Virginia Society of Health-System Pharmacists

2023 Award Presentations

RD Anderson Distinguished Leadership Award 

The RD Anderson Distinguished Leadership Award recognizes sustained excellence and progressive practice in health-system pharmacy. Since the award was established in 2006, there have only been nine recipients.  It would be nearly impossible to quantify the contributions and impact of those individuals on pharmacy in Virginia.

The recipient of the 2023 R.D. Anderson Distinguished Leadership Award, Craig Kirkwood, is a perfect fit with this group.

Craig has over four decades of leadership, in health-system pharmacy as well as with VSHP and ASHP. There are very few people in this room who do not have a story to tell about their interactions with Craig – whether it is a famous “Dr. Kirkwood” saying as a professor at the MCV/VCU School of Pharmacy, the impact of formal and informal mentorship to pharmacists and pharmacy learners, his many years of volunteer and elected VSHP involvement, or his presence at the national level in Advisory Groups and the House of Delegates, Craig has influenced countless pharmacy professionals to be their best and perform at the top of their practice. Craig has served many roles in his career, including as clinical pharmacy manager, P&T chair, coordinator of the resident teaching certificate program, VSHP President, VSHP Secretary, pretty much every other VSHP position you can think of, author, presenter, mentor, friend, and most recently Assistant Director for Pharmacotherapy Services at VCU Health and Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy. Craig recently announced his planned retirement, and while his presence in the health system and the school of pharmacy will be missed, his legacy will endure. His focus on advancing clinical pharmacy practice has achieved positive results for students, residents, pharmacists, and patients throughout his career, and this impact will be felt by future pharmacists for years to come.

 2023 is an unusual year indeed, as we have a second recipient of the R.D. Anderson Distinguished Leadership Award, Denise Lowe.

Denise is the current manager of the VCU specialty pharmacy. Prior to this role, this she served as the director of drug information services and residency program director at VCU from 2001 through 2019, and a neurosciences/medicine decentralized pharmacist at UVA from 1991 through 2001. Since 2019, VCU Specialty Pharmacy has achieved tremendous growth under her leadership. Denise has grown the program from a staff of two to over thirty-five employees, including pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and reimbursement specialists. Denise’s leadership encompasses oversight of revenue, 340b regulations, teaching pharmacy students, and precepting health-system administrative residents. 

One colleague states, “I am currently a specialty pharmacist that covers hematology/oncology drugs and Denise has been able to easily introduce and integrate me into the sickle cell clinic at VCU, which has allowed me to assist this patient population and advocate for their medication needs, and spread the value of specialty pharmacies.”

In addition to her leadership skills and scholarly activities, Denise is also a great leader and mentor when it comes to employee engagement and flexibility.   Her team members report that she consistently promotes work-life balance and shows empathy during family emergencies and other personal situations, often going the extra mile to advocate for her employees.

This individual has worked hard over decades to distinguish herself as a leader in operations and people management. Please join me in congratulating this year’s recipient of the R. D. Anderson Distinguished Leadership Award, Denise Lowe.

Pharmacist of the Year Award 

The next award is presented to the VSHP Pharmacist of the Year.  This award is awarded annually to a pharmacist who exemplifies the following characteristics:

• ·         Service to the profession of pharmacy, specifically health system pharmacy
• ·         Contributions to pharmacy programs within the Commonwealth
• ·         Cooperation and contributions to the health-care team
• ·         Recognized by the profession as a leader within pharmacy
• ·         Service to the community
  

This year’s recipient exemplifies many of these qualities – specifically those related to service to the profession and contributions to pharmacy programs.  She is an accomplished clinician who previously served as a Critical Care Pharmacy Specialist and PGY1 Residency Coordinator prior to transitioning to her current role in an academic setting.  In her current role, she serves as a mentor to many students and has encouraged several students over the years to pursue careers in health-system pharmacy.  Additionally, over the past two years, she has contributed #3 CE presentations; 3 posters at pharmacy-centric conferences; given one national presentation and published two peer-reviewed manuscripts. 

This is all in addition to her service and involvement with VSHP.  This pharmacist actively serves as a member of the Education committee, the co-chair of the VSHP Resident and Student Committee, and is deeply involved in the VSHP Clinical Skills Competition – and we are grateful for her continued service!

Please join me in congratulating this year’s recipient of the Pharmacist of the Year Award – Dr. Alexis Crawford. 

Clinical Practice Achievement Award

The Clinical Practice Achievement is presented to one or more VSHP members who have made a recent contribution to the development and provision of a patient-oriented pharmacy service.

Let me tell you about this year’s recipient, John Austin, who has made a tremendous impact at his hospital and across his health system ever since becoming clinical coordinator at Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth VA. He serves as an excellent clinical coordinator and always exceeds expectations when implementing formulary changes, cost savings initiatives, and clinical pharmacy enhancements. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started, Dr Austin has been an integral part of our health system’s response. He has critically reviewed a countless number of COVID-related studies and helped craft the health system’s treatment algorithm. Due to his diligence and commitment, Bon Secours was an early adopter of life-saving treatments such as tocilizumab and baricitinib while moving away from costly, less effective medications such as remdesivir.

