As we approach the 2017 Annual Meeting, the committees are preparing their final reports for the Board of Regents. It has been a busy year, with about 220 ACCP members serving on a 2017 ACCP committee and board members and staff serving as secretaries. The committees took on a wide range of charges, from those supporting new strategic initiatives to others addressing cutting-edge or controversial topics facing the profession.
In addition to recommending candidates for this year’s recipients of the Clinical Practice, Education, Russell R. Miller, Robert M. Elenbaas Service, New Clinical Practitioner, New Investigator, New Educator, and Therapeutic Frontiers awards, this year’s Awards Committee was charged with developing a more systematic means to apply the award criteria in selecting the final awardees. Committee chair Krystal Edwards and vice chair Brad Phillips led the group in developing the first drafts of rubrics to provide more consistent assessments of each nominee and support the rankings provided to the board. These rubrics will be finalized by next year’s committee. The committee also established policies and procedures for use by future committees to further standardize the process.
Chair Judi Jacobi, vice chair Jennifer Bean, and members of the Certification Affairs Committee developed recommendations for how ACCP might support and highlight the Board of Pharmacy Specialties (BPS) Value of Board Certification Initiative. This initiative, designed to promote the value of board certification both within and outside the pharmacy profession, is part of BPS’s yearlong commemoration of its 40th anniversary. The committee developed a detailed report of resources addressing the value of credentialing for three different target audiences: prospective applicants, employers, and the public. These resources, to be used in future ACCP messaging and made available as a bibliography for future committee work and collaborations with BPS and other professional organizations, will help members demonstrate the value of board certification in their respective workplaces.
The Clinical Practice Affairs Committee continues to develop an issue brief for the board on how clinical pharmacists can best contribute to medication optimization at the patient population level. This brief will also address how ACCP can support and promote pharmacists involved in providing population-based health care.
Chair Lisa Costanigro, vice chair Andrew Crannage, and members of the Credentials: Membership Committee reviewed all the membership applications submitted this year and recommended approval for new full members, associate members, affiliate members, resident and fellow members, and student members. Many associate members met the qualifications to become full members. The committee also reviewed submissions for the Member Spotlight series in the ACCP Report.
The Credentials: Fellowship Committee, with Kristi Kelly as chair and Dawn Havrda as vice chair, awarded Fellow (FCCP) status to 30 deserving ACCP members. This 36-member committee, the largest of ACCP’s member work groups, reviewed and scored each nominee’s application. Each committee member reviewed five or six applications using an online evaluation tool, with each nominee receiving a composite score reflecting the evaluations of five committee members. The chair and vice chair performed a final review of each application to identify any possible errors or omissions. The names of nominees recommended by the committee for Fellow status and their scores were then submitted to the board for final approval.
In conjunction with its theme of “Interprofessional Collaboration: From Theory to Practice,” the Educational Affairs Committee is revising the 2008 ACCP white paper “Interprofessional Education: Principles and Application. A Framework for Clinical Pharmacy.” This revision will reflect the significant advances in interprofessional education and training for health care providers over the past decade, including the growing body of literature describing best practices and the recent work of groups such as the Interprofessional Education Collaborative. Chair John Murphy and vice chair Anne Marie Liles also led the committee in developing recommendations for updating the 2009 ACCP position statement “Interprofessional Education and Practice.”
One of the most common issues raised in the 2017 member survey was the need for information on personal financial management. The Member Relations Committee, led by chair Zachary Stacy and vice chair Kira Brice Harris, took on this topic. After gathering additional information from a targeted survey of the membership that resulted in 850 responses, the committee developed recommendations for a wide variety of webinars and online tools. These resources will include information useful to ACCP members at many stages of their careers, from dealing with student loan debt to prioritizing personal saving and investing and engaging in retirement and estate planning.
Chair Krystal Haase, vice chair Mary Roth McClurg, and members of the Nominations Committee completed recommendations for the slate of candidates for the 2018 ACCP elections. These recommendations were approved by the Board of Regents during its July meeting and published in the August ACCP Report. The committee identified the need to develop the skills of “near-future” leaders whose strengths and experience in professional organizations might be enhanced by opportunities to serve on ACCP committees or task forces. This recommendation parallels a strategic objective of the new 2017 ACCP strategic plan to develop future leaders through new ACCP Academy programming and leadership sabbaticals or traineeships.
The Public and Professional Relations Committee, led by chair Sarah McBane and vice chair Scott Coon, is finalizing a new ACCP white paper on using and promoting compounded medications. This charge was developed to address the controversies related to the sale of compounded products of unproven effectiveness as well as efforts to restrict compounding, which may inadvertently limit the necessary production of oral liquids for infants, children, and older patients unable to take solid oral dosage forms. The committee is using an evidence-based approach to analyze the recent literature and produce a document that can serve as a resource for future guidelines or regulations in this area of pharmacy practice.
Chair Jill Borchert, vice chair Jennifer Phillips, and members of the Publications Committee are completing an ACCP white paper on using pharmacy technicians and other support personnel to optimize clinical pharmacy services. This paper will address how support staff can become more integrated into the health care team to facilitate expanded opportunities for clinical pharmacists to engage in medication optimization. Examples from organizations that are currently optimizing their use of support personnel will be included, as well as information gathered from the work done during the 2017 Pharmacy Technician Stakeholder Consensus Conference.
The Research Affairs Committee, led by chair Christina Aquilante and vice chair Paul Stranges, developed a web-based resource guide of programs and services to aid ACCP members in developing research, scholarship, and scientific/professional writing skills. This extensive resource includes content from ACCP and sources outside the organization, with most available at no cost or for a nominal fee. This new resource guide is expected to be available by the end of 2017.
The 2018 Annual Meeting Committee, with chair Kelly Caudle and vice chair Alexander Flannery, is completing its work in preparation for the 2018 ACCP Global Conference on Clinical Pharmacy to be held in Seattle, October 20–23, 2018. Mark your calendars now!
The Research Fellowship Program Review Committee also completed its evaluations of programs applying for an ACCP peer review or for a re-review of an existing ACCP-approved program.
Chair Erin McCreary and vice chair Brandon Martinez led the Resident Advisory Committee in several initiatives this year. In addition to the standing request for committee members to participate in the “Emerge from the Crowd” and other programs at ACCP meetings, the group evaluated the current ACCP mentoring program and submitted recommendations for improvement, developed a plan for promoting ACCP membership to residents and fellows, proposed a re-design of the ACCP Career Center, and identified resources to assist residents and fellows with personal financial management.
The National Student Network and Advisory Committee, led by chair Brian Kurish and vice chair Anesia Reticker, provided input on revising the ACCP student membership brochure. The committee also developed new content for the ACCP student webpages that highlights the past winners of the Clinical Pharmacy Challenge and Clinical Research Challenge. In addition to these new changes, the committee continued to provide content and review for the quarterly ACCP student newsletter and the student sections of the ACCP website and Facebook page. As in previous years, both the resident- and the student-led committees were dedicated in completing their charges and produced excellent deliverables.
Because this is my last President’s Column, I would like to once again thank all the members of our organization who have volunteered this year. Whether serving on committees, holding office, working within your PRN, reviewing meeting abstracts or papers for Pharmacotherapy, serving on the ACCP-PAC Governing Council, or serving as a MeRIT, FIT, or student mentor, you are making ACCP and our profession better and enhancing our ability to care for the patients we serve. I look forward to seeing you in Phoenix!