Every ICU patient deserves the care of a critical care pharmacist.
How do we get there?
Vision: Every patient receives the care of a clinical pharmacist.
Gap: Not every patient receives the care of a clinical pharmacist.
Approach: A three-pronged approach may bridge this gap.
Prong 1: Focus on the big-picture. (View the horizon, don’t sweat the small stuff, maximize ROI for all activities as it relates to placing pharmacists in all patient care environments and as key stakeholders in ‘the big conversations.’).
Prong 2: Prioritize Sustainable Excellence in systems, personal practice, and education of trainees. Importantly, this ‘Frank Starling Curve’ of ROI (individual effort to results) can be augmented by thoughtful organizational structure and teams.
Prong 3: Focus on Process over Product. Leveraging the power of mentorship networks, team science, and layered learning to increase relationship building, productivity, and skill development is a sustainable, ‘long-game’ strategy.
My name is Andrea Sikora, and I am a clinician, scientist, and educator at the University of Georgia. I like thinking about how systems can be improved to achieve better outcomes for patients, trainees, and society. I want to help individuals to pay it forward and am author of a book on this topic. I believe in the power of interprofessional healthcare, team science, and mentorship to improve the systems of healthcare delivery, inquiry, and education. Indeed, we are all beneficiaries of gifts we can only pay forward to the next generation.
I was trained as a pharmacist specializing in critical care and as a scientist trained in clinical research. In each domain, I am moved by how the systems designed to provide, evaluate, and teach healthcare are necessary to care for our most vulnerable populations (our sickest patients and our students) but moreover those that have dedicated their lives in the care of others:
I believe that every intensive care unit patient deserves a critical care pharmacist (and the broader corollary, that every patient deserves an interprofessional team designed to care for them).
I believe in the power of rigorous questioning and inquiry to effect change.
I believe that educators have the power to kindle the fire of those that come after us.
Solving problems excites me, and I love asking questions to find solutions, especially about systems: the system of healthcare delivery, the system of healthcare education, and the system of translating clinically meaningful inquiry between those at the bedside and those in the laboratory.
If you are interested in joining the Sikora Lab, please navigate here.
If you would like to dialogue on any of these topics, contact me here.
