Narrator - Dr. Abel 00:00 Welcome to HelixTalk, an educational podcast for healthcare students and providers, covering real life clinical pearls, professional pharmacy topics and drug therapy discussions. This podcast Narrator - ? 00:11 is provided by pharmacists and faculty members at Rosalind Franklin University, College of Pharmacy. Narrator - Dr. Abel 00:17 This podcast contains general information for educational purposes only. This is not professional advice and should not be used in lieu of obtaining advice from a qualified health care provider. Narrator - ? 00:27 And now on to the show. Dr. Sean Kane 00:31 Welcome to HelixTalk, episode 99 — I'm your co-host, Dr. Kane. Dr. Khyati Patel 00:35 I'm Dr. Patel, and today we have with us the Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Rosalind Franklin University College of Pharmacy — Dean Janeen Winnike. Thanks. Speaker 1 00:45 It's great to be here today, and I'm looking forward to the talk Awesome. Dr. Sean Kane 00:49 Well, the title of today's episode is, may I take your order the menu of professional pharmacy organizations, and today we're going to go through some of the more common professional organizations that are out there that would be relevant to pharmacy students, what they are, what they do, where a student might interact with some of these organizations? Yeah. Dr. Khyati Patel 01:06 And I think when we have students here as it is, it's difficult for them to select what organizations they want to join, but it becomes incredibly challenging once they're advancing to becoming practitioners. So when they're in their residency or fellowship or postgraduate training, and they're actually then practicing professional so we're going to kind of discuss the pros on pharmacy organizations in general and how to keep involved years after pharmacy education is over. Speaker 1 01:35 That's what I was going to say. I think not only are we going to talk about this from a student perspective, but I think, you know, from someone myself, who's been a practitioner for 25 years, talk about some of the opportunities and reasons for a seasoned practitioner to be involved, get involved or stay involved. Dr. Khyati Patel 01:50 Yeah, and I just have a quick disclaimer that, you know, there are so many different pharmacy organizations out there, and in this episodes, we obviously don't list each and every one of them. The purpose is to kind of talk about more of the larger organizations, and then, more importantly, address the importance of joining at least one to get more networking opportunities and professional enrichment. Dr. Sean Kane 02:16 Well, let's kick it off with the first one, which is APhA (American Pharmacists Association), and this is actually the first national professional pharmacy organization — it was founded in 1852 and a lot has changed since then. Dr. Khyati Patel 02:37 A lot has changed, right? More sectors of Pharmacy has come across, because at that time, it used to be called American Pharmaceutical Association that encompass not just the clinical side of pharmacy, but more on the scientific side of pharmacy as well. Dr. Sean Kane 02:50 And this is one of the largest organizations that we have, correct. Dr. Khyati Patel 02:54 That's correct. We have about a little bit more than 60,000 members, and that includes practicing pharmacists, student pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists and even pharmacy technicians. Dr. Sean Kane 03:03 So Dean munici, what are the typical people who are involved in this organization? Speaker 1 03:09 You bet I think this really is one of the most broad based organizations for pharmacists or students who are just pro pharmacy, regardless of their practice site, and when you take a look at the things they have to offer to members. It's varied, and it will really almost find something for anyone as a member of APHA, Dr. Sean Kane 03:31 perhaps that reflects the large size of its organization, as you said, more than 60,000 people. That's not going to just be community pharmacists, not just be inpatient clinical pharmacist. It's going to be a lot of different Speaker 1 03:43 people, and it's exciting to think it'll be really having its 200th anniversary. Wow, in 2052 which might sound like a long time from now, but it'll be here before we know it. Dr. Sean Kane 03:54 So like many organizations, they have an annual meeting. What might someone expect at an annual meeting? Dr. Khyati Patel 03:59 Their annual meeting is actually one of the largest gathering happens once a year, somewhere around the spring, and in addition to APHA members meeting during this meeting, they have concurrent meetings for other organizations. They don't have a larger venue or meeting to gather, such as Phi Lambda Sigma and Rho Chi. These are honor societies; Industry Pharmacists Organization and the International Pharmaceutical Student Federation, as