Josh: All right, and welcome back to Beyond the Herd. Today's guest is Dr. Brian Wilson. He is a member of the graduating class of 2023. So thank you for joining us today, Brian. and we'll just jump right into it. So give us just kind of a daily rundown of what your job is like, what you've been doing since you left HUCOP and just what a typical day looks like for you.
Brian Wilson: Yeah, so since I left HUCOP pretty much my time was pretty busy and kind of a little bit all over the place. So I graduated in 2023, like you said, completed a PGY one pharmacy residency program over at Baptist Health in North Little Rock, Arkansas, then went on to do a PGY two pharmacy informatics at Cleveland Clinic. and so now I practice as an informatics pharmacist by training. I work for St. Luke's Health System over in Boise, Idaho, where my job title is an applications analyst, where I leverage technology to support the medication use process for both inpatient and outpatient workflows. Typical day for me varies, but the general cadence of it would involve reviewing, prioritizing, and completing my assigned service requests that I receive, working on projects that I'm assigned, reviewing and answering emails, and attending meetings, a bunch of meetings. Across various topics. The bulk of my work pretty much revolves around creating or adjusting medication records that are used within our electronic health record or EHR. This could be anything from limiting or expanding the doses, routes, or frequencies that are available for medication, you know, ensuring medications are prepared correctly by pharmacy technicians, displaying instructions to those technicians to help them prepare medications. And also ensuring nursing staff is administering those medications appropriately by providing them with some details that's medication specific. Creating or updating an order set that's used to guide the clinician order and process, ensuring clinicians can only place orders for what is available at their site from an inventory perspective, creating alerts and other forms of clinical decision support, and performing data and analytics in our EHR. All in all, I collaborate with pharmacists, physicians, nurses, as well as other IT teams to ensure technology supports patient care.
Josh: So thinking about your current role and your path so far in pharmacy, what is one thing that you didn't necessarily expect to love, but you ended up being like, I really love this.
Brian Wilson: Yeah, I would probably say presentations. it's kind of funny just because like I've never been one to really like to get in front of a crowd and do any type of public speaking. even in undergrad, like I took public speaking, you know, it was like a required class if you take in your undergraduate studies and I took it online. And I just remember like having to record myself like presenting on a certain topic and submitting it for a grade, you know, and I was just like, What did I just do? And then like getting in the pharmacy school, you know, I came in in twenty nineteen and then basically we had the pandemic in twenty twenty. so there's a lot of like virtual meetings, virtual presentations done in that time. And lo and behold, you know, I end up moving into a IT team where basically all of our meetings are through a virtual platform and I'm giving virtual presentations. And so it's just kind of been one of those things where like as it's built up in number over time, like I've really come to love it, but that was not something I expected initially. So Yeah, I'll say that.
Josh: Hmm. Yeah. Speaking in front of people is always a a fun time, that's for sure. thinking about your time at Harding, can you remember any specific professor or mentor or rotation that you had that really helped shape your career trajectory to what it is today?
Brian Wilson: Yeah. just going into the pharmacy informatics space, you know, that's not necessarily something that's in the curriculum. many schools don't really have that. so it was definitely at the point of my APPE rotations, so is where I was able to really, you know, get more insight into what the role was and what that could look like. I would probably say my longitudinal APPE rotations, which I do have to shout out Doctor Story for that. you know, she was responsible for helping Coordinating all of our rotations and I'd happy to be able to apply and get accepted to be one of the students to do the longitudinal APPE. This was at Baptist Health in North Little Rock, Arkansas, where I also did my PGY1 residency. I really wanted to shout out that program as well, just because I think it's a hidden gem of a program to be able to be a part of. But basically that longitudinal rotation, it allowed me to one get exposure to the electronic health record. from an end user standpoint. So how does pharmacists how do pharmacist actually interact with this system? and then also being able to see it on the back end in terms of how do we we configure the system for our pharmacists and other caregivers to be able to provide picture care. So I would definitely say that was the biggest turning point for my career tri trajectory.
Josh: Fantastic. So if you could go back in time to when you were a first year pharmacy student and give yourself
Brian Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Josh: one piece of advice, what would that advice be?
