Indrani Kar

Specialty

Indrani Kar is currently the Drug Policy/Formulary pharmacist at University Hospitals of Cleveland (UH), a 15 hospital health system in northeast Ohio which includes an academic medical center, pediatric hospital, women’s hospital, and several community institutions. She provides drug policy and formulary direction for the adult and pediatric formularies at UH from a system level. She also serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Northeast Ohio Medical University College of Pharmacy in Ohio.

Role

Indrani serves as secretary for the System Medication Safety & Therapeutics Committee and System Formulary Review Subcommittee. She additionally serves on four disease-specific system formulary subcommittees, Pharmacy Design team, Medication Leadership Cabinet, and Policy Oversight Committee. She is also responsible for medication policy at a system level and system pharmacist education, such as Pharmacy Grand Rounds. She also actively precepts and guides UH pharmacy residents in drug information and precepts APPE students from nine schools of pharmacy as part of a system medication safety/clinical informatics/drug information rotation. Much of her role involves facilitating interdisciplinary projects throughout the system.

Specific components of her role are listed below:

• System formulary management of the adult and pediatric formulary
• System policy development
• Interdisciplinary project management
• Clinical education develop and continuing education
• Medication use improvement
• Teaching

How She Got There

Indrani received her Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Pittsburgh. She then completed a Specialized Drug Information Fellowship at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy in Kansas City, Missouri and a Specialized PGY2 residency in Drug Information at Rutgers, the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She wishes to acknowledge the many pharmacy leaders in her network for guidance in the profession.

Other Professional Activities

Indrani became involved with ASHP as a student and currently is serving as a member of the Section of Inpatient Care Practitioners’ (SICP) Education Steering committee and as a Curriculum Vitae Review Program Reviewer. She recently finished a three year membership with the ASHP SICP Medication Safety Section Advisory group. She is also active at the local/regional level as a member of the Educational Affairs Division with the Ohio Society of Health-System Pharmacists. She additionally works closely with drug information specialists in Ohio and nationally to network and further the specialty. She credits her involvement in professional organizations, including ASHP, as a student and now as a new practitioner for influencing her professional development.

Advice

• Find your passion and run with it.
• Build and maintain key professional relationships.
• Find opportunities to collaborate and learn from experts within your workplace, within your specialty, and actively within local or national pharmacy organizations.
• Work the network, because the network works for you.