Behind the Bench
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| Dance moves are an elective in Pharmacy School, I believe! |
Name: Jeremy Daniel
Hometown: Currently live in Jeffersonville, but I consider myself from Terre Haute, IN
Education: Bachelor's of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology specialization), Purdue University, 2010. Doctor of Pharmacy, Purdue University, 2012.
Q1: Why inspired you to enter into the field of pharmacy?
I always loved chemistry in high school. I enjoyed the problem solving that goes along with it and the various types of experiments that I was able to do. Up until the last few months of high school, I wanted to major in chemistry in college. However, after talking to my neighbor changed my viewpoint. In Terre Haute, my neighbor was a pharmacist for Walgreens. He found out that I wanted to go into something science related, so he started talking to me. He convinced me I had good communication skills, always wanted to help people, and would be perfect as a pharmacist. He told me about all the chemistry he had to take, so I was kind of sold. Plus, he used to work for Budweiser as one of the QA people, and he had a pharmacy degree…so that was pretty legit.
Q2: What is your grandest aspiration for your career?
My goal is to one day be a psychiatric clinical pharmacist. I look at most of our professors at Purdue and see how amazing they are in their areas of practice. I am glad I got the opportunity to go to Purdue where some of the leading people in various pharmacy fields practice. My favorite professor throughout my curriculum is Dr. Carol Ott, a psychiatric pharmacist with Wishard Health Services. She writes book chapters for national publications, sits on the Board of Directors or other panels for national organizations, and has essentially paved the way for psych pharmacy practice at Wishard, both in the inpatient setting and in her outpatient clinic. My goal is to one day be this great. I feel this is the way I can make the biggest difference in my profession while still directly caring for patients and continuing to practice (rather than just sitting behind a desk in some office with a window).
Q3: What are your specific interests in pharmaceuticals?
As far as trends in pharmaceuticals, the drive towards more specific medicine is fascinating. What I mean by this can best be summed up with modern cancer medications. For instance, in the treatment of colorectal cancer, panitumumab (Vectibix®) and cetuximab (Erbitux®) are two drugs commonly used. The response rates to these medications are great (as far as chemotherapy is concerned). However, if a patient has a mutation in a GTPase called KRas, these drugs are virtually ineffective with an efficacy rate of less than 5%. This signals the clinician that a different therapy is in order. Likewise, there are other drugs that require the patient to express a certain receptor (if the patient has the receptor, over 80% efficacy; no receptor, less than 10% efficacy). This trend towards drugs that are highly effective if patients present a certain way compared to putting one drug out for the masses makes me very optimistic in our ability to treat patients in the future. This is definitely an interest of mine.
A trend that I absolutely loathe is the development of drugs that serve virtually no purpose in practice. These “me too” drugs simply complicate patient treatment decisions, increase medical cost by increasing hospital formularies and retail pharmacy stock, and pass a large cost on to the consumer because of a very effective drug rep that convinced their doctor to prescribe the new brand name version over the generic version that has been out for 5 years. I believe drug companies should focus on clinically meaningful (this is a very important point), novel treatments for either existing conditions or new conditions. Unfortunately, this also adds cost due to the orphan status of most of those drugs, and I do understand how difficult this is from my BSPS background, but that is a discussion for a different day and another post…
Q4: What is the next step in your professional journey?
The next immediate step is completing my rotations and graduating pharmacy school. My plan after that (at least right now) is to complete two years of residency and specialize in psychiatric clinical pharmacy. However, all of this could change if I discover another area I am passionate about, but for the moment, this is what I have in mind.
Q5: Favorite thing about being in pharmacy?
My favorite thing about being in pharmacy is the difference I get to make in my patients’ lives. In my community rotation, I saved a patient $2800 on his prescription for Zyvox by getting him on a patient assistance program from the manufacturer. During this rotation in the hospital, I counsel at least 2 patients daily about Coumadin, which takes a lot of knowledge and attention to detail on the part of the patient to effectively manage their therapy. A patient told me today that he appreciated me stopping by and talking to him because he had been on the drug for 2 months and no one counseled him on it. He just changed his diet to try to eat better and ended up in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism. If someone would have talked to him about the food interactions with Coumadin, this probably would not have happened. This difference is very important to me, and it is what makes pharmacy so great.
This is a great post!
ReplyDeleteThe last little bit about Coumadin is frustrating though! Any doctor, dietitian, nurse, or pharmacists should know that and one of the four should tell him the details BEFORE he starts taking it.