Brian Wilson: Yeah, for me I think it would be just getting more exposure to different areas of pharmacy as early as you can. for me I came into pharmacy school with a retail pharmacy background. I worked as a technician for about five to six years before I got into pharmacy school. And even when I as a P one, P two, I stayed within that same retail company. And basically now that I work as a pharmacist in the informatic space, I do have some of that knowledge of working as an outpatient pharmacy technician where that benefits me in my role because we also like I mentioned before, we support the outpatient pharmacies that are integrated within our health system. but I do find there are some times where working as an inpatient pharmacist definitely has its has its benefit into my role, but There are some things where I feel like working as a technician or as a pharmacy intern, really getting into the workflows of how things are being dispensed, how the medication use process is being handled, you know, by the boots on the ground, which are most of the times are pharmacy technicians and interns, I think that really would have helped propel me a little bit more in my role. So that's definitely some advice I would give my young people and so forth.
Josh: going and kind of thinking about the future of pharmacy education and the pharmacy workforce, is there one skill or some type of mindset shift that you think the next generation of pharmacists need to develop before they graduate?
Brian Wilson: Yeah. I would say having an adaptable mindset would be the best thing, just because everything is changing, whether it's technology related or just practice related in general. like you see, pharmacy technicians are moving up into a more involved role, which allows pharmacists to be able to expand their role. So a lot of times You know, you come in as a P1 and you sometimes have a good idea of what area of pharmacy you want to go into, but by the time you hit that P4 year and by the time you take the NAPLEX and are actually start being able to apply for these roles, the the way that you came in with as a as a P1 is vastly gonna change just because of the ongoing changes that are happening within pharmacy. so I think just having an adaptable mindset, just being able to, you know, consider different options. being able to pivot while you're in a role into something different, continuing to to, you know, try to advance and grow as a professional is definitely something to consider for sure.
Josh: all excellent things to consider for sure. So now a few little fun little questions for you. when you were at Harding, what was your go-to caffeine source or a study snack that you used to help you get through those long nights of studying?
Brian Wilson: Yeah. NOS energy drinks was my go to for those late nights. You know, I think I don't even think they had them. Like I'm just remembering being, you know, in the in the Farrar building and it was like you had the NOS energy drinks that were in like downstairs and then you had the ones that was on the nursing side. And I'll always travel to the nursing side just to give myself a mental break, you know, just give up have a little walk. And I just remember, you know, I only use those in very specific situations. If I knew I had to like really prank out some material, I would take one of those now with energy drinks because even by the time you took one, like you probably aren't gonna go to sleep for a long time. So, you know, that was my go to for nights that I really needed.
Josh: And what is one common myth about being a pharmacist that you just love to bust?
Brian Wilson: Yeah. is that we just count pills all day. You know, I think that is the main thing and it kind of goes back to having that adaptable mindset, you know, like yes, like pills are involved in the mostly of the outpatient space, but not every pharmacy works in the outpatient space. And even those that do aren't really the ones that's counting the pills. It's mostly the pharmacy technicians that are doing that. The pharmacies are the ones that's providing that clinical review, making sure the pills that are in there are the correct ones, you know, making sure there's not anything additional. making sure that these pills are actually appropriate for this patient. and even then, you know, the technicians aren't really even counting as much as they used to, just because they are there's automation that's coming into it. You have a lot of dispensing robots that's like pre-packaging all of these things, that's counting out the pills, putting them in the bottles, topping it and s and s shipping it out to the technicians to be able to just apply the label. Some of them even apply the label for you. So I I love when you know I tell someone that I have a pharmacist and they're just talking about counting pills. And I'm like, that is that's definitely not what I do. I haven't touched the field in in years, honestly. So
Josh: Exactly. Yeah. That's something that I see all the time when students come in to interview or whatever, like all they think about is, you know, working at Walgreens or Walmart and counting pills and I'm like, there's so much more
Brian Wilson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Josh: you can do with a pharmacy education.
Brian Wilson: Yes, for sure.
Josh: And then lastly, if you weren't a pharmacist right now, what completely different career path would you be pursuing?
Brian Wilson: I would be a traveling musician. You know, I I grew up in high school. I played in the band, I was a drummer. I played drums at church, part of the choir, you know, that was that was my thing for a long period time. I ended up kind of moving away from it just 'cause the way my, you know, life just went. But if if I had to go in a different direction I would definitely be packing up drums and being on the road and going to play different things. I love that.
