Where were you born and where did you go to high school?

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska. Graduated from Lincoln High School in 2009 (Go Links!) 

Where did you complete your undergraduate requirements for pharmacy school?  

Completed undergraduate requirements and graduated with Bachelor degree in Biology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in December 2013.

What is your favorite memory from pharmacy school?

So many to choose from, but I’ll have to go with any of the countless evenings spent studying with good friends that ultimately ended with all of us watching silly YouTube videos. A close second would be presenting a poster at the APHA Annual Meeting in 2018 and then proceeding to go on the Dr. Klepser tour of Nashville breweries.

Describe your career path since you graduated.

I started working for Consonus Pharmacy in Gretna Nebraska (previously known as Community Pharmacy) as an intern during pharmacy school. After graduation I transitioned over to splitting my time between their staff pharmacist and consultant pharmacist teams.

Those first few years spent in several roles provided a way to sharpen many of the skills that I learned while attending UNMC, including pharmacotherapy, sterile and non-sterile compounding, drug information, and many

others. Among some of the highlights along the way has been the opportunity to give some of the very first COVID-19 vaccinations for long-term care residents during Phase 1 of Project Warp Speed.

Consonus also provided me the opportunity to pursue my personal passion in the field of Infectious Disease, specifically Antimicrobial Stewardship. The knowledge, experiences, and relationships I fostered while a student at UNMC helped me play a pivotal role a joint project between Nebraska Medicine’s Antimicrobial Stewardship and Assessment Program (ASAP) and Consonus Pharmacy. Together, we were able to demonstrate that type of impact that consultant pharmacists and pharmacy support can have on long-term care antimicrobial stewardship programs.

Thanks to my ongoing work as a consultant pharmacist and contributions to long-term care antimicrobial stewardship I have the privilege of serving as a member of the Nebraska state Healthcare Associated Infections-Antimicrobial Resistance (HAI-AR) subcommittee and as a board member for the Nebraska Infection Control Network (NICN).

Please list any honors or recognitions you have received during your career.

Recognitions:

Clinician Spotlight-Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP) 2022 Antibiotic Awareness Week.

Speaking engagements at the following conferences:

-Minnesota Antibiotic Stewardship Conference 2022

-Nebraska Antimicrobial Stewardship Summit 2022

-Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) Spring Conference 2024

-Leading Age Iowa Spring Conference 2024

-Nebraska Antimicrobial Stewardship Summit 2024

If you could give 1 message to future pharmacists, what would it be?

My message for any future pharmacist is to be open to trying new things in your career. When I graduated, I had no inkling that combining my interests in infectious disease pharmacotherapy and long-term care pharmacy practice would lead to so many cool experiences.

Embrace the opportunities that come your way, especially if they align with something you are passionate about. You won’t regret it!

Please describe your path to becoming a preceptor for the College of Pharmacy. You may list as much detail or as little as you choose.  

Since my time as a teacher’s assistant in an anatomy lab at UNL, I always knew I wanted to teach in some capacity. I found that a smaller group of students or even one-on-one time with students was where I could establish the connections needed to adequately gauge learning. With this in mind, I knew when I got into hospital pharmacy that I wanted to precept.

I started with a few students looking for preceptors local to their homes, then reached out to Nebraska Medicine to see what it would take to establish an ‘official’ site. After hosting an institutional rotation for a while, I found our site supporting lots of clinical knowledge building, therefore adjusted to an Acute care 1 rotation. Here we push students to establish and confirm their knowledge and the ‘why’ behind various treatment regimens. 

The challenges and the growth of this rotation has increased in a great way with the addition of our additional pharmacist preceptor Andrew Flint, who helps drive the ‘why’ we are so passionate about at our site. 

How many years have you served as a preceptor for UNMC?  

I have been a preceptor since 2018. So, if I did the math right, that’s way too long (6 years) to have an influence on young minds.

Please describe your practice site.  

Again, we pride ourselves in driving students to understand the why behind the things we

do. We are located in Kearney, NE as a small hospital with a mindset that we can take care of anyone that walks in the door. We are a 95-bed hospital and growing that number as we speak. KRMC has a full-service Maternity care center, outpatient and inpatient surgery care, we are a destination for cathlab services (from cardiac cath procedures, watchman insertion and TAVR), Emergency room that covers trauma, strokes and everything in between, and an ICU that provides care to all with the exception of neurosurgery.

Our site has two pharmacist preceptors, as prior mentioned, and we enjoy hosting topic discussions for practical application of major diseases, complications and treatments encountered in an acute care setting. We like to incorporate students into our clinical workflow, having students participate as clinical pharmacists (including active roles in interdisciplinary care for the full variety of patient statuses we encounter) throughout their time at KRMC. We have a great collaboration with other professionals to provide some impactful shadowing experiences, including nursing, anesthesia, emergency, nutrition, and hospitalists/intensivists.

What is the most rewarding part of being a preceptor for the College of Pharmacy?

The pay.

But really, I find it rewarding to help guide a future pharmacist in their approach to care. UNMC does a great job of preparing the knowledge base for these students – it’s incredibly rewarding to see students start at our rotation with the building blocks, then come out of it with tools to do the job and do it well – from patient education to therapeutic interventions. Then to see these students later on after they have been pharmacists and see how well they are doing… it’s the best.

If you could give one message to our current students, what would you say?

Anticipate the change and the gray. You are learning the best therapy we know now from some brilliant people. A good portion of what you are learning now will change, even by the time you graduate. You are also learning on clear patient scenarios (otherwise grading would be impossible) – you need to apply your knowledge to navigate therapy when complications and interactions create the ‘gray area’ of therapy.

Very rarely is there one single answer to a patient’s problems…use what you know and think through the second and third lines of therapy to get the job accomplished.