Compounding Matters Quarterly - Spring 2015

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PERSONALITY OF PERSONALIZED CARE: LOREN MADDEN KIRK by Scot Maitland Photo by Melea Kirk Welcome back to another edition of The Personality of Personalized Care. This issue we reached out to one of our student members of IACP, Loren Madden Kirk. Loren is a pharmacy student at East Tennessee State University, and I met him several years ago at IACP’s Compounders on Capitol Hill when he was interning for PCAB. I caught up with Loren right before the APhA trade show in San Diego. Scot Maitland: Loren, I have the benefit of not just being a colleague of yours, but your friend too. So I know that you’re more than just a pharmacy student. You posted a photo on Facebook, which started this conversation, can you tell our readers about the photograph? Loren Madden Kirk: So, I’ve ridden horses competitively in multiple different disciplines since I was seven. When I would try and escape pharmacy school or try and get pharmacy school off my mind, I would go out to the barn, and I wouldn’t be able to necessary escape that. I wouldn’t be able to forget about my to-do list. Or all of the things that I needed to study before an exam. Even on horseback, when I used to be able to be able to experience was the escape. Where I didn’t have to think about anything except me and the horse and what was going on underneath me. And what was going on with the horse, how fast they were going, how slow they were going, what they were looking at. But like I said, it has now become autopilot. I’m no longer focused on the horse. I was focused on what I was supposed to be 18 Spring 2015 | IACPRx.org/Publications
doing instead of what I was doing right then and there on the back of a horse. So my solution to that was to try something new. So I had a break here, for spring break, and I the coach of the North Carolina Polo Team. And asked him if I could have a few lessons. And he offered a spot, and I went out and I took my first two polo lessons. Polo is, in my mind, attractive for two reasons. It’s something new; I hadn’t tried it before. And two it adds the element, a completely different element, that you’re hitting a ball from atop a horse, which is unique to any other horse discipline. There’re not many other ways of riding that involves hitting a ball into a goal from the top of a horse. SM: I think it’s brilliant that you took something that you love, but was becoming stale for you and mixed it up. You found a new way revitalize it. I know our readers can take a lot from that because pharmacy can get that way. It can become monotonous, compounding in the lab or behind the counter. Even doing patient consults can become tedious, and you can lose your passion for it. I think one of the great things about pharmacy today is the variety it offers. As I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, I met you when you were interning for PCAB and Compounders on Capitol Hill. What other things have you been up to as part of your student career? LMK: Since my time at the Pharmacy Compounding Accreditation Board, I’ve begun to focus on the broader aspects of pharmacy. I’ve worked primarily with the American Pharmacist Association’s Academy of Student Pharmacists. At this point, I am three weeks away from finishing my year-long term as the APhA-ASP Speaker of the House*. In that role, I am one of the five student pharmacists that represent over 34,000 student pharmacists across the country. It’s an honor and a privilege and quite a heavy responsibility to be able to represent those individuals and be a facilitator of all the policy and advocacy actives that APhA offers to student pharmacists. I kind of got started within the policy and advocacy realm when my chapter at East Tennessee University in Johnson City Tennessee began to approach collaborative practice within Tennessee. And how the state’s pharmacy practice act did not include provisions for pharmacists to be able to collaborate with other health care providers. So my school began to take that on as a larger issue. And I got involved with that, and it rolled on from there to where I became very interested and enjoyed the policy and advocacy side of pharmacy. And from then on I pursued a regional position with APhA-ASP and then finally was elected last year to the APhA-ASP Speaker of the House position. SM: So what’s the next step? LMK: Well that is a very good question Scot. At this point, my next step is to graduate. It has always been the constant pursuit, but I have a lot of unique experiences, that I’m very excited about planned for my fourth and final year as a student pharmacist, in that rotation year, so I’m quite, excited to hone in on those experiences and make sure I get the most out of those over the next year. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be involved extracurricular with both riding as well as APhA-ASP. I’ll likely seek a few more positions and see where I can be helpful to student pharmacists in facilitating their policy and advocacy actives as well as empowering them to get involved within the profession. SM: So, one final question for you, what would you say to fellow student pharmacists out there who might be struggling with their course load and trying to be active and having a personal life? LMK: I would have to say that the one piece of advice is to learn to prioritize. There are times when an example is the priority. There are times when finishing a compounding lecture or finishing reviewing a lecture for a quiz, and that’s the priority. There are times when working with a group member, in order to complete an assignment for class, is the priority. There are also times when you are the priority. When you’ve been studying all night, and ultimately you are the priority at the end of the night whenever you need to get rest and go into the exam fresh. So learning those priorities is going to be able to allow you to strike a balance within life and by no means have I found the balance. And by no means have I not struggled with finding that balance. But the designation of priorities is what has allowed me to find some degree of success as I’ve worked through finding that balance within life. *Publisher’s note: at the time of the interview, Loren was still serving as the Speaker of the House for APhA-ASP. Scot Maitland is the publisher of IACP’s two publications Compounding Matters Quarterly and Pharmacy Marketing Quarterly and host of our new IACPodcast. He coordinates with other IACP Communications staff to promote the visibility of IACP and the IACP Foundation. SIMPLE. ACCURATE. RELIABLE. • The most USP/ PCAB compliant pump • UVA and UVB protection above USP standards • 5 bottle sizes and 4 interchangeable dosing options • The most accurate and consistent dosing • Mention you attended CCH15 to receive free shipping on first order www.topipump.com / 877-323-3376 IACPRx.org/Publications | Spring 2015 19
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Page 3 and 4: IACP STAFF David G. Miller, R.Ph. C
Page 5 and 6: Preserve Your Access to Customized
Page 7 and 8: pharmacy because it will enable you
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Page 15 and 16: THE MOU: A PHARMACIST’S PERSPECTI
Page 20 and 21: IACP FOUNDATION HISTORY by Lisa D.
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Compounding Matters Quarterly - Spring 2015

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