Daniel Good, MS, RPh, FASHP, and Meagan Good, PharmD

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 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. Today I’m joined by Daniel Good, Vice President of Pharmacy Services at Mercy Springfield in Missouri, and Megan Good, who will start her new role at Parkland Hospital Dallas as the Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in Pain and Palliative Care. Thank you both for joining us today. Megan, let’s start with you. What healthcare professions were you considering when you joined HOSA?

Meagan Good: Yeah, when I first got into HOSA, I was like, oh, I’m gonna go in the medical field. That’s what I’m gonna do. I had always thought, you know, veterinary medicine would be an interesting way. So I did a little bit with veterinary medicine, competed a year or two in that within the HOSA field. And then also was thinking, you know, radiology might be really interesting, you know, looking at the imaging and diagnosis with that. I also looked into nursing and what it would look like to do nursing, blood draws, things like that. And then eventually did shadow a pharmacist in an oncology pharmacy through the shadowing program and fell in love. And I was like, all right, we’re done here. I’m going to go to pharmacy school, I think. And so ended up going that route and moved some of my competitions more in that angle as well as like just medication-based competitions.

Ashley Boedecker: What HOSA resources did you use to further explore the pharmacy career path?

Meagan Good: A lot of what HOSA offered was like after school activities that allowed us to have exposure to different healthcare fields or healthcare activities. So our HOSA chapter would bring in guest speakers from across the city. We had a local affiliation with another organization who brought in dummies and like mannequins and taught us phlebotomy on those as well as taught us BLS and CPR certifications. And so got my BLS certification pretty early on and then was able to recertify through them. And then the other thing that was really kind of fun with them is PPE, like personal protective equipment. A lot of people hear about it and see it a lot in the construction industry, you know, on the side, like do not enter without proper PPE. But this organization brought in all the supplies and taught us, you know, the proper donning and doffing of those different things from gowns to gloves to hairnets to booties. And so that was really interesting to see and then to get it to relate back into the shadowing experiences.

Ashley Boedecker: Did you start as a technician? And if yes, how did that experience help you become a pharmacist?

Meagan Good: I began my pharmacy technician career once I was a freshman in college. So I didn’t necessarily do it in high school, but being a pharmacy technician really helped me to see and learn the communication aspect between patients and providers as well as between a pharmacy technician and a pharmacist. But sounding really kind of nerdy is like the biggest thing I probably learned was like brand names to generic names because you do it all the time. I was in a community setting and so patients would come up all the time and give you a brand name and you’re like, well, what about, wait, hold on. And so you convert it to that generic name. And so that really allowed me to learn that a lot better.

Ashley Boedecker: What skills or activities in high school helped you to be most prepared for pharmacy school?

Meagan Good: I was the chemistry nerd for sure. I took all of the like chemistry classes that were offered. I took like the AP chemistry classes and so focused a lot on chemistry and pharmacy definitely is very heavily chemistry focused and especially in the undergrad. And then as you’re starting your like therapeutics courses, it really is more chemistry focused. And so that was definitely something that really helped me with my pharmacy career. But then through HOSA, I had the leadership opportunity. And so with the leadership opportunity, that allowed me to get more communication skills, learning how to communicate with people who are above me or have higher paying positions and things like that when it came to getting donations, things such as that. And so the leadership opportunity was really valuable.

Ashley Boedecker: What was pharmacy school like and do you have any advice for those entering soon?

Meagan Good: Yeah, pharmacy school was definitely like challenging, but it’s very rewarding because as you progress through school, you start to have more and more patient interaction and you start to see just how much of an impact a pharmacist can make for a patient or even within a provider who’s like, I don’t know how to help this patient and you’re able to figure out the payment or coverage of medication or a different medication. But then also during pharmacy school, I continued shadowing to really determine exactly where in pharmacy I wanted to go. And so the shadowing opportunities that I continued to have, and I would highly encourage anybody going into pharmacy school to continue shadowing. Just so you can continue to learn more about the field and really determine where you may want to be. Because what you want to do when you go into pharmacy school won’t be the same thing you end up doing when you graduate. The other thing that’s really nice in pharmacy school was the hands-on simulations that we were able to have. So we used arms to learn blood pressure. We used each other for immunizations and learning how to immunize. We had demo inhalers and having that hands-on learning experience is so valuable in the pharmacy. so that you can specifically show a patient, here’s how to use your inhaler and you actually know how to use it because you’ve got to practice with it in pharmacy school. So when I think about the piece of advice for pharmacy students, I really think about telling students that don’t be afraid to ask for help. Just because you’re now in college doesn’t mean that people don’t care about you or anything like that. Your professors want to see you succeed. So don’t be afraid to ask for help or ask for additional clarification or ask to meet up with them after class because they want to help you succeed and they will find different ways to teach you something that makes sense to you. I had so many professors that would take that extra time and it really makes a difference. So that’s probably one of my biggest pieces of advice for them.

