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The News
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Become a Pharmacist Volunteer!
Whether you volunteer locally or in a foreign country, using your pharmacy knowledge can make a huge impact in the life of someone else. Volunteers are proud ambassadors of goodwill, not only to the patients themselves, but also to their families, communities, and homelands. Volunteers are eager to return again and again to provide life-changing help for children and adults, each service transforming into a labor of love. I’ve tried to put together a number of opportunities for pharmacist volunteers, both locally and in foreign countries. Each opportunity offers a fantastic experience. The following are opportunities I am familiar with and would highly recommend. There are many other chances to help others. If you know of an organization that could use help, please post on CSHP website. Flying Horse Farms: http://www.flyinghorsefarms.org/Volunteer
Flying Horse Farms is a camp for children with serious illnesses. They provide magical, transforming and fun camp experiences and serve many disease groups. Located just outside Mt. Gilead, Ohio, Flying Horse Farms is where children with serious illnesses come to experience the magic of camp. For a week at a time, being sick takes a backseat to simply being a kid. And fun is priority number one.
They could us volunteers on arrival days to check in camper medications and departure days to check out camper medications of our Residential Sessions. Here’s a list of dates: - July 7th – 10th – Transplant Camp
- July 17th - July 23rd – Heart
- July 31st - August 6th – Hematology/Oncology
- August 14th - August 20th – Hematology/Oncology
- October 28th - October 30th – Alumni Camp In addition to using clinical skills on arrival/departure days, I’d love to have them as counselors/activity leaders. Basically, it’s entirely up to the volunteers; I place them in positions they are interested in. Operation Rainbow: http://operationrainbow.org/learn/
A rainbow is a universal sign of hope and a reassuring promise for renewal. The patients they serve have had little or no hope for a better life. The surgical teams restore hope and bring the promise of a better life. This is an orthopedic team traveling to third world countries. This team was fantastic in Haiti, working miracles on the many of their patients.
Now 1,000 volunteers strong, Operation Rainbow continues its mission throughout the world by: - Leading 6-9 humanitarian medical missions each year, which provide much-needed orthopedic intervention for children and young adults suffering from congenital abnormalities or untreated chronic injury
- Training doctors, nurses, and other staff at host hospitals, enhancing their capacity for early diagnosis, treatment, and orthopedic surgical intervention of congenital abnormalities among the vulnerable populations they serve
Medical Missions International: http://www.mmint.org/
MMI is committed to meet the need for medical care among the world's poor with lasting solutions through excellence in medicine, patient care, and health education. We do this by mobilizing volunteers on one and two-week medical projects and by establishing and equipping permanent medical centers. A number of local physicians and pharmacists are part of this team that goes regularly to the Dominican Republic.
MedWish: http://www.medwish.org/ Whether is helping in their huge warehouse in Cleveland or going on a short term mission, MedWish makes a huge difference in peoples’ lives while also helping our environment. To date, MedWish has recovered over 2.2 million pounds of medical surplus from 38 hospitals throughout Northeast Ohio. In 2010 alone, MedWish saved 886,000 pounds of medical supplies from disposal, keeping this valuable solid waste out of our landfills. To imagine what that number looks like in real life, that’s the equivalent of an entire football field stacked 6 feet high with boxes of supplies! Interested in donating your medical supplies to MedWish? This is an easy way to help. Some of our CSHP members have participated in trips like this year’s. The medical brigade for 2011 will take place from August 1st-6th and travel to Carazo, Nicaragua. Free Clinic of Greater Cleveland: http://thefreeclinic.org/
Volunteering is a two-way street. Our outstanding volunteers help us provide critical services to the community, but they also enjoy the opportunity to grow personally and professionally.
