Clinical Associate Professor, Division of Outcomes and Practice Advancement
Department of Pharmacy Practice
Geriatrics; Geriatrics / Gerontology; Medication Safety; Medication Therapy Management; Pain Education; Pain Management; Palliative Medicine
How do pharmacists participate in the prevention of medication harm in the waning years of life? Answering this question is the focus of my scholarship. Preventing medication induced harm is an ongoing effort. However, even since the inception of the first Beers’ criteria article about Potentially Inappropriate Medications (PIMs) in 1991, evidence continues to demonstrate that elders across all levels of care are still exposed to PIMs at unacceptable rates. To address this, I have focused my research efforts on deprescribing practices at three intersecting areas; 1) patient/care partner 2) provider and 3) system. Our team approach to define and test Collaborative Drug Safety Management (CDSM) implementation is innovative because in addition to traditional outcomes measures, we are including implementation science and examining the human factors, communication and behavioral aspects of the processes involved in deprescribing.
Since 2016 I’ve co-lead and grown our geriatric medication safety research team (Team Alice www.teamalice.org) from a small seed grant into a multi-disciplinary group that is now competitive for large extramural support. The team has been bolstered by trainees including pharmacy and medical students, and graduate students including human factors engineering, social work and anthropology. Their continued development as well as mentoring additional junior investigators is integral to growing our team into a center of excellence. Our publications range from elders and their caregivers relationship to medication management to completing secondary analysis of data sources identifying relationships between PIMs and healthcare costs. Co-authors are largely comprised of various mentees at the student, resident, fellow and post-doctoral levels.