Dear Colleagues:
Welcome to an exciting year with the Section of Clinical Specialists and Scientists. I look forward to working with you as the Chair of the Section. First of all, I'd like to congratulate our Section's newly elected officers; James Trovato (MD) as the chair-elect and Lea Eiland (AL) director-at-large-elect.
The Section, through its members, is creating opportunities to participate in a number of initiatives while also working with ASHP on relevant activities. Some of the current initiatives and accomplishments of the Section include:
- Newly formed Section Advisory Group on Gene Therapy
- Development of the ASHP Statement on Pharmacy Services to the Emergency Department by the Section Advisory Group on Emergency Care
- Soon to come resource center on investigational drugs developed by the Section Advisory Group on Investigational Drug Services
2008 Midyear Clinical Meeting Activities
- Network facilitators have busy planning 16 networking sessions in a variety of specialty practice areas at the MCM. These sessions are discussion groups for practitioners to talk about a variety of topics pertaining to their specific practice area. All are welcome to attend these lively discussions!
- The Section Programming Committee planned 14 hours of educational programming for specifically for clinical specialists and scientists. Back by popular demand is the Clinical Pearls Session and Debates in Therapeutics. Other topics include infectious diseases, the use of meta-analysis, review of top papers in the medical literature, and therapeutic updates.
Other Section Activities
- The Section planned two webinars on the pharmacist's role in the implementation of the National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) 3E. The webinars were held earlier this year and focused on practical strategies for implementing an anticoagulation service. There was an overwhelming response by Section members with an estimated 1500 participants between the two webinars. Many thanks to Edith Nutescu, Bill Dager, and Mike Gulseth for sharing their knowledge and expertise with webinar participants!
- The Section was involved with planning the ASHP Task Force on Science. This meeting was held at ASHP on September 17, 2008 with national experts in informatics/technology, pharmacogenomics, personalized medicine, gene therapy, and nanomedicine. Recommendations from this meeting will help guide future activities of the Section and ASHP in the emerging sciences and the incorporation of informatics/technology into practice. A report of this meeting will be published in a future issue of the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy.
Future Activities
With the upgrade of ASHP software, the time is now to update the Virtual Journal Club. This program is taking a short hiatus while a working group is formed to re-vamp the program and software for ease of use. Watch for more information in the near future!
The Executive Committee will soon start work on the 2009-2010 Strategic Plan. The purpose of the Strategic Plan is to guide Section activities, communications, and advocacy efforts.
The Section Executive Committee encourages you to participate in Section activities and to become involved in Section leadership. For a list of opportunities, click here. If you have any questions or have an interest in any of these opportunities, please contact me at sections@ashp.org.
Regards,
Kelly M. Smith, Pharm.D., BCPS, FASHP
Chair, Section of Clinical Specialists and Scientists
Previous Messages from the Chair