well as certain other government pharmacy groups, federal pharmacy groups also meet during an APhA annual meeting, Speaker 1 04:31 I would say you have to wear your walking shoes. Dr. Kane, because it is a big meeting with lots and lots of sessions and opportunities that start at five or six in the morning and go till six, seven or eight in the evening, depending on what you want Dr. Sean Kane 04:43 to do. So given that the group is so heterogeneous that you have so many things going on, I would assume that the sessions are going to be highly varied in terms of what one might see if they were to attend a session, like an educational session. Dr. Khyati Patel 04:56 Absolutely, it's hard to pinpoint at one, but I do want to say. From student perspective that this is the largest gathering of student pharmacist gives a separate, concurrent, parallel meeting for students to gather, run their House of Delegates sessions as well as their leadership training sessions. Speaker 1 05:15 And I would echo Dr. Kane, I think those CE offerings are wide. They're varied. They help identify them, whether they're entry level or a little more advanced, which can be really helpful when you attend if you want to think about something new, that you want to learn about, or if you want to advance your current knowledge. The program is set up really well to help you with that. Dr. Khyati Patel 05:36 Yeah, and I think there's, there's seems to be more of a continuum. You know, you have student pharmacists, then you have these new practitioners. So there are sessions catered towards somebody who's just entered the profession, and then there are sessions for, obviously, seasoned practitioners and some of the veteran practitioners as well. So it's more of a fluid, fluid type of environment when you attend the meetings. And more importantly, for student organizations, the meeting also holds a some competition, such as the National Patient counseling competition. Dr. Sean Kane 06:06 Another thing that APHA is involved in is lobbying in terms of representing the interests of pharmacists with respect to Congress and the legislature. Speaker 1 06:16 Right? Absolutely. Most of these national organizations with APHA we're talking about first, are going to be involved in lobbying or really promoting our profession to the government at a national level, in this in this case, on Washington, DC, and when we think about how highly regulated health care is, it's really important to have our voice at the table and be heard. And so that, really, to me, is one of the important reasons to be a member. I don't want the laws that are going to impact my profession or even my health care as a patient to be dictated by people that are not informed about those health care issues. And so those lobbying efforts are key. Dr. Khyati Patel 06:57 Yeah, I think you put it very well there. Dean Winnike is, and I think what APhA is doing differently is they're trying to instill these principles in students too. So they're asking students to get involved in advocacy efforts while they're in pharmacy school, not just when they become pharmacists. Dr. Sean Kane 07:15 So in terms of benefits of joining, aside from attending a meeting and getting CE and networking and things like that. What are some other benefits that a member of APHA may derive? Dr. Khyati Patel 07:27 You could join special interest group. You can take leadership positions in those interest group too. You can stay up to date by getting some of their publications, such as the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association (JAPhA). Pharmacy Today is their more commercial publication. They have their drug information updates, daily briefing emails come through their advocacy updates. They're obviously live and online. Webinar ces available too. Speaker 1 07:51 Yeah, that's what I would say. For me, it's just a way to stay up to date, whether I want to read a little blip right and then hit the link to learn more. There's opportunity for that in almost any area of pharmacy. Excellent. Dr. Sean Kane 08:04 So moving on from the biggest, the next is ASHP — the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. It has roughly 50,000 members. Dr. Khyati Patel 08:17 We kind of look at more of the niche areas that they represent. Pharmacists in hospital, HMOs, long term care, home health, and other areas of health care system in general. Then that includes pharmacy residency placement services, health care administration. So like we're talking about management, pharmacy informatics, and again, those pharmacy technicians practicing in any of these environments, right? Speaker 1 08:39 Really comprehensive for any pharmacist who has an interest or is involved in health care system pharmacy. Dr. Khyati Patel 08:48 And again, the purpose is to advance and support those, you know, individuals working in hospitals and health system