Ohio State College of Pharmacy and Wexner Medical Center collaborate to establish two new faculty positions
The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy and Wexner Medical Center (OSUWMC) collaborated to establish two new faculty positions that will split funding and time between the college and medical center, taking care of patients and teaching students and residents about critical care pharmacy.
Victoria Williams, PharmD, BCCCP, assistant professor – clinical of the college’s Division for Pharmacy Practice and Science, started in July and Casey May, PharmD, BCCCP, FNCS, associate professor – clinical of the Division of Pharmacy Practice and Science, started in November.
The two positions highlight progress made in the college’s strategic priorities and efforts to enhance collaboration with the Wexner Medical Center.
“The college and medical center have made incredible progress over the past few years in expanding opportunities to collaborate,” said Bella Mehta, PharmD, FAPhA, professor and chair of the Division of Pharmacy Practice and Science at the college. “We have more experiential rotations at OSUWMC than ever; we have groups of faculty and practitioners working between the department of pharmacy and Division of Pharmacy Practice and Science on our division strategic plan and actionable collaborative steps. Together, we are fostering synergies in the training of our students and residents and facilitating Ohio State to be seen as a leader at the forefront of pharmacy practice. Additionally, adding these two new shared inpatient faculty practitioner positions is exciting as it has been nearly 20 years since we have had an inpatient college-based faculty practitioner.”
At OSUWMC, Drs. May and Williams have direct patient care responsibilities in the neurointensive care unit and the medical intensive care unit, respectively. While caring for patients they will also work with their critical care colleagues to create and modify institution guidelines, train residents, conduct research and precept pharmacy students on experiential rotations.
“We are excited about this opportunity to collaborate with the College of Pharmacy as the primary practice site for the two critical care faculty positions,” said Amanda Hafford, PharmD, MS, associate director of pharmacy for University Hospital. “Having practitioners who are also faculty at the college will help to bridge the gap between didactic and experiential learning and be a resource to our clinical specialist team. I look forward to working with the college and hopefully growing the number of acute care shared faculty positions in the future.”
In addition to being active in inpatient care, Drs. Williams and May will bring expertise into the college’s curriculum. Both faculty members will teach within integrated pharmacotherapy (IP) courses including IP4, a class offered in the spring semester for P3 students that provides content on critical care medicine, and coordinate and teach a critical care pharmacy elective.
Dr. May is originally from Honaker, Virginia, and obtained her undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Virginia. She graduated with her PharmD from the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy and completed her PGY1 pharmacy residency and PGY2 Critical Care specialty residency at University of Kentucky Healthcare.
“The newly formed Division of Pharmacy Practice and Science had a key goal of identifying how to better collaborate and integrate with OSUWMC,” Dr. Mehta said. “Joint task forces and early listening sessions found a gap in the number of faculty practicing in the acute care space at the college. Leadership teams from the college and OSUWMC worked together to create a proposal and successfully develop these new positions. We are delighted to welcome Drs. May and Williams into these roles and to the team.”