Assessing the impact of a leadership and advocacy elective course in a college of pharmacy curriculum.

Introduction And Leadership Framework: While the scope of a pharmacist's work has grown, continued advocacy is needed to ensure that their skillset is used to the best advantage of the patient. To accomplish this aim, the University of Utah College of Pharmacy created an elective advocacy and leadership class to train students in leadership and advocacy methods, with a focus on enabling students to practice advocacy within the state of Utah throughout the class.

Educational Context And Methods: In addition to traditional lectures, this class asked students to apply the knowledge learned in class to projects within their sphere of influence.

Implementation of radio-frequency identification technology to optimize medication inventory management in the intraoperative setting.

Purpose: Manual restocking and tracking of noncontrolled medications in anesthesia workstations (AWSs) is complicated and time intensive, provides several opportunities for error, and lacks perpetual inventory transparency regarding expiration and lot number. This pre-post study assessed the impact of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology on restocking of noncontrolled medications in AWSs in relation to workflow, improved patient safety due to reduced restocking errors, and restocking accuracy and efficiency, as well as the estimated costs of on-site medication RFID tagging versus purchase of pretagged products.

Summary: Pre- and postimplementation process steps were mapped.