Ashley Boedecker: And what was your residency experience like? And if you have any advice for those considering a residency?

Meagan Good: Yeah, residency is a great opportunity to kind of have a built-in support system to kind of help you mentor and learn how to be a pharmacist in the real world. In school, you have somebody who you’re running all your recommendations by, and as you become a licensed pharmacist, you’re the one making those decisions. But the residency allows you to kind of have that crutch. If you have a question, you have somebody you can reach out to. But the other opportunity that residency really provides is that you get to do research, you get to do MUEs or a medication use evaluation and really get to see all the new drugs that are coming through. I’ve been able to review multiple new drugs that have hit the market in the last year just to see what the literature is and add to that and see that kind of thing.

Ashley Boedecker: Daniel, let’s transition to you. Tell us about your experience supporting the local HOSA high school chapter.

Daniel Good: Well, honestly, as a pharmacist at the hospital, I didn’t even know it was HOSA, right? It was just high school students coming in to be shadowing and doing something right. But what we soon learned, and that’s where we learned from it, was by having my daughter in the program, what was the pros and cons? And it wasn’t good enough just to come in and tour through the pharmacy with 12 people, right? We had to create some kind of an experience for them. not like you can let them handle drugs. They can’t mix chemo. But we could gown them up in full garb like they’re going to go in the clean room. We could have them make hair gel. We’d have them make hand lotion and things like that so that, yeah, that isn’t classic pharmacy work. But it’s something that they’re going to remember. When they get home, they’re going to say, well, what did you do at school today, Megan? Well, I made hair gel at Mercy Hospital, right? But the other side of it is a tour piece about what do the pharmacists do when they’re there? What are they doing besides those kind of simple tasks, right? What are they doing interacting with nurses? What are they doing with physicians? What are they doing with each other to do research and stuff like that? So that’s what we learned from her experience. We got to step up our game. We got to give them a lot better experience so that they see it as something they might want to do. And for our purposes, we had two things in mind. One is we were trying to recruit pharmacy technicians right out of high school, right? And then two, we’re trying to recruit people that want to go on and be pharmacists. So we have to kind of keep that in mind is meet the student where they’re at and what is it that we can appeal to make it happen.

Ashley Boedecker: A lot of students are interested in STEM programs, but don’t always consider pharmacy as a career path. What connection can you make between those interests and pharmacy opportunities?

Daniel Good: I think that is important when the HOSA students come in and the idea from the high school teachers, right, is that we just want to expose them to STEM. We want to give them an opportunity, right? And there’s other programs in the high schools to go see manufacturing, to go do legal and do other things, right? Marketing and sales as well, but from the standpoint, from the hospital standpoint, how do we tie our skill set back to what they’re trying to learn in biology and chemistry and how those things tie together, which is very important. So that’s why I think it’s important when they come through, we don’t just tour and talk, we give them something physically to do so they can actually tie that back, say, there is some kind of physical activity here with this. Plus I get to use my cognitive brain, right? I don’t have to be one that’s just counting important kind of things. There’s other things to happen there. So we try to make that connection for them. So when people say, well, do you use algebra when you’re an adult? Well, yeah, matter of fact, we do use algebra when you’re an adult. So that kind of stuff. I’d like to tell them the story of my father also because for the best, several years, right, many years. We’ve lived separate from my parents who are up in the state of Washington and we’re in Missouri now. But every time I’d go home, my father would ask, well, have you been a real pharmacist lately? And so I would take up the practice of going down into the pharmacy and signing off on a take home script of Moxicillin or going in the IV room and signing off on a IV bag or something. Just so I’d say, as a matter of fact, I just filled some etenolol for a patient on Thursday. So try to tie that back together so they understand what the real value is.

Ashley Boedecker: Pharmacy can be a difficult career path to understand if you don’t have a friend or family member in the profession? How can parents learn more about the pharmacy profession?

Daniel Good: Oh, this is a great question because we’re just coming out of Thanksgiving, right? And all those families were gathered and grandma was asking the high school student, well, what are you thinking about doing, studying when you graduate from high school, right? Maybe you’ll consider pharmacy or health profession or whatnot, right? And so that’s what we’re trying to get after is get to that point where parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles are saying, hey, have you considered healthcare? Within healthcare, have you considered pharmacy? Because it is something that has a direct impact on patients. It takes advantage of your cognitive intelligence, right, and your ability to make reasoning and make decisions, but it also takes advantage of your human skills to be able to interact with others and communicate and make things happen. So that’s kind of a unique aspect that makes it good. So it’s not unilateral. There’s a pretty broad aspect to it and a lot of variety within the pharmacy community practice or home infusion or nuclear or industry, there’s all kinds of opportunities to go that direction. So for us, I think in the hospital pharmacy world, we are learning to take advantage of how do we expose the students to that? And when Megan went through the HOSA program, we didn’t have the ability to hire high school students into the pharmacy. In the state of Missouri, you can work as young as 16 years old. So what we created was a pharmacy technician in training that didn’t require to be certified, but they just have to be registered with the state. And then they were in a kind of a apprentice program where they could actually learn from another technician they’re working side by side with. They could be in the pharmacy, they actually handle medications and stuff like that, which then will give them the experience to move forward. Now they may choose, no, I don’t really like this, I’ll move on someplace else, but at least it gives them real life experience at a younger age. And I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment for us to actually get into the high schools to do that.