Josh: Well thank you so much, Doctor Brian Wilson for your time and I appreciate everything that you've said today and how it's gonna impact hopefully a future generation of pharmacists and we can't wait to to get this out there so that people can hear what you had to say.
Brian Wilson: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Brian Wilson: Yeah, so since I left HUCOP pretty much my time was pretty busy and kind of a little bit all over the place. So I graduated in 2023, like you said, completed a PGY one pharmacy residency program over at Baptist Health in North Little Rock, Arkansas, then went on to do a PGY two pharmacy informatics at Cleveland Clinic. and so now I practice as an informatics pharmacist by training. I work for St. Luke's Health System over in Boise, Idaho, where my job title is an applications analyst, where I leverage technology to support the medication use process for both inpatient and outpatient workflows. Typical day for me varies, but the general cadence of it would involve reviewing, prioritizing, and completing my assigned service requests that I receive, working on projects that I'm assigned, reviewing and answering emails, and attending meetings, a bunch of meetings. Across various topics. The bulk of my work pretty much revolves around creating or adjusting medication records that are used within our electronic health record or EHR. This could be anything from limiting or expanding the doses, routes, or frequencies that are available for medication, you know, ensuring medications are prepared correctly by pharmacy technicians, displaying instructions to those technicians to help them prepare medications. And also ensuring nursing staff is administering those medications appropriately by providing them with some details that's medication specific. Creating or updating an order set that's used to guide the clinician order and process, ensuring clinicians can only place orders for what is available at their site from an inventory perspective, creating alerts and other forms of clinical decision support, and performing data and analytics in our EHR. All in all, I collaborate with pharmacists, physicians, nurses, as well as other IT teams to ensure technology supports patient care.
Josh: So thinking about your current role and your path so far in pharmacy, what is one thing that you didn't necessarily expect to love, but you ended up being like, I really love this.
Brian Wilson: Yeah, I would probably say presentations. it's kind of funny just because like I've never been one to really like to get in front of a crowd and do any type of public speaking. even in undergrad, like I took public speaking, you know, it was like a required class if you take in your undergraduate studies and I took it online. And I just remember like having to record myself like presenting on a certain topic and submitting it for a grade, you know, and I was just like, What did I just do? And then like getting in the pharmacy school, you know, I came in in twenty nineteen and then basically we had the pandemic in twenty twenty. so there's a lot of like virtual meetings, virtual presentations done in that time. And lo and behold, you know, I end up moving into a IT team where basically all of our meetings are through a virtual platform and I'm giving virtual presentations. And so it's just kind of been one of those things where like as it's built up in number over time, like I've really come to love it, but that was not something I expected initially. So Yeah, I'll say that.
Josh: Hmm. Yeah. Speaking in front of people is always a a fun time, that's for sure. thinking about your time at Harding, can you remember any specific professor or mentor or rotation that you had that really helped shape your career trajectory to what it is today?
Brian Wilson: Yeah. just going into the pharmacy informatics space, you know, that's not necessarily something that's in the curriculum. many schools don't really have that. so it was definitely at the point of my APPE rotations, so is where I was able to really, you know, get more insight into what the role was and what that could look like. I would probably say my longitudinal APPE rotations, which I do have to shout out Doctor Story for that. you know, she was responsible for helping Coordinating all of our rotations and I'd happy to be able to apply and get accepted to be one of the students to do the longitudinal APPE. This was at Baptist Health in North Little Rock, Arkansas, where I also did my PGY1 residency. I really wanted to shout out that program as well, just because I think it's a hidden gem of a program to be able to be a part of. But basically that longitudinal rotation, it allowed me to one get exposure to the electronic health record. from an end user standpoint. So how does pharmacists how do pharmacist actually interact with this system? and then also being able to see it on the back end in terms of how do we we configure the system for our pharmacists and other caregivers to be able to provide picture care. So I would definitely say that was the biggest turning point for my career tri trajectory.
Josh: Fantastic. So if you could go back in time to when you were a first year pharmacy student and give yourself
Brian Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Josh: one piece of advice, what would that advice be?
