROM HOSPITAL TO HOME or a long-term care facility is a busy time for both patients and care providers. When administrators at Scott and White Memorial Hospital, a 600-bed academic medical center in Temple, Tex., found that the computer-assisted discharge medication reconciliation process wasn’t robust enough, they tapped pharmacy staff for a solution. Seizing [...]

A KEY ELEMENT of advancing pharmacy practice—and a recommendation of ASHP’s Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative—is the expansion of pharmacists’ duties to include writing medication orders. At the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System (CAVHCS), which serves more than 134,000 veterans in a 43-county area of Georgia and Alabama, the clinical pharmacy team has achieved this [...]

Editor’s Note: After Hurricane Sandy flooded the lower floors of Bellevue Hospital Center, N.Y., with 10 million gallons of water, rendering the fuel pumps for the center’s back-up generators useless and many of the nursing units without power, the nation’s oldest public hospital was forced to do something no one in its 276-year history ever [...]

Editor’s Note: While hospitals near the Atlantic Ocean braced for Hurricane Sandy and prepared to evacuate as necessary, medical centers located inland readied themselves for an influx of patients. Rebecca Deoras, Pharm.D., pediatric clinical pharmacy coordinator at Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York, spoke with InterSections about the center’s preparations and the challenges of treating [...]

  With the October launch of its Pharmacy Online Residency Centralized Application Service™ (PhORCAS™), ASHP has pushed aside the typically cumbersome, paper-laden residency application process to make room for a more efficient and convenient alternative. “The residency application process has been slow and labor-intensive,” said Kate Farthing, Pharm.D., BCPS, pharmacy clinical specialist, quality and patient [...]

When Tyler Van Schyndel, Pharm.D., was choosing his pharmacy residency project in 2011, he wanted one that would leave a lasting mark. He chose well. His pilot study demonstrated that pharmacy technicians could efficiently and accurately collect medication histories in the emergency department (ED) of Froedtert Health,Milwaukee. Dr. Van Schyndel’s work was so compelling that [...]