VSHP Membership Spotlight
Jennifer Gaissert
What initially motivated you to join VSHP?
I've been a practicing Pharmacy Technician in Southside Hampton Roads for 39 years. The VSHP meetings were a great way of keeping in touch with everyone, as well as accruing CEs.
Where have you trained or worked?
I joined the Navy in 1980 as a Hospital Corpsman, and received my Pharmacy Technician training at the Naval School of Health Sciences in Portsmouth in 1982. I was then stationed at the Admiral Joel T. Boone Clinic outpatient pharmacy, on what was then the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, where I was the lead, and narcotic vault, technician . Five years later, I returned to NSHS as a Master Training Specialist. I was also the senior instructor at two civilian Pharmacy Technician schools: Mansfield School of Business in the late 1980's, and Everest College in the mid 2010' s. I worked full-time at the old Naval Hospital's inpatient pharmacy as a civilian contractor for a year after leaving the Navy preparing IVs, and taking and entering orders. I began working evenings at what was then Chesapeake General Hospital beginning in 1985 while still on active duty, and full-time for a year after I was honorably discharged in 1989, then part-time again after my son was born. prepared sterile admixtures: IVs and IVPBs, chemos, and TPNs/hyperalimentation. In the 80's people could smoke in the pharmacy breakroom, and all IVs were in glass bottles! Between full- and part-time, I worked at CGH for 19 years. I left CGH in 2004 to accept a position at Radiology Services of Hampton Roads in Chesapeake, a nuclear pharmacy headed at the time by John Tabb, and now by Steve Mize, having worked with both of them at CGH. I was promoted to Lead Nuclear Pharmacy Technician in 2009 . In addition to drawing
sterile radioactive isotope doses, radio labeling white blood cells, and performing quality control analysis, as lead tech I also do scheduling, inventory management, and train radiologist residents and nuclear medicine technologists during their clinical rotations through our facility.
Describe your current area of practice and practice setting:
We are, by far, the largest nuclear pharmacy in the region. We prepare radiopharmaceuticals for the nuclear medicine departments in all regional Sentara hospitals and clinics (including Williamsburg and Albemarle) all regional Bon Secours hospitals and clinics, Chesapeake Regional Healthcare, and the vast majority of independent clinics and facilities.
What advice would you give to a new technician?
Stick with it! Pharmacists are being given significantly more responsibilities, which is going to require many of their previous responsibilities to be delegated to senior and more highly trained Pharmacy Technicians. A more experienced and highly trained technician, managing more responsibility, makes more money and has greater job satisfaction!
Do you have any special interests or hobbies outside of work?
Being a new grandmother definitely tops the list! I also am a member of Mensa and Virginia Beach Christian Church.
What is your favorite place to vacation?
Italy!
