Alyssa Ferrie, Week 3

I can’t believe that I am finishing my third week with MPhA. Where did the time go? 

We had our fourth and final Pharmacy Night in Roseville on Tuesday.  It was a great turnout and fun to see so many familiar and new faces!  Much of my work this week continued to focus on the Fungal Meningitis outbreak. The spotlight has definitely been turned on the profession of pharmacy. Our profession has always worked hard to show the public that our number one priority is patient care and the health and safety of the public. Not surprisingly, this unfortunate occurrence is sparking a call to action by the public and subsequently our legislators. We are very lucky to have expert pharmacists in this state and legislators who recognize the importance of our input on any medication and patient safety issues.

Julie and I had the pleasure of joining students in the Social and Administrative Pharmacy program during their Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy seminar on Wednesday. As a class project they will be looking at the circumstances surrounding the outbreak and will focus on creating a policy agenda for our legislators. I really enjoyed being able to discuss policy with individuals who bring a lot of different background to the table. It also helps when you have been studying the issue for the past three weeks!  They have a wonderful opportunity to look at policy in real time and to position pharmacy in a pivotal role to address this concern. 

No doubt there is much more to come and MPhA will surely be involved all along the way! Next week I am looking forward to attending committee meetings and speaking at the Minnesota Pharmacy Student Alliance meeting on Thursday. Now to finish my journal article… 

Pharmacy Nights, Immunizations, and Legislative Issues

It’s already Friday… and two weeks with MPhA have flown by! I’ve had the opportunity to attend two Pharmacy Nights in Rochester and Alexandria. It has been wonderful meeting pharmacists throughout the state and everyone has enjoyed the Minnesota Department of Health Immunization presentation. On Wednesday (Oct. 17) I attended a Minnesota Coalition for Adult Immunization meeting. I was proud to report the strides pharmacists are making to increase immunization awareness and education. Pharmacists now give 20% of flu shots! Last Saturday I helped train 30 new immunizers. It is great to see so many pharmacists interested in joining the immunizing team! I encourage all pharmacists to keep up-to-date on current recommendations and schedules, as we are an important source of information and champion of immunizations.

This morning Julie Johnson and I met with Bethany Snyder, Senator Al Franken’s liaison for health issues in Minnesota, and spoke with Hannah Katch, the senator’s health policy advisor in DC. They were interested in learning more about MPhA and our legislative priorities. We spent a great amount of time discussing the recent fungal meningitis outbreak and issues surrounding compounding. I have worked hard to educate myself about this issue over the past couple of weeks. This situation has shown me how quickly things can come up and that it is important for the association to be as informed and engaged as possible. The outbreak is tragic and I think everyone in the profession extends their sympathies and is motivated to work together to do what we can to prevent any similar events in the future. I am amazed at how quickly the professional organizations and associations have responded and begun working together. Some may view this as a black mark for pharmacy — but I am confident that this will only highlight our professionalism and desire to deliver the highest quality of patient care.

I am learning about new things every day and I cannot wait to see what the coming weeks will bring!

Alyssa Ferrie

MPhA Welcomes Alyssa Ferrie

Hello! My name is Alyssa Ferrie. I am a fourth year pharmacy student at the University of MN College of Pharmacy-Twin Cities campus. I am just starting a five week leadership rotation with Julie Johnson here at MPhA. I love to be involved with the college and professional organizations. I am an active member of Kappa Psi, the Minnesota Pharmacy Student Alliance, Phi Lambda Sigma, and several of our state and national professional pharmacy organizations. I am an intern at the University of MN Medical Center-Fairview and work in both the University Discharge and Riverside Inpatient pharmacies. I have enjoyed all of my rotations so far which have included an independent community pharmacy, a patient care elective in mental health at the St. Peter Treatment Facility, and the emergency department at Essentia St. Mary’s in Duluth. I have a BA in Psychology from the University of MN-College of Liberal Arts and have loved every minute of my eight years in Minneapolis.  I am originally from Moorhead, MN (home of the Spuds and the Dilly Bar). My parents still live up North and I try to get up to see them as much as I can. I have one younger brother who is a civil engineer in Wahpeton, ND and we actually like each other! I am true Minnesotan and enjoy spending as much time as I can outdoors camping, canoeing, hunting, fishing, hiking, and biking. I am an active intramural sports participant and play on volleyball, softball, kickball, and flag football teams throughout the year. I may even try my hand at broomball this winter! I live for travel and count my month long backpacking tour of Europe and my four trips to Nicaragua as some of the best experiences of my life. My special talent is making lefse and my guilty pleasure is singing karaoke. I have already learned so much about MPhA and pharmacy in our state and I am looking forward to the coming weeks!

5 weeks in review

Well, my time here at MPhA has come to an end. I am sad to leave. 

I have learned much in my five weeks at MPhA about how an organization is really ran and the things that it takes to keep a machine like this running. I also got to have lunch with Matt Lemke, MPhA’s (and all of pharmacy’s) lobbyist and learned about his job.  Lowell Anderson, Matt Lemke and I also produced a timeline for the new pharmacy practice act revision – which you should all know about and give input on; it’s going to change the way you practice pharmacy in the near future! You can read more about it here:
www.pharmacy.umn.edu/clhc/prod/groups/cop/@pub/@cop/documents/content/cop_content_391552.pdf

I also had the opportunity to present on this new timeline and the DEA ruling on faxed prescriptions at the Policy Affairs and Community Pharmacy Business Coalition meetings.

I am now off to St. Cloud to try my hand at Ambulatory Care with the VA. I am excited for this rotation: as a veteran, I have long looked forward to my opportunity to work with this patient population. However, it is going to be hard to leave Julie Johnson. She has been a great preceptor and mentor; the most important things I learned from this rotation, I learned from watching her interact with others. I am glad to have made a friend in her, which is what made this rotation so great.

Thanks for everything Julie!

Pharmacy Advocacy

This week I traveled up to Duluth with Julie for Pharmacy Nights. We heard Brent Thompson talk about the Pharmacy Practice Act Working Group’s progress.  If you haven’t heard about this yet, there is a group who is currently going through the Minnesota pharmacy practice act line by line and making suggestions for change to modernize it. The intent is to ensure that pharmacists in the future have a wider scope of practice that enables them to fully participate in a changing health care model. Tiffany Elton alerted us to the methadone abuse situation in Duluth, and the Department of Health educated us all about immunizations.

On Thursday, I attended my first MPhA Board of Directors meeting. This was a great opportunity to learn more about how the matters that affect pharmacy in Minnesota are dealt with. Earlier that same day, I attended an MPhA financial meeting, during which I learned about the different sources of funding and expenses of MPhA.

This week at MPhA has given me a more in depth view of pharmacy advocacy that I’m sure will benefit me in my future career.