Safely gaining experience in death and dying: Simulation in palliative care and end-of-life education.

Background: Training in palliative and end-of-life (EOL) care provision represents a critical topic in health professional curricula for ensuring a workforce prepared to provide safe and person-center care at the end of one's life. This manuscript describes the incorporation of a simulation-based learning experience (SBLE) and the evolution of a professional elective course for student pharmacists related to palliative and EOL care.

Educational Activity: A SBLE was incorporated into a long-standing professional pharmacy elective course in palliative and EOL care.

Implementation and evaluation of a virtual learning advanced pharmacy practice experience.

Background And Purpose: The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 restricted student involvement in direct patient care. Virtual learning is an effective education strategy in pharmacy curriculums. This study aimed to evaluate student perceptions of virtual learning advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPE) utilizing an electronic 12-question survey.

Descriptive analysis of the unwarranted continuation of antipsychotics for the management of ICU delirium during transitions of care: A multicenter evaluation across New Jersey.

Purpose: Nearly half of intensive care unit (ICU) patients will develop delirium. Antipsychotics are used routinely for the management of ICU delirium despite limited reliable data supporting this approach. The unwarranted continuation of antipsychotics initiated for ICU delirium is an emerging transitions of care concern, especially considering the adverse event profile of these agents.

Integrating high fidelity patient simulation into a skills-based doctor of pharmacy curriculum: A literature review with focus on the bedrock pilot course.

Introduction: Simulation-based teaching is an effective instructional strategy gaining momentum in pharmacy education but remains variable across programs. This is the first known report depicting the development of a multifaceted, integrated simulation program during concurrent initiation of a new skills-based pharmacy curriculum.

Methods: A significant infrastructure expansion created simulation areas whose availability corresponded with the initiation of a new skills-based curriculum.

Simulation as a Tool to Illustrate Clinical Pharmacology Concepts to Healthcare Program Learners.

Purpose Of Review: This article provides an overview of simulation as an effective and evolving tool for teaching clinical pharmacology within the health professions. Further, opportunities for positioning this methodology to meet current educational challenges are presented.

Recent Findings: Clinical pharmacology is an essential core competency for all health professionals, correlating with ability to appropriately and safely prescribe, administer, or optimize medication regimens.

The LOTUS: A Journey to Value-Based, Patient-Centered Care.

In response to the merger of our 248-bed community hospital with a new health system, a multidisciplinary team began a journey of holistic transformation via the evolution of a new rounding process called Leadership, Ownership, Transformation, Unity, and Sustainability (LOTUS) in the 20-bed ICU. Morphing from a hierarchical practice structure with limited engagement of multidisciplinary members, the LOTUS initiative (named for the blossom whose petals surround its core, the patient) afforded each discipline (petal) an equal voice and allowed a once-fragmented team to work cohesively, collaboratively, and at the highest level of the scope of practice for each discipline, thus affording expert guidance during care planning while providing a method to collect quality metrics. LOTUS allows us to view our patients in a new way as we refocused goal determination on patients and their families.

Acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: diagnosis, management, and prevention in critically ill patients.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death and is a substantial source of disability in the United States. Moderate-to-severe acute exacerbations of COPD (AECOPD) can progress to respiratory failure, necessitating ventilator assistance in patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). Patients in the ICU with AECOPD requiring ventilator support have higher morbidity and mortality rates as well as costs compared with hospitalized patients not in the ICU.

Agitated delirium associated with therapeutic doses of sustained-release bupropion.

Case Description: We report a case of a patient initiated on therapeutic doses of sustained-release bupropion for the management of major depressive disorder who subsequently developed acute agitated delirium that required ICU level care. This patient's history was significant for alcohol and cannabis abuse but he was currently detoxified and beyond the withdrawal period. Throughout the course of treatment, all maintenance medications, including bupropion, were discontinued and the patient required escalating doses of benzodiazepines and typical antipsychotics to resolve symptoms.

Pharmacoeconomics of surfactant therapy.

Surfactant therapy has become an integral part of the standard of care for treating premature infants with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). Institutions that routinely treat this patient population have to select a surfactant based upon clinical and pharmacoeconomic considerations. Pharmacoeconomic studies have established the cost-effectiveness of individual agents based on a variety of factors, including length of hospitalization, mortality odds ratio, and other direct medical costs.