to then kind of really put medication safety and public health at the forefront. Dr. Sean Kane 08:58 And at least for me, one of the things that I think of when I think of ASHP is the mid year clinical meeting. And it's at that mid year clinical meeting that a couple things happen that I think about every year, including the clinical skills competition for students. I also think about the PPS, which is the interview process during mid year, and also the showcase, the residency showcase, where 1000s of different residencies are there to talk about why you should join their residency and apply to them and things like that. It's a huge event at the mid year clinical meeting with ASHP, Dr. Khyati Patel 09:33 yeah, you're gonna see a lot of third year fourth or pharmacy students, you know, walking about either in their nicest attire, you know, either interviewing or meeting with these residency directors and residents of the current program. Speaker 1 09:46 That's what I was going to say to our practitioners. Listening, if you precept students, mid year might sound to us like it's the middle of the year, but it's actually in December, mid year of the association's fiscal year, but mid year is in December. So if. Precepting students, and they're kind of a little riled up and talk about mid year. There really is a mid year meeting in December, and it is a big one for anyone interested in residencies. Dr. Khyati Patel 10:09 Another big thing ASHP does, it accredits pharmacy residency programs across the United States, and that it joins hands with APHA as well as MCP to accredit some of the community as well as the managed care type residencies. Dr. Sean Kane 10:24 And just to re emphasize that accreditation is incredibly important, because if you want to do a PGY2, typically you have to go through a PGY1-accredited program. And accreditation means something. It means that it's been evaluated by this governing body, ASHP, to make sure that you're getting out of your residency what you're supposed to and that it's consistent across all residencies. It's kind of a seal of approval that someone has validated that that's an appropriate residency that meets their standards. Speaker 1 10:52 I would absolutely say that. And I think one of the things for our students listening, we've talked about a SHP being an organization mainly focused on health systems. But as it relates to residencies, all residencies, as my partners here have mentioned, whether you're talking community pharmacy, managed care, etc, all fall as a partnership in accreditation, recruitment, etc. Dr. Khyati Patel 11:15 And when it comes to student organizations, they do have their SSHP — the student society that connects ASHP state affiliates and their student chapters. So for example, for Illinois, will be ichp, Illinois Council of health system, pharmacy and their student chapter to the national ASHP, as we talked about benefits from APHA, you know, we have similar type of benefits coming from ASHP to the members, in addition to networking and leadership opportunities, we get to see participation in special sections and forums in order to stay up to date, they have their own journal, AJHP; ASHP Daily Briefings are some of the emails that help you stay up to date. Advocacy updates live and online CE that provided right? Speaker 1 12:01 They're absolutely advocating and working hard to promote the profession of pharmacy and make sure those decisions are getting made that provide opportunity for us as pharmacists. They have some great career tools as as well. Actually, all the organizations do, but those career tools I know I recommend a lot for students off the ASHP website, Dr. Khyati Patel 12:21 yeah, and if you're a preceptor out there and you know, wanting to advance yourself, they actually have a separate preceptor conference, whether you're precepting pharmacy students or pharmacy resident. But they also have a lot of precepting tools available on their website. Dr. Sean Kane 12:36 So moving on to our third organization, ACCP, the American College of clinical pharmacy. This is a little bit smaller, so about 15,000 members, a little bit newer, established in 1979 and really the purpose of ACCP is to advance pharmacists expanding into clinical practice and research. So this is kind of a clinical arm, if you will, of a pharmacy organization, yeah. Dr. Khyati Patel 12:58 And when I think about a CCP, I think about, you know, promoting that clinical advancement of the pharmacist, and really pushing pharmacist and work with other healthcare providers in more collaborative manner. Dr. Sean Kane 13:11 And of course, they also have an annual meeting so they provide updates and therapeutics, so kind of a pharmacotherapy esque approach to how they provide CE at their meetings. Dr. Khyati Patel 13:21 And again, that focuses, usually on practice of pharmacy, education and research. And so