Pharmacy Services Clinic: three decades of excellence
To take the Pharmacy Services Clinic Anniversary Quiz, click here.
Top 5 lines – in no particular order — overheard at the Pharmacy Services Clinic’s 30th anniversary celebration Nov. 20:
1. “I thought this place had just been built!” (Someone apparently impressed with its youthful appearance)
2. “I wasn’t even born yet.” (Upon finding out the clinic originated in 1978)
3. “Hey, is that a dig?!” (From somebody born before ’78)
4. “Do we get a door prize?” (In response to the 30th anniversary pharmacy quiz … more about that later)
5. “Corn pudding? It’s a Virginia thing.” (From a lively discussion among residents who apparently aren’t from these here parts)
That’s what you get when you combine a giant Ukrop’s sheet cake, a bowl full of punch, an examination table piled with trail mix, chips, salsa and veggies … and celebrants enough to overflow Room 215 in the Ambulatory Care Center’s Primary Care Clinic.
Refreshments aside — which, by the way, were kindly provided by the School of Pharmacy and hospital nursing staff — the Pharmacy Services Clinic has accomplished much in three decades.
Ron Ballentine estimates that more than 500 pharmacy students and more than 225 pharmacy residents have been trained in the PSC since its 1978 origin. Including anticoagulation patients, the PSC now sees about 7,000 patients annually.
Ballentine, associate professor of pharmacy and assistant director of admissions and services, coordinated the anniversary celebration.
Rita Willett, an associate professor of internal medicine who came on board in 1993, shared a pre-party Pharmacy Services Clinic Anniversary Quiz. People waiting in the hall quickly realized the clinic had opened not only before some of them were born, but also before Hepatitis C or AIDS were identified.
Ballentine noted that Jim McKenney and John Witherspoon were instrumental in creating the clinic. “To our knowledge,” he said, “this was the first clinic in the country with pharmacists doing this kind of work.”
When Ballentine arrived on campus in 1987, one resident and one faculty member were responsible for all the PSC refills. “Of course, [refills] weren’t anywhere near the volume there is now.”
“You know who’s responsible for that now?” Willett laughed, pointing to herself. She was one of the early proponents of the clinic as a teaching tool.
Commenting on how much the field has evolved in the last 30 years, Willett noted the presence of new diseases and the changing pace of medicine on the whole. Areas that are becoming more important and will provide new challenges, she said, include the aging population, pain management, Medicare, medical resources and patient advocacy … all of which also will be affected by changes in the economy.
Referring to the pharmacy-medicine collaboration, she said, “I think of how important it is for us to practice together … how great it’s been to have a teaching environment together.”
Laughing, Willett added, “I get the anticoagulant patients presented … I look like I’m approving, but really I’m an anticoagulation student.”
For more photos from the Pharmacy Services Clinic’s 30th anniversary observance, click here.
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