Pharmacists leadership in a medication shortage response: Illustrative examples from a health system response to the COVID-19 crisis.

As medication experts, clinical pharmacists play an active and dynamic role in a medication shortage response. Supplementing existing guidelines with an actionable framework of discrete activities to support effective medication shortage responses can expand the scope of pharmacy practice and improve patient care. Dissemination of best practices and illustrative, networked examples from health systems can support the adoption of innovative solutions.

Dynamic pharmacy leadership during the COVID-19 crisis: Optimizing patient care through formulary and drug shortage management.

Purpose: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for health systems around the world. We describe our approach to adapting the pharmacy leadership structure to address critical medication shortages through innovative data analysis, procurement strategies, and rapid implementation of medication policy.

Summary: Yale New Haven Health deployed a system incident management command structure to effectively respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

Experience with integrating pharmacist documenters on cardiac arrest teams to improve quality.

Objectives: To determine if adding a clinical pharmacist to the cardiac arrest team in a documenter role improves completeness of documentation and quality of advanced cardiovascular life support (ACLS).

Setting: A 1541-bed, tertiary care, academic medical center with an integrated clinical pharmacy practice model.

Practice Description: In 2012, we identified documentation of resuscitation activities during cardiac arrest events and compliance with published ACLS guidelines as opportunities for systematic quality improvement at our tertiary care academic medical center.

Implementation of a pharmacist career ladder program.

Purpose: The implementation and outcomes of a pharmacist career ladder program (PCLP) at a tertiary care, academic medical center are described.

Summary: A PCLP was developed at Yale-New Haven Hospital to guide career development, motivate staff to perform beyond their daily tasks and responsibilities, and recognize and retain high performers through professional advancement. The PCLP advancement criteria include specific requirements for excellence in five categories: level of training and experience, pharmacy practice, drug information, education and scholarship, and leadership.

Improving medication safety through the use of metrics.

Purpose: Describe medication safety metrics used at University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) institutions and recommend a meaningful way to report and communicate medication safety information across an organization.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using an electronically distributed, open-ended survey instrument.

Results: Twenty percent of the UHC institutions responded to our survey.

Clinical outcomes associated with conversion from brand-name to generic tacrolimus in hospitalized kidney transplant recipients.

Purpose: The safety of converting kidney transplant recipients on brand-name tacrolimus to generic tacrolimus during hospitalization was evaluated.

Methods: A single-center observational study compared tacrolimus dosages and trough tacrolimus levels in kidney transplant recipients who had a kidney transplant more than 90 days before hospital admission. Patients in the "brand" group were maintained on brand-name tacrolimus throughout the entire study period.