when we talk about research, tons of opportunities for researchers to present their abstract or podium presentations as well. Speaker 1 13:34 I think another opportunity at those ACCP meetings are just continued education at really on an advanced or specific level. So perhaps helping provide CE as pharmacists get ready to think about taking a board certification exam through BPS; oftentimes there are CE opportunities to help prepare for that. Dr. Sean Kane 13:54 Absolutely, there are student chapters as well for ACCP, and through that student chapter, there is also a competition, and in this case, the National Clinical Pharmacy challenge is offered through ACCP as a student challenge. Dr. Khyati Patel 14:09 And the interesting thing about this challenge is that usually the pre challenges occur online, so remotely, and then the national challenges when occurs at the annual meeting. Dr. Sean Kane 14:20 Very cool. So in terms of benefits, you know, as with all of the other organizations, networking is huge. Leadership opportunities is huge. With a CCP, they have something called prns. These are practice and research networks. These are kind of listers of people with a particular topic, where someone on a PRN might email out. You know, have you encountered this side effect with this drug? Or how is your institution dosing? Or have a protocol for a particular medication or regimen? It's kind of a way to communicate with other members of ACCP within that PRN Dr. Khyati Patel 14:54 and they have something called ACCP academies too. They focus on four major things, such as. Leadership and Management, research and scholarship, development and teaching and learning, and basically the purpose is to take the new practitioners and train them who are en route to any of these positions in these areas. Speaker 1 15:13 So I think, as Dr. Kane, Dr. Patel, you've said, they provide so many opportunities to stay up to date online at their meetings. Through these PRN or the academies, they also have great career tools. So again, students, if you're a member of ACCP or become one, you have access to those career tools or pharmacists that are precepting or perhaps looking to make a change, right? There's some great opportunities to have peers review your CV, letter of intent, etc. Dr. Sean Kane 15:40 And like all of the other organizations, ACCP also has their own journal, and this one is called pharmacotherapy, and that would be the Journal of the ACCP. Dr. Khyati Patel 15:48 So moving on to another bigger organization is AACP, which is the American Association of Colleges of pharmacy. This is where the academics of pharmacy is housed, and rightly so, they're committed to advanced pharmacy education and scholarship. Dr. Sean Kane 16:05 So this is not to be confused with a CCP. This is AACP, where we're focusing on basically pharmacy education, as opposed to kind of clinical pharmacy and things like that. Dr. Khyati Patel 16:16 So when we look at the breadth of AACP's scope: 142 ACPE‑accredited schools, about 6,400 faculty, ~62,500 students in professional programs, and about 5,100 graduate students. Speaker 1 16:35 what's interesting about this particular organization is the institution holds a membership, but as individual faculty member, we also can hold that individual membership and take advantage of the opportunities and benefits. Dr. Khyati Patel 16:50 And you practitioners, if you're in academia, you get that first year membership for free. All you need is the Dean's letter. Dr. Sean Kane 16:57 So really, just like all of the other organizations, we see an annual meeting. They also have interim meetings, which many of the other organizations also have, and also special AACP institutes. Are you guys familiar with that? Speaker 1 17:08 Well, I am, because I actually just attended one on health and wellness for students and faculty. My role in student affairs, you know, would have a special interest in that, and it was great because it was specialized. It was just with folks who had that interest, hearing from subject matter experts, and I was able to take back a lot of great ideas to bring back to my school this upcoming academic year. Dr. Sean Kane 17:31 I think that's actually a really good example of the kinds of CE or content that you might expect. So from a CCP, for example, you might have a CE on you know, what's new or different in treating chronic heart failure, whereas with AACP, you might have a CE on how to give better test questions, or how to be a better lecturer, or how to support students, Dr. Khyati Patel 17:52 or how to be a good preceptor, you know, or deal with special situations. So it makes sense that Dr. Sean Kane 17:57 different organizations are going to have programming based on whatever that organization specializes in. Dr. Khyati Patel 18:03 So continuing the trend of having a major journal publication, AACP also has their own