Pharmacy students inducted into national honor society

Audience members stopped their personal video feeds to allow inductees into the Phi Lambda Sigma (PLS) honor society to shine on screen during a virtual induction ceremony held May 6.

“Phi Lambda Sigma, as many may be aware, is the pharmacy organization that recognizes outstanding leadership,” said master of ceremonies Leon Cosler, associate professor of health outcomes and administrative services and faculty advisor to the newest PLS chapter — the Epsilon Iota Chapter. “Membership is well recognized among the pharmacy academy and profession as a whole.”

The 17 inductees were selected by a committee of administrators and faculty as having merited this special recognition, Cosler added. Moving forward, the chapter’s student officers will formulate the process to welcome members into their ranks in subsequent years.

Following a welcome from Brandon Jennings, the national treasurer of PLS and also a past president of the organization, Sarah Spinler, chair and professor of pharmacy practice at Binghamton, addressed the inductees.

“I can speak for all of the faculty when I say we are so proud of all of you and your accomplishments to date,” she said. “This induction honors your efforts.”

Spinler urged the students to carry their enthusiasm and talents with them as they move through their careers, “not only through participation and leadership in local, state and perhaps national professional organizations, but individually being creative to bring innovative care to patients.”

Pharmacy, especially in New York state, is on the verge of another breakthrough, she said, as she recalled when she was a student more than 30 years ago. “The only ambulatory care practice really was anticoagulation. And there was no point-of-care testing for even INRs [international normalised ratio, a laboratory measurement],” she said. “There was no MTM [medication therapy management], no community pharmacy residencies and no such thing as a PGY2 [post-graduate year 2 residency]. Look how far pharmacy has come. It is because of individuals like yourself, pushing practice.”

Spinler, who chose academia as a career path, wanted to train the next generation of pharmacists. In this role, she said, she had to think ahead. “What will practice be like and how can we make you prepared to take the lead?” In 1997, she was teaching a cardiovascular therapeutics course that included skills labs just as today’s courses do.

She recalled that a company had developed a device [Cholestech] that could be used to perform a point-of-care fingerstick complete lipid panel. “I said to myself, ‘What a great role for pharmacists.’ Let’s train our students.”

However, she was discouraged from teaching it by the long-time course coordinator, who told her that community pharmacists would never be involved with patient care at that level.

Luckily, it didn’t stop Spinler. “I designed a lab to teach the students how to do it and to practice counseling patients about the results according to something call the National Cholesterol Education Program, which was the first national lipid management guideline,” she said. “The course coordinator spoke to the students telling them they would never use the information they were learning. It didn’t deter me.

“Flash forward in time — Cholestech became a (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments) CLIA-waived device and in 2011, Walgreens pharmacists were testing patients.”

Spinler added that one of her then-students completed a residency before specializing in lipid management, becoming one of the first pharmacists to be board certified in lipid management through the National Lipid Association (NLA). “He also became the first pharmacist to serve on a lipid guideline writing panel,” she said.

So her final message to inductees: “Don’t undervalue your ideas or underestimate your ability to change practice.”

Following Spinler’s remarks, Shannel Gaillard, a Class of 2020 PharmD candidate at the Medical University of South Carolina and a 2019-2020 PLS national member-at-large, led the inductees in reciting their oath to promise to uphold the standards of PLS to work for the advancement of pharmacy through leadership and service and to practice the duties of their profession with dignity, knowledge, ethics and a genuine concern for the well-being of those they serve.

Though the new members would normally have been pinned by Gaillard, they instead pinned themselves, before the officers were sworn in.

“Congratulations and welcome!” Gaillard said. “I’m always excited to recognize pharmacy leaders from across the country. You have shown drive and will to continue to as a leader. I challenge you to look at today as a new start on your leadership journey. Our profession and the world are in need of leaders.”