Anastasiya Shor, PharmD, BCPS

Narrator: Welcome to We’re Your Pharmacist, a new monthly podcast featuring ASHP members and colleagues sharing their stories and discussing the essential contributions pharmacists make as part of the patient care team.

Ashley Boedecker: Hello everyone, and welcome to We’re Your Pharmacist, where we sit down with pharmacists and other healthcare team members to share stories of the incredible impact pharmacists have on patient care. I’m Ashley Boedecker, Director of Member Relations at ASHP, and today I’m joined by Anastasiya Shor, Director of the Drug Information Center and Assistant Professor at Touro College of Pharmacy. Anastasiya, thanks so much for joining us today.

Anastasiya Shor: Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here today and share my story.

Ashley Boedecker: Excellent. We’ll start with your story. Can you share a little bit about your background and your current role?

Anastasiya Shor: Definitely. So I’m currently working as a drug information director in an academic college of pharmacy. I didn’t always used to work here. My background is quite varied and I’ve done a little bit of everything, which is, I think, how I found my passion for drug information. So I worked in a health economics startup. I’ve worked as a community pharmacist both in the corporate and independent pharmacy. I’ve also worked as an investigational pharmacist, which I think gave me a really nice opportunity to see the behind the scenes. As pharmacists, we always read clinical trials and depend on what the clinical trials are saying, but when you actually understand. what is going on, I think it gives a much bigger and richer perspective and gives a lot more insight into the literature. And through all these different positions, I really found that my greatest passion was looking stuff up, to put it lightly. There’s a lot of current information that is constantly changing. And my favorite part about my job right now is that I’m able to really stay on the forefront of medicine and really make sure that I’m reading the newest literature, analyzing it critically, and trying to condense it and communicate it to other healthcare professionals. So not just pharmacists, but also nurses, doctors who may have questions about how to integrate this information into their daily practice.

Ashley Boedecker: Thanks for sharing that background. You mentioned you’ve done a little bit of everything. So from your perspective, why are pharmacists essential members of the patient care team?

Anastasiya Shor: So. The pharmacists to me are like the last line of defense. By the time the prescription makes it to us, there has been many eyes on it. There’s been the patient has been seen, but we have access to the patient chart and we have in the hospital, we review the labs, we look at the different drug drug interactions to make sure that all the medications are okay to take together, that the dose meets the diagnosis, and we’re really making sure that the medication that gets into the patient’s hand is administered to the correct person at the correct dose, and we are there to make sure that the patients are safe. I think that’s really our essential role is patient safety. Because if we do have questions, we have no problem. stopping what we’re doing and calling our providers to confirm that we are aligned and that we’re on the same page. And if there are, for example, things like drug shortages where our physicians or our nurse practitioners would like to give a particular product, maybe it’s not in stock, these are calls that we make as well because they may not be aware that this is happening. So we’re happy to provide evidence based recommendations as to what other products are out there, recommend a different product if there is a drug drug interaction, or maybe let them know, hey, the patient looks like they’ve picked this up a few days ago. So maybe we need to double check that the patient is actually taking the medication before we proceed with this additional refill. So there’s a lot of work that we do on the phone, which I think is why we’re almost always on the phone. We’re always calling, double checking, verifying. And I think that is the essential function that we provide.

Ashley Boedecker: You mentioned in the beginning that the pharmacist is really that last line of defense, and that’s not always recognized by the patient. What’s one more thing you wish people understood about the role of the pharmacist that might surprise them like that?

Anastasiya Shor: Yeah, I think this is something that is extremely relevant to me and my role as a drug info pharmacist. But truly, every pharmacist is a drug information pharmacist. We all receive training on how to find the information and how to think about what we see. So the one thing that is not so clearly visible, I think to our patients is how much thinking. are doing. We may look like we are just standing there, but I’m telling you, those gears are turning. We’re looking at all the aspects of the patient profile, the patient history. We’re thinking about the information that we read recently for our continuing education. We’re always current, right? We want to make sure that we’re practicing the most current guidelines. So there’s a lot of thinking that happens, and I think that it’s not something that is as easily observable as, let’s say, administering a flu shot or performing a physical exam, which by the way, we also can do in many of the different settings. But this particular position, because we’re at the computer, we’re looking at all these things, this is something that may be very surprising to people, how much actual sleuthing and detective work and decision making is really happening here. And specifically with drug information, I think this is so important because when we get these calls from our receptors, our physicians, nurses, other pharmacists, they’re looking to make sure that, again, patients are safe and they’re looking to make sure that they’re doing the right thing. So they may call us and say, hey, I heard you have access to this clinical database. that we’re not able to source, is this something you can double check for me? I want to understand what is the most recent guideline update, like what’s the top line summary of things that are actionable that I need to know? So I guess I’m adding a second part to this particular question is the communication aspect of it because we’re constantly communicating with each other. with our other healthcare professionals, with our patients, and we all serve as a drug information resource for our family and friends as well. So how we are communicating, whether it’s print, we’re sending an official letter, or we’re chatting informally, or somebody texts us and says, hey, can you look this up for me? What do I do in this situation? We’re always communicating. So that part is almost as important as the critical thinking, because if you don’t communicate in a way that the other person understands, then that’s not really working, which is why I think that’s another really, really important skill that we have, translating that information into something usable for whoever we’re speaking with.

Ashley Boedecker: I like how you created the image we aren’t just standing there. We are thinking and our gears are always turning. Building on that, why is pharmacy an exciting career choice for students considering the healthcare field?

Anastasiya Shor: I think as pharmacists, we are a really valuable member of the healthcare community. And my favorite part about being a pharmacist is the intricate knowledge of all the different drugs. I think of pharmacy as almost potion making. And we are able to make sure that the medications suit our patients needs. Sometimes that means selecting the right dosage form or the right medication, and sometimes it’s actually preparing the medication for that particular specific patient, maybe in terms of a suppository or an IV bag or even a lollipop for our pediatric patients. So I think the versatility of the career is kind of a really big attractive point. I think advanced practice is also something that is constantly emerging. There’s a lot of opportunities to specialize. So if somebody has a passion for a particular field, maybe they wanna work with patients in a clinic, they can pursue things like ambulatory therapy. Maybe they want to help out at the patient’s floor. Maybe they will go into hospital pharmacy and round with the team every single morning to really follow up on those patients, make sure they’re getting their best care. Drug information. As I said, every pharmacist is a drug information pharmacist because we all get this kind of training to keep current with our information, to look up information and distill it. But whatever you decide to do as a student, there’s so many things to try. And even if somebody decides, maybe this particular type of pharmacy is not something I’m as interested in. I think there is a place for everyone and it’s a matter of just getting in there, trying it out and finding your niche.

Ashley Boedecker: Thanks for bringing the role of the drug information pharmacist to the forefront today, as well as sharing it’s a role really all pharmacists play. That is all the time we have today. I want to thank Anastasiya for her time and And thank our listeners for joining us on the Were Your Pharmacist podcast series. We hope today’s conversation gave you a new perspective on the invaluable role of pharmacists. Don’t forget to subscribe and tune in for our next episode, where we will continue to explore the many ways pharmacists make a difference. Until then, visit yourpharmacist.org to share your own story and read more about the critical role of pharmacists on the patient care team.

Narrator: Thank you for listening. Be sure to visit yourpharmacist.org to learn more about how pharmacists provide essential patient care. For more podcasts from ASHP, visit ashp.org/podcast. If you love the episode and want to hear more, be sure to subscribe, rate or leave a review.