journal called AJPE (American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education). We also have Academic Pharmacy Now online magazine, webinars, and live CEs. They have special interest groups. They have consoles of faculty, deans and sections, and they also have certain scholarship opportunities for both students and faculty. One example is their Walmart Scholars Program. Right? Speaker 1 18:30 The Walmart Scholars Program is an opportunity for students who have an interest, perhaps, in going into academia to partner and apply with a member of their faculty for this program and attend their meeting and learn behind the scenes as a student what it what's it like to be a faculty and what kind of opportunities are available. Dr. Sean Kane 18:51 Moving on to our next organization, AMCP (Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy) represents pharmacists involved in managed care. So this is going to be anyone involved in PBM, insurance companies, things like that, Dr. Khyati Patel 19:06 and we're looking at about 8,000 members that serve about 270 million Americans. Speaker 1 19:12 that's the key. I think that's the key there. Dr. Patel, it's a smaller organization, but when we think about it, managed care impacts so many patients. It has a small membership that impacts such a large number, two 70 million. Dr. Khyati Patel 19:24 And then when we're looking at what the actual goal of this organization is, to increase patient access to affordable medicine, improving health outcomes. So they're really focused on outcomes research as well as ensuring wise use of healthcare dollars. So they put out a lot of cost effective and cost utility analysis and tell us whether this so and so treatment is actually worthwhile in using or not Speaker 1 19:48 similar to the others, there are student chapter organizations, available competitions for students, and I know even at my school, we do not have a student group of this particular organization. Station, amcp, but I reach out to the listserv and find members who might want to come to campus and talk with my students. So that's something to keep in mind for those of you who want to learn more, even if you're not a member yet, you can sure reach out and learn. Dr. Khyati Patel 20:15 Yeah, their P&T competitions tend to be very interesting. These are pharmacy and therapeutics (P&T) competitions — the format (originating at UIC College of Pharmacy) became a national contest, and I learned a lot from competing. You kind of just get a new drug that's developed, and you basically get to read the entire dossier from the pharmaceutical company. Dr. Sean Kane 20:42 I actually want to just emphasize for a second the value of these competitions. I also I didn't do the P and T competition, but I did do the clinical skills competition, and I really valued that experience dramatically. It really changed my perspective on how to study for pharmacy school, the importance of it. It gave me this motivating factor beyond grades that really made me a better pharmacy student and later pharmacist. So I love the fact that so many of these organizations have these competitions that get students out of grade mode and put their perspective in a different venue that probably is really helpful for their growth as students and later practitioners. Speaker 1 21:19 I would absolutely say that students who are listening participate in one of the competitions, even if you're thinking, no, no, I'm not going to win. That's not for me. It is for you, because it does give you an opportunity to put your education into practice. It also gives you an opportunity to work on a team in many of these and we know that working as a pharmacist is a collaborative opportunity, so it's a great opportunity, Dr. Sean Kane 21:43 and amcp is involved in accrediting managed care residencies and internships. Again, that accreditation process is really important to make sure that you have consistent quality of these programs through the accreditation body. In this case, amcp, Dr. Khyati Patel 21:58 they do also have their own journal, Journal of managed care and specialty pharmacy. Their daily dose is their newsletters, they have webinars in live CE. So again, when it comes to benefits to member it's very similar to some of other organizations we talked about. What's a little different is they put out a guide to pharmaceutical payment methods. So this talks at breadth about, you know, what do you see in red books? You know the acquisition cost and what, what the usual and customary cost, and really, what are the costs to and how to bill for your clinical pharmacy services too. So those who are kind of thinking about establishing a business or a clinical service, they can utilize this guide as well. Dr. Sean Kane 22:37 The next organization is AAPS (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists). It primarily serves pharmaceutical