MEDICAL CLINIC
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – 9:30am to 3:00pm
Thursday – 11:00am to 3:00pm
• General medical services
• Specialty clinics
• Chronic care – hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and high cholesterol
• Women’s Health Services
•Education and prevention for HIV & STDs
•Family planning services and counseling
• Male & Female STDs, birth control refills
UNTO International: http://www.untoinc.org/
Unto inc. focuses specifically in meeting education, medical, social, and spiritual needs. This is done through: team experiences, child sponsorship, community outreach, medical projects, educational programs and partnerships. As a change in pace, a local group focuses on construction in Dominican Republic. Workers help build schools, water treatment facilities, sidewalks, etc. every February. |
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Greetings CSHP Members! It is hard to believe September is already upon us. I wanted to take this time to welcome you back. We are looking forward to another great year of networking, learning, and advancement of the pharmacy profession. The Ohio Society of Health-System Pharmacists (OSHP) has been quite busy since we last met in May. At the end of June there was a very successful planning session which laid out different tasks for each division to work on this up coming year. A few items on the list were to target new graduate and young pharmacists to join, publish a new OSHP website with uniform local area chapter websites, refine physician consult agreements, and create a position statement regarding criminalization due to medication errors. At each meeting throughout the year we will dedicate time to update members with OSHP news and events. We will do our best to provide a nice variety of meetings this upcoming year. The pharmaceutical companies have started to get accustomed to the PhRMA guidelines. As mentioned last year, these guidelines limit us from being able to provide continuing education (CE) when a sponsor provides a meal in addition to a speaker. Our goal is to provide CE at half the meetings each year and we already have a few CE meetings scheduled. Beginning this year, the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Pharmacy (NEOUCOP) will be sending a student liaison to each CSHP meeting. This student will report the current events and status of the NEOUCOP Student Society of Health-System Pharmacists to our members and will also report information about CSHP and OSHP meetings back to their student group. This should be a great way to connect CSHP with some of the young professionals, which has been a goal of OSHP. I look forward to seeing everyone on September 15th. If you have not had a chance to register, please take a few minutes and sign up via the www.clevshp.org. This month’s meeting provides a great opportunity to give back to our local community. Sincerely, Tim Heimann, PharmD President Cleveland Society of Health System Pharmacists |
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When patients are dying, the simple act of “presence” is offered and often accepted. Just being at the bedside with a patient at a time complex emotions creates an environment of peace. Chaos often precedes this event. Symptoms of pain, nausea and agitation mark some physiological challenges facing the dying patient. It takes work with many disciplines from spiritual care, nursing and pharmacy to establish a care plan that may address these distressing symptoms. The Cleveland Society of Health-System Pharmacists can not just offer “presences” to our parent organizations. We must first establish a strong regional society willing to look critically at ourselves. The Cleveland regional healthcare establishment is a beacon of light in what is often regarded as a despondent geographical area. Our association with innovative, creative and progressive healthcare does not resolve CSHP of providing the same attention to our state and national organizations. Arguably, it creates a higher expectation of our society. In order to meet our expectations and responsibilities, identification of what we want to achieve followed by defining how to make these changes can give insight to our future. I believe three concepts need attention: 1. Clarification of CSHP 2. Participation within CSHP 3. Intervention within CSHP and outside CSHP
Clarification Dr. Farine (Secretary) has taken our Constitution and Bylaws and created a document that is now is available on our website for members to study, reflect and comment on. We must decide the relevance of these documents to the current and future state of our organization. In upcoming meetings, we will have reports from local representatives to OSHP regarding the work that is occurring in the state of Ohio. This will be followed by discussion of issues that face the future of pharmacy and how our region might address these changes. Participation Considerable time has been spent attempting to get the message out that our society is active and willing to participate in future conversations in the state and national arena. We are making small gains in attracting visitors and current members to our monthly meetings. It is my hope that support for CSHP/OSHP/ASHP comes internally from all health-system pharmacies. With encouragement from the Directors of Pharmacy, I believe participation will increase. However, it is our society’s responsibility to convince management of the importance of this organization and how their input will set the direction of pharmacy practice in the future. With the constraint of time, many members would like to help, but do not want to subscribe to being in a leadership role. A unique aspect of pharmacy is the ability to take what you have and create a sound organization. I believe pharmacy has excelled in this area. Just looking at scheduling, many in managment have taken FTE positions and parceled it to two or three PTE. Our society must do this also. Here are a few examples: 1. Submit one article you wrote that can be placed on our website for the education of all 2. Review part of the Constitution or Bylaws and make comments and recommendations 3. Become a “prn” local area representative to OSHP when one of our voted members can not go or attend a conference call 4. Seek out one sponsor for a meeting or our website 5. Review minutes from OSHP and give a short report on their meetings 6. Write a short commentary regarding opinions of where pharmacy needs to move towards and how to make these changes work Interventions By addressing the “clarification and participation” we can, as a society, take our global opinions and comments to OSHP for consideration. By addressing the “clarification and participation” we can establish and move forward as a society locally with the hope to improve our practice. And finally, by addressing the “clarification and participation”, we can, as a society, better serve our patients. How will this occur? This will depend on you! The landscape has been laid, but the building still must be built. With our Constitution and Bylaws, much of the design is in place, although upon review, there may need to be some adaptations. I submit these comments with the excitement and anticipation. CSHP can be the beacon of light to OSHP and ASHP. Although presence is important, let’s help with the preceding chaos.
Respectively submitted, Wayne H. Grant, PharmD, RPh November 11, 2008 Your Career, Our Profession *** Get Involved! |
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Welcome to the new web site of the Cleveland Society of Health System Pharmacists. We know your time is valuable and hope you find the new web pages easy to use and informative. Electronic connectivity will allow members to find information regarding upcoming meetings and CE with ease. With so many important legal and financial issues that affect the practice of pharmacy in the news, we hope the new site provides easy reference to updates that impact your practice. |
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