Ashley Boedecker: You’re currently a pharmacy leader. What did your career path look like to get there?

Daniel Good: Yeah, I did the pharmacy school program. I did a two plus three because I’m old, right? But then at the end of that program, it was our chair of pharmacy practice at the University of Washington, Bill Campbell. He was one that encouraged me, you want to go on and do a residency, but if you’re going to do a residency, you probably ought to do a two-year residency and get a master’s degree along with it, right? So it was his encouragement that says, go off to the Midwest and learn it and then bring it back to us, right? went off to Kansas and did the master’s residency program with Harold Godwin and Sarah White, which was really a life-changing, career-changing kind of experience for me. And I told my mom on the way to the airport is it’s only two years. Oh, look at that in two years, right? And so at the end of those two years, mid-year, literally interviewing for jobs, right? I ended up taking a job in Dallas, Texas at Parkland Hospital, which was a great opportunity because they were just, They were literally growing. And people aren’t going to believe this on the podcast, right? That at that time at Parkland Hospital, they weren’t doing unit dose medications. They were sending bottles of medications to the floor. They were sending vials of IVs up to the floor. And the nurses were handling it all. So at that time, when I showed up there with Susan Ruiz and Chris Hatwig, we actually expanded the pharmacy to do unit dose. We put in Pyxis machines. We put in an IV room. We were mixing things up. As a matter of fact, that’s how I met my wife was she was a critical care nurse up on the floor. And can I go here? Can I tell this story? You are welcome to. I was downstairs handling the IV room and my friend Chris Hatwig, now he’s president of Pexis, he had upstairs the whole decentralized services, right? And he comes to me, says, hey, I got a problem with one of these nurse managers up on the medical ICU. She won’t use your IVs. What are you talking about? We’re making up these unit-dose IVs. This is the latest and greatest. It’s contemporary practice, right? So he says, come on upstairs and help me talk to her, right? So Chris and I show up in her doorway of the little five-foot-four nurse manager from Medical ICU, and Chris and I, you know, six-foot-four plus, right? Say, okay, what’s the deal here? And the problem was, we were fluid overloading our patients that we were putting them into 100 or 250 milliliter bags, right, with antibiotics, and those are not surgical patients that are oozing and bleeding out these are medical patients that are really having trouble breathing and fluid overloaded already, so from that. we went back and retooled and said, okay, we need to start putting things in syringes so that we can actually have the right fluid volume for her patient. So long story short, a few months later, we were on a double date with Chris and his wife in the back of a Ford Bronco going to see Brooks and Don at a concert, and then we end up getting married. So that’s kind of the story of how my wife and I met. But after that, my career choices weren’t so much based on title or money. And I see a lot of title stuff in the current marketplace, right? Because I had lots of folks coming to me asking, employers saying, come be a director here, come do this here, come do a long confusion, blah, blah, blah. And my approach was The next step for my career was what am I going to learn from that? What’s going to prepare? Because I really did think that I’m going to be in charge one day, right? So I need to be prepared to do that. So I need to be able to gather that skill set to get there. So that’s how I made my choices when I left Parkland to go to the University of Washington Harborview in Seattle was because of the leadership there and the opportunity there to have a broader base of exposure, what I need to do. And then when I left Harborview to go to Baylor, again, it was going to be an associate director of pharmacy, not the director. a big university teaching hospital with a lot of opportunity there to have exposure to not just technicians and pharmacists, but residents and the teaching component as well for that. And it’s at that point at Baylor that they came calling from one of their small community hospitals and said, hey, you need to come out here and be director. No, I’m not going to be a director at a small community hospital. You guys don’t have your hair on fire going 1000 miles an hour, right? And that’s where it was really Garrison, one of the directors and former president of ASHP, that really told me, he says, you don’t have to be a hair on fire at a university teaching hospital to make a difference in patient care, right? So I go out to this non-24-hour operation that’s like 60 beds, and over the course of five years, we grew it into 300 beds, 24-7, 24-7. open heart surgery, the whole thing. So that’s the kind of thing that I thought was exciting was we’ll have the opportunity to take those different skill sets, combine them together, and be patient enough to get to the point where you actually can make a difference when you get there. So you don’t feel like you’re flailing.

Ashley Boedecker: Well, that’s all the time we have today. And I want to thank Daniel and Megan for their time and thank our listeners for joining us on the We’re 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 that 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.