Convocation speaker Maine to discuss A.I. and the future of pharmacy
BY GREG WEATHERFORD
Director of Communications, VCU School of Pharmacy
As a child, Lucinda Maine, Ph.D., R.Ph., wanted to be an elementary-school teacher.
“I walked out of first grade, looked at [my teacher] and said, ‘I want to be just like you,'” Maine recalled with a chuckle.
That plan did not work out. Instead, as a teenager Maine followed the advice of her submarine-building father. “I was interested in healthcare, but I knew I wasn’t going to medical school or nursing,” Maine explained. “My dad said, ‘Have you thought about pharmacy?'”
She had not. She met with her family pharmacist, whom she barely knew. His enthusiasm and encouragement — and the offer of a summer job after her freshman year at Auburn University — led her to pharmacy, then to pharmacy education and association management.
Since 2002, Maine has been executive vice president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. In that role, she will be the convocation speaker this week for the hooding and diploma ceremony for the VCU School of Pharmacy’s Class of 2018.
“I envy the Class of 2018 because the opportunities that await them are so different and more expansive than I ever could have imagined when I walked across that stage almost 40 years ago,” Maine said.
Among the changes for the profession she plans to discuss in her talk is the increasing role of technology in pharmacy, from artificial intelligence to the concept of “augmented intelligence,” which she described as “how to make information technology your friend.”
Maine also plans to address another “AI”: authentic interactions. Pharmacy is “going to be all about relationships,” she said.
For example, pharmacists are likely to be more familiar with technology than many of their patients and will need to explain it and its role in health care to them, Maine said.
Maine holds a B.S. in pharmacy from Auburn and a doctorate from University of Minnesota, where she also taught and practiced in the field of geriatrics. She was an associate dean at the Samford University School of Pharmacy. Before being hired to lead AACP, Maine served for 10 years as a senior vice president with the American Pharmacists Association.
She serves on the board of directors for Research!America and is an Executive Committee member of the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education.
Asked if she has any messages for faculty, Maine pointed to changes in teaching and curricula since she received her B.S., in 1980. In those days, she said, “it was lockstep … nothing like the integrated modules and experiential learning we have today.”
“[Learning] is not teacher-centered, it’s learner-centered. It can’t be the ‘sage on the stage’ for 60 minutes,” she added, acknowledging that this has been a difficult transition for some faculty.
Her association has begun to take steps to modernize pharmacy teaching along those lines, Maine said, such as emphasizing the importance of communication skills and being a change agent for the profession.
In addition, “we can’t possibly teach them everything they will need to know,” she said. “We have to teach them how to find to find, assess and apply information to patient care accurately on their own.”
Finally, Maine added, “they need to be compassionate.”
The Class of 2018 Hooding and Diploma Ceremony will be held May 11, 2018, at St. Paul’s Baptist Church in Richmond.
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