scientists, including students pursuing MS/PhD programs. Dr. Khyati Patel 22:51 And if you look at who's actually the member body of this organization is, they're all scientists. They're dedicated to the discovery, development and manufacturing process of pharmaceutical products and therapies and things like that. So it's very scientific and R and D in nature. Speaker 1 23:07 And as you might guess, the opportunities that they have really are around scientific programming, ongoing education related to that research or science opportunity gets again, for networking and professional development related to pharmaceutical scientist interest. You know, another thing is, I just was wrapping up around AAPs, what a great opportunity for our pharmaceutical scientists through this organization to share and exchange knowledge on an international front, because we know drug development is an international topic, and so this is a great forum and place for for that to occur. Now the Dr. Sean Kane 23:45 Next organization is ASCP — the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists. It was founded in 1969. And really this organization is focusing on health outcomes for older adults, so more of that geriatric patient population Dr. Khyati Patel 24:02 and so focusing on that. They also provide study material for those who are sitting on board certification for geriatric pharmacy. They also have job finder on their website. And just like all the other organizations, they have their own journal called the senior care pharmacist journal. They have their online resource centers for those who are caring for the special patient populations, and their live and webinar ces are available too. Dr. Sean Kane 24:28 So despite the name of American Society of consultant pharmacists, as we mentioned, this is definitely a focus more on that geriatric patient population. Dr. Khyati Patel 24:37 And a couple last bigger organization we have to discuss are focused in the community practice. We have ncpa, which is national community pharmacist Association. We're looking at them representing about 23,000 independent pharmacies. So again, they're community pharmacies, but they're more focused on the independent pharmacies and their pharmacy owners, managers and employees. Now. Speaker 1 25:00 Absolutely great resource. It really is the go to if you're an independent pharmacy owner. And again, great networking, annual meeting opportunities, opportunities to learn new products, new marketing, new business ideas and so forth. Dr. Sean Kane 25:14 And then we also have NACDS (National Association of Chain Drug Stores), founded in 1933 — it represents major retail chain pharmacies and suppliers. This is going to include, you know, your typical corner drug store type programs, as well as the suppliers of those programs, right? Speaker 1 25:35 The other thing that I would point out is, we're talking about NACDs, ncpa, those also provide great lobbying opportunities, partnership opportunities for a unified voice, a unified message on pharmacy topics, with a PHA that we talked about earlier this session, as well as a SHP. Dr. Sean Kane 25:56 You know, as we mentioned as the disclaimer at the beginning, we can't cover every organization out there, just to briefly mention a couple specific organizations that certain pharmacists or pharmacy students may eventually be involved in. For me, Society of Critical Care Medicine, SCCM. This is a an interprofessional organization focused only on critical care that includes nurses, physicians, pharmacists, things like that. So any critical care people would definitely have heard of SCCM. Speaker 1 26:21 We have HOPA — the Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association. I think the name pretty much speaks for itself. Dr. Sean Kane 26:30 And you know, a student may be involved in Hopa if, let's say they did research as a student and they presented a poster, if that was an oncology hematology topic, they might go to Hopa and present that poster at the HOPA conference. Dr. Khyati Patel 26:43 And our beloved Dr. Schuman is not here, but otherwise he would love to talk about this. The next organization is college of psychiatric and neurologic pharmacists, cpnp, obviously, as the name says, you know, it kind of revolves around all the psycho, psychiatric and neurologic issues and concerns. There's a Speaker 1 27:03 pediatric pharmacy advocacy group as well, PPAG. Dr. Sean Kane 27:07 Then we also have the Society of infectious disease pharmacists, sidp, Dr. Khyati Patel 27:11 and we talked about AAPS (pharmaceutical scientists). We also have IPhO (Industry Pharmacists Organization) for those interested in industry careers. This really connects the pharmacist and pharmacy students who are interested in industry opportunities. Dr. Sean Kane 27:27 So really, those focused a lot on interest groups, right? So if you're interested