What one can do.® The Nation's Premier Hospice PBM and Pharmacy
As a pediatric neurology pharmacist, my role is to ensure safe and accurate use of medications. For patients with seizures, this includes addition of a rescue medication for prevention of status epilepticus (SE). Despite the fact that intranasal midazolam is evidence-based, inexpensive, accessible, and well-tolerated, it’s an underutilized option in all clinical settings, including hospice and palliative care.
Just like Oscar the cat can identify and comfort patients who are near death, it seems that another unusual suspect has a keen sense for helping humans who are approaching the end of life. Peyo (affectionately nicknamed “Dr. Peyo”) is a 15-year-old former show stallion that literally roams the halls of the palliative care center of Calais Hospital in northern France. His trainer, Hassen Bouchakour, could tell early on that he was special. According to Bouchakour, Peyo is not usually an attention seeker, but always seemed to approach those who were likely emotionally, physically, or psychologically vulnerable and would act in an especially gentle and protective manner.
It’s inherently difficult to create a seal on bleeding tissue, since it’s a wet environment and blood is a liquid made up of many different cells – the blood (and cells) needs to be moved out of the area for a tight seal to be made. To combat this issue, clever researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found inspiration in nature from a creature that has no problem with adhesion in a wet environments – barnacles.
Earlier this year in June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new Alzheimer disease (AD) drug for the first time since 2003.1 Biogen’s Aduhelm (aducanumab) is a monoclonal antibody infusion that’s administered every 4 weeks and targets amyloid beta plaque aggregates in the brain – an underlying cause of AD.2,3 Aduhelm is currently labeled only for treatment of AD patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia (the patient population studied in clinical trials).4 It’s not indicated for patients with more severe disease or other types of dementia since these patients weren’t studied and there’s no safety or efficacy data available.3,4
We hope you were able to join the March and April presentations from our 2021 clinical webinar series, Budget Busters – Best Practices with NOACs, Insulins, and COPD Drugs in Hospice. Throughout the webinar, our Senior Clinical Pharmacist, Melissa Corak presented pearls and practical strategies to promote cost avoidance in circumstances where hospices would otherwise be on the hook for paying for these often high cost medications. If you didn’t have the opportunity to tune-in (or want a refresher), the webinar can still be viewed on-demand on OneConnectPoint under the Clinical Resources tab.
Our “Together as One” series spotlights nurses, physicians, pharmacists and others who positively impact the lives of hospice patients and their families every day. Through the dedicated and compassionate work of these inspiring professionals, patients receive the high-quality care and attentive consideration they deserve. Together with innovative and responsive hospice partners, they create the network of support so essential to hospice care. We invite you to meet the people behind the mission—and see what one can do.
My cousin graduated pharmacy school back in the early 2000’s and told me about her job and how at the time there was a large shortage of pharmacists. As a 14 year old, job security sounded pretty good to me and I already knew I wanted to do something in the medical field.
ACE-inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) are mainstays of heart failure treatment. But, if you have heart failure patients on your census, it might seem like more of them are taking sacubitril/valsartan (marketed as Entresto) – a sign that providers are keeping up with the 2021 update to the American College of Cardiology’s (ACC) heart failure guidelines.1 The latest recommendation is to use Entresto over ACEIs/ARBs in most cases, even as initial therapy, due to demonstrated reductions in death, hospitalizations, improved cardiac function and reversed cardiac remodeling.
Our “Together as One” series spotlights nurses, physicians, pharmacists and others who positively impact the lives of hospice patients and their families every day. Through the dedicated and compassionate work of these inspiring professionals, patients receive the high-quality care and attentive consideration they deserve. Together with innovative and responsive hospice partners, they create the network of support so essential to hospice care. We invite you to meet the people behind the mission—and see what one can do.
After college, I started working as a pharmacy clerk to test the waters. Prior to that, I wasn’t sure if pharmacy was a path that I wanted to pursue. After working at my first pharmacy job, I quickly learned that I enjoy interacting with and helping people from different paths of life—customers, doctors, nurses, and of course, fellow colleagues.
Hydroxyzine is a first generation histamine (H1) antagonist that’s been on the market since the 1950’s.1 Its mechanisms of action are unique. Not only does it compete with histamine for H1 receptor sites in the GI tract, blood vessels, and respiratory tract, but it also it exhibits activity at muscarinic, serotonergic, and dopaminergic receptors in various parts of the brain, which may explain its anxiolytic effect.2 Hydroxyzine is available in two different salt forms, hydroxyzine hydrochloride (HCl) (commonly known as Atarax) and hydroxyzine pamoate (commonly known as Vistaril).
Our “Together as One” series spotlights nurses, physicians, pharmacists and others who positively impact the lives of hospice patients and their families every day. Through the dedicated and compassionate work of these inspiring professionals, patients receive the high-quality care and attentive consideration they deserve. Together with innovative and responsive hospice partners, they create the network of support so essential to hospice care. We invite you to meet the people behind the mission—and see what one can do.
My passion to help others and desire to become a pharmacist during my childhood, along with having the opportunity to work in a hospital throughout my high school years, all played a huge role in me becoming interested in healthcare and pharmacy.
With my educational background being in Human Resources, my...