We’re all breathing a sigh of relief in the hospital’s pharmacy residency program and celebrating the high praise we just received from outside surveyors.
 
Back in April, Community had a two-day re-accreditation site visit by the American Society of Health

Tamar Lawful, past resident and current Transitions of Care Pharmacist; Kailee Shearer, past resident who participated in the ASHP accreditation survey and current Clinical Pharmacist; Curtis Takemoto, a Medication Safety specialist; and Laurie Wright, past resident who participated in the accreditation survey and current Pediatric Clinical Pharmacist.

System Pharmacists (ASHP), which is the national organization that accredits Pharmacy Residency Programs.  At Community Regional Medical Center, we have a post graduate year one (PGY1) Pharmacy Residency Program that started in 2002. 
 
This is our third on-site visit, and it was still nerve-wracking! 
 
The survey involved many different areas and people, from the CEO, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technicians and residents.  The goal is to ensure that our hospital and residency program is providing an organized and excellent site for residency training. Having this residency program helps bring much-needed pharmacists to the Valley and helps introduce the Valley to pharmacists from outside our area – with the