Brian Wilson: Yeah, for me I think it would be just getting more exposure to different areas of pharmacy as early as you can. for me I came into pharmacy school with a retail pharmacy background. I worked as a technician for about five to six years before I got into pharmacy school. And even when I as a P one, P two, I stayed within that same retail company. And basically now that I work as a pharmacist in the informatic space, I do have some of that knowledge of working as an outpatient pharmacy technician where that benefits me in my role because we also like I mentioned before, we support the outpatient pharmacies that are integrated within our health system. but I do find there are some times where working as an inpatient pharmacist definitely has its has its benefit into my role, but There are some things where I feel like working as a technician or as a pharmacy intern, really getting into the workflows of how things are being dispensed, how the medication use process is being handled, you know, by the boots on the ground, which are most of the times are pharmacy technicians and interns, I think that really would have helped propel me a little bit more in my role. So that's definitely some advice I would give my young people and so forth.
Josh: going and kind of thinking about the future of pharmacy education and the pharmacy workforce, is there one skill or some type of mindset shift that you think the next generation of pharmacists need to develop before they graduate?
Brian Wilson: Yeah. I would say having an adaptable mindset would be the best thing, just because everything is changing, whether it's technology related or just practice related in general. like you see, pharmacy technicians are moving up into a more involved role, which allows pharmacists to be able to expand their role. So a lot of times You know, you come in as a P1 and you sometimes have a good idea of what area of pharmacy you want to go into, but by the time you hit that P4 year and by the time you take the NAPLEX and are actually start being able to apply for these roles, the the way that you came in with as a as a P1 is vastly gonna change just because of the ongoing changes that are happening within pharmacy. so I think just having an adaptable mindset, just being able to, you know, consider different options. being able to pivot while you're in a role into something different, continuing to to, you know, try to advance and grow as a professional is definitely something to consider for sure.
Josh: all excellent things to consider for sure. So now a few little fun little questions for you. when you were at Harding, what was your go-to caffeine source or a study snack that you used to help you get through those long nights of studying?
Brian Wilson: Yeah. NOS energy drinks was my go to for those late nights. You know, I think I don't even think they had them. Like I'm just remembering being, you know, in the in the Farrar building and it was like you had the NOS energy drinks that were in like downstairs and then you had the ones that was on the nursing side. And I'll always travel to the nursing side just to give myself a mental break, you know, just give up have a little walk. And I just remember, you know, I only use those in very specific situations. If I knew I had to like really prank out some material, I would take one of those now with energy drinks because even by the time you took one, like you probably aren't gonna go to sleep for a long time. So, you know, that was my go to for nights that I really needed.
Josh: And what is one common myth about being a pharmacist that you just love to bust?
Brian Wilson: Yeah. is that we just count pills all day. You know, I think that is the main thing and it kind of goes back to having that adaptable mindset, you know, like yes, like pills are involved in the mostly of the outpatient space, but not every pharmacy works in the outpatient space. And even those that do aren't really the ones that's counting the pills. It's mostly the pharmacy technicians that are doing that. The pharmacies are the ones that's providing that clinical review, making sure the pills that are in there are the correct ones, you know, making sure there's not anything additional. making sure that these pills are actually appropriate for this patient. and even then, you know, the technicians aren't really even counting as much as they used to, just because they are there's automation that's coming into it. You have a lot of dispensing robots that's like pre-packaging all of these things, that's counting out the pills, putting them in the bottles, topping it and s and s shipping it out to the technicians to be able to just apply the label. Some of them even apply the label for you. So I I love when you know I tell someone that I have a pharmacist and they're just talking about counting pills. And I'm like, that is that's definitely not what I do. I haven't touched the field in in years, honestly. So
Josh: Exactly. Yeah. That's something that I see all the time when students come in to interview or whatever, like all they think about is, you know, working at Walgreens or Walmart and counting pills and I'm like, there's so much more
Brian Wilson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Josh: you can do with a pharmacy education.
Brian Wilson: Yes, for sure.
Josh: And then lastly, if you weren't a pharmacist right now, what completely different career path would you be pursuing?
Brian Wilson: I would be a traveling musician. You know, I I grew up in high school. I played in the band, I was a drummer. I played drums at church, part of the choir, you know, that was that was my thing for a long period time. I ended up kind of moving away from it just 'cause the way my, you know, life just went. But if if I had to go in a different direction I would definitely be packing up drums and being on the road and going to play different things. I love that.
Josh: Well thank you so much, Doctor Brian Wilson for your time and I appreciate everything that you've said today and how it's gonna impact hopefully a future generation of pharmacists and we can't wait to to get this out there so that people can hear what you had to say.
Brian Wilson: Yeah, thanks for having me.
