University of Georgia Pharmacy Student Ryan Markham was appointed to the Community and eCommunications Advisory Group of the ASHP Pharmacy Student Forum for the 2010-2011 academic year. One of five advisory groups of ten students each, the Community and eCommunications advisory group is charged with the ongoing development and support of an actively engaged and connected community of student members.
Regarding the appointment, Ryan said “I am pleased to provide a voice for all of Georgia’s pharmacy students at a national level. I hope to help strengthen the connection between ASHP and pharmacy students, and stay current as our methods of communication change.”
A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Chemistry, Ryan serves as the GSHP president and Chair of the Dean’s Student Advisory Council at UGA. After graduating in 2012, he plans to pursue postgraduate residency training in health-system pharmacy.
S. Todd Parker, PharmD, was named Pharmacist of the Year by the Atlanta Academy of Institutional Pharmacists for 2010-2011. The award honors outstanding service and accomplishments in health-system pharmacy practice as well as contributions to AAIP. He is a member of ASHP, AAIP and GSHP. He has served as President and Chairman of the Board for AAIP and has done numerous presentations for the organization. Todd is a clinical pharmacy specialist at Piedmont Hospital where he has worked for the past 13 years. His areas of interest include infectious disease, epilepsy and neonatology. He has precepted students from all three pharmacy schools in Georgia as well as PGY 1 residents in various clinical settings.
Brian Buck was named the 2010 Teacher of the Year at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy.
Grady Health System was one of four institutions participating in an ASHP Foundation sponsored study of medication errors recovered by emergency department (ED) pharmacists. Results were published in the June issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Dr Jeffrey M. Rothschild of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School is the paper’s lead author. Other sites participating in the study were Brigham and Women's in Boston, The University of Wisconsin Hospital's and Clinics, and Cedar's Sinai in Los Angeles. In this study pharmacists completed 787 hours of observation, identifying 504 recovered medication errors, with rates of 7.8 errors per 100 patients and 2.9 errors per 100 medications. On average ED pharmacists recovered 25.7 potentially harmful medication errors per 40 hours of observation.
The majority of recovered medication errors were intercepted potential adverse drug events (90.3%), and potential severities of the recovered errors were most often serious (47.8%) or significant (36.2%). The authors concluded that ED pharmacists can prevent potentially harmful medication errors, however further trials are needed to determine the net costs and benefits of ED pharmacist staffing on safety, quality, and costs.
In Memoriam-George Albert Kemp of Augusta passed away June 23, 2010. Mr. Kemp was a 1958 graduate of Mercer University School of Pharmacy and Assistant Director of Pharmacy of the Medical College of Georgia for 30 years.