Dr Austin had to take on a lot of extra responsibilities this year due to turnover at his hospital. In addition to his responsibilities as clinical coordinator, he served as pharmacy buyer and then director of pharmacy at various points in 2023. He also worked tirelessly to support his hospital’s conversion from Pyxis to Omnicell and served as the clinical pharmacy lead in our Hampton roads market while converting to a new instance of Epic earlier this year. He also leads the Renal Dosing Committee for Bon Secours, which reviews medications to be added to our pharmacist automatic renal dosing protocol. Despite all of the challenges he faced in 2023, he continued to serve as lead of this important committee and contribute to COVID medication management - He never wavered in his commitment.

Please join me in congratulating this year’s recipient of the Clinical Practice Achievement Award John Austin.

Let me tell you about this year’s recipient.  This pharmacist has been critical to the development of the emergency department pharmacist role within her community health system. She joined the team in 2019 as the first emergency department pharmacist. Very quickly she integrated into the very busy, level 2 trauma ED, where there had been little to no pharmacy presence. In 2020 her leadership was recognized with a promotion to ED Team Lead, and she began training other pharmacists to operate in the emergency department while simultaneously precepting pharmacy students and residents.  As you can tell, education is one of her passions, and she takes every opportunity to teach anyone that is interested.  She has delivered at least 20 formal presentations to multidisciplinary teams during health system grand rounds, medical education series, and external conferences.

When her facility started an Emergency Medicine Physician Residency in 2020, the recipient became a preceptor for that program as well. She started EM resident lectures on pharmacy/pharmacology and created a rotation for all the clinical specialists and pharmacy residents to educate this group. She also collaborated with the ED team and the patient safety coordinators to increase medication related event reporting for the ED, leading to the formation of a pediatric medication taskforce to track, trend, and prevent pediatric medication errors.

While anyone can start a service, it is remarkable to start a service that can sustain once you have moved on to another position. She transitioned to the Clinical Manager role in 2022. Several pharmacists that she had trained maintained the position with her support until a permanent team lead could be found for the ED. A previous PGY-1 resident had been so impacted by this pharmacist’s mentorship that she went on to a PGY-2 in Emergency Medicine, then rushed back “home” to rejoin the team as the ED Team Lead, citing the recipient as a major factor for her return.

Please join me in congratulating this year’s recipient of Clinical Pharmacy Practice Achievement Award, Tanya Claiborne. 

New Practitioner of the Year Award

This award is presented to a VSHP Member that

• ·         Earned his/her first pharmacy degree within the previous 5 years
• ·         Supports VSHP by membership, meeting attendance, and participation
• ·         Promotes the pharmacy profession within the Commonwealth
• ·         Provides service to community
• ·         Demonstrates superior leadership, innovation, clinical skill or other talent compared to other new practitioners
  

This recipient was an outstanding resident in her 2019 PGY-1 class at a community teaching hospital.  After residency, she transferred to a smaller community hospital within the health system as a clinical pharmacist, also achieving Board Certification in Pharmacotherapy. Her excellent clinical skills, dedication to all aspects of pharmacy profession, and growth mindset was immediately apparent to her colleagues. In a matter of months, she began to partner with her Director of Pharmacy to address operational issues. She worked very closely with nursing and providers on behalf of the departments. She willingly took on clinical and operational projects to move patient care forward in an informal role. She was critical to the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out in the Williamsburg area, supporting her own medical group practices, community clinics, and external healthcare partners, including retail pharmacies and pediatric medical practices.

Recently, her director was on maternity leave for 3 months. Rachel voluntarily assumed the role of PIC. She engaged in almost all aspects of leadership/management during this period including preparing the department for DNV visit, onboarding a new technician, partnering with other disciplines in medication error corrective action planning, controlled substance discrepancy resolution, and the list goes on. She was highly commended by the hospital administrative team for her strong leadership during this period.

Please join me in congratulating this year’s recipient of the New Practitioner of the Year Award, Rachel Barts.

Technician of the Year

This award is presented to a VSHP Member that:

• ·         Demonstrates service to the profession as a Pharmacy Technician
• ·         Must be a Certified Pharmacy Technician
• ·         Contributions to pharmacy programs within the Commonwealth
• ·         Cooperation and contributions to the health-care team
• ·         Recognized by the profession as a leader within pharmacy
• ·         Service to the community

This year’s recipient is a medication safety influencer and has been instrumental in "proving" her health system level changes are effective since she stepped into her role as Medication Safety and Regulatory Compliance Technician in July of 2022. She has successfully completed certifications for ASHP/ISMP Medication Safety and PTCB Regulatory Compliance, as well as playing a key role in several medication safety and regulatory projects that exemplify Plan-Do-Study-Act principles, including:

• ·         Completion of titratable infusion audits and coordination of follow up in collaboration with nursing leaders to clear a DNV finding in 2022. Her initial audits paved the way for nursing to assume the audit process, resulting in sustained results assessed during the following survey.
• ·         Barcode medication administration audits and direct engagement of local Imaging and EKG/Echo department leaders across the health system to increase BCMA compliance after expansion of BCMA in procedural areas.
• ·         Implementation of post-partum hemorrhage carts and process standardization in L&D and Mother Baby units at a community medical center. She engaged nurse leaders in process audits and was ultimately successful in leveraging audit results to convert physical post-partum hemorrhage kits to virtual kits in Pyxis.
• ·         Completion of IV pump library compliance audits and engagement of stakeholders, both in person and through development of content in the health system Medication Safety Newsletter. This resulted in a 6% increase in pump library compliance over a 2-month period to enhance safety and lay groundwork for bidirectional pump integration.

Please join me in congratulating this year’s recipient of the Technician of the Year Award, Carly Sinclair.