in hospital pharmacy, clinical pharmacy, managed care, chain drug stores, we have tons of organizations focusing on those. We also have student organizations, and really alumni organizations as well, that focus just on being a pharmacy student, exactly. Speaker 1 27:47 And those professional pharmacy fraternities, as Dr. Kane mentioned are, are usually you join as a student member, and then that membership continues your whole lifetime as a pharmacist, and you can continue to network, have meetings at annual conferences, regional conferences, connect with students. A couple that come to mind are Phi Delta Chi, Kappa Psi, Rho Pi Phi, and Kappa Epsilon — there are others as well. Dr. Khyati Patel 28:20 Yep, actually there are three or four others. It depends on, you know, what college of pharmacy you get involved in? There were some. Some of these were established very old pharmacy schools, such as Philadelphia, College of Pharmacy, or, you know, Iowa, College of Pharmacy. In a nutshell, these are the larger ones that we see. We do have some honorary pharmacy societies, as we mentioned earlier, Rho Chi is our academic honors pharmacy fraternity or society or and then we have Phi Lambda Sigma (PLS), which recognizes leadership. These are all national organizations we talked about. We cannot emphasize the importance of state pharmacy organizations. Obviously, per individual state, there might be one or two out there. For Illinois, we have the Illinois Pharmacists Association (IPHA), as well as ICHP (Illinois Council of Health‑System Pharmacists). For Wisconsin, we have the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin — students should consider getting involved at the state level. You know, if you're afraid of going to those meetings where there's, you know, 1000s of people, maybe going to state meetings might be a better step in the right direction. And state organizations are going to be those venues that would give you the opportunity. So we listed all these organizations, and there's just so many to select from, but what it really boils down to is kind of weighing out the pros and the cons. So Dean Winnike, if a student approaches you, how would you guide them in the right direction? What are the pros of joining? Speaker 1 29:49 Well, I hope you've been able to tell from the podcast today that networking is one of the largest pros, or reasons to join and staying connected with your peers. Is important throughout your professional career, and it gives you the opportunity to learn, helps others learn from you. And for me, it's just a way to realize I'm not out there alone in the issues that you might be dealing with on a day to day basis. It's an opportunity to stay up to date. How many journals, CES, webinars, etc, did you hear us talk about today, and what I love is it's the menu of your choice you get to do the ones that you want to do. The leadership opportunities are great. We try to get students who are leaders on campus to stay leaders in our profession, and we need leaders in our profession. And these are some opportunities to kind of put your feet in and say, Yes, I like that, whether it's through your special interest group or a task force or something like that, and then you can continue down that path if you'd like. The opportunities for research and scholarship, especially for those of us that are in an academic setting or have that interest, is available as well. Dr. Sean Kane 30:59 In terms of some downsides, we just went through many different organizations, and if you joined all of them, you would lose a lot of money, because they're not expensive on their own. But as you accumulate multiple different organizations in terms of being a member, it's going to cost you hundreds of dollars to do that. So time and cost are the two main factors that you have to consider and probably be selective about what you want to devote your time, energy and money to, given that there's a lot of different options. Dr. Khyati Patel 31:29 And I think the one liner that I use for my student advisees is that you can rip the benefit by, you know, basically what you saw. So if you want a lot out of the organization, it's up to you how much, and you know, how involved, what depth you want to involve yourself in, because the opportunities are endless. But if you want to just become a member and then attend their once yearly meeting and just kind of complete your CE requirements, you can keep your involvement just to that level, too. I think the other Speaker 1 31:57 thing tying into to the cost, you do have to keep in mind that there is a cost affiliated with each and for me, one of the larger organizations I've been a member of, really since I was a student, and some years I've been more active than others, but for me, it's just a way of making sure I'm providing some financial support to that organization to help protect my profession and make Sure the voice of our profession is being heard as legislation is being considered, voted on, etc. So that's another way that I think of that membership again, even if I choose not to be real active here and there throughout my career, it's what I do for my profession. Dr. Khyati Patel 32:37 So continuing with the pros and cons, Dean Winnike, I do have a question: how do we direct students who are presented with all these organizations? How should they weigh it out? Speaker 1 32:49 Of course? Well, I tell them, Don't over commit as a student. And if they're not sure what they want to do or which organization to join, consider joining a broad one, especially as a student, because there are so many varied opportunities within those organizations to kind of feel out their interests, and that's a great way. I don't want a student to get over committed, either it might impact their academics. And if you're over committed, you're probably not developing any real leadership skills, friendships, networks, etc, that you would be if you were committed to one or maybe two organizations, Dr. Khyati Patel 33:22 and I think that's a great answer to those who are seeking those stronger leadership positions. But the problem is not only what to select because there are so many out there, but the problem is representation. There's so many different pharmacy organization. If I'm looking at other healthcare professionals, they maybe have one or two, exception of medical society. But are we divided as we stand, or are we united as we stand? Right? Speaker 1 33:47 Well, that's a great question. You could probably Google it and get some hot editorials on that for our profession. But you know, I think from my personal opinion, in theory, one organization, you know, with the power of the Most members and the most opportunities to promote our profession would be ideal, especially as we think about lobbying and impacting legislation which we need to move our profession forward. However, with that said, as we've gone through so many strong national organizations that we currently have, I think they do a good job of working together at a national level on initiatives that can make a difference, and so they do come to the appropriate parties as a united front, but it's still confusing to the average Joe. The average Joe knows what the medical professional society is, but the average Joe in our society, if you asked who represents pharmacy or pharmacists, they're not going to know. And I think some of that is because we have so many different national organizations representing the profession. Dr. Sean Kane 34:52 So Dean winickie, you know, you mentioned what students can do or how they a student should approach this. What about that new graduate, someone who just graduated? It ready to start their pharmacy career. What opportunities do they have? Right? Speaker 1 35:04 Because sometimes they're like, 'oh my gosh, what do I do now?' — they knew what to do as a student, but then what? And then you have seasoned practitioners who are in the groove and they know what to do. What I love about opportunities for new student grads is there are some new grad membership opportunities. So if you were active in an organization, or even if you weren't, but you thought it sounded good join as a new grad, because the fees are usually less. The organizations recognize that you have student loans, moving expenses, etc, and that gives you, right away an opportunity to interact with online or at meetings however you choose folks that are like you in terms of being in practice for, typically five years or less. So those new practitioner networks are awesome. Dr. Sean Kane 35:46 So that wraps up episode 99 quite well. Dean Winnike, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. We really appreciate it. We're available at HelixTalk.com this is episode 99 we'll have links to basically all of these organizations. So within the alphabet soup. If you're kind of confused where to go, you're welcome to click on any of those links to kind of follow to the websites of those organizations. And we're also on Twitter at HelixTalk, if you want to get some clinical pearls from previous episodes, those are available and released regularly as well. So with that, I'm Dr. Kane, Dr. Khyati Patel 36:17 and I'm Dr. Patel, and I'm Janeen Winnike — and at the end, I'm not going to say 'study hard.' I'm going to say: lead, organize, participate, super hard. Narrator - Dr. Abel 36:27 If you enjoyed the show, please help us climb the iTunes rankings for medical podcasts by giving us a five star review in the iTunes Store. Search for HelixTalk and place your review there Narrator - ? 36:38 to suggest an episode or contact us or online at HelixTalk.com thank you for listening to this episode of HelixTalk. This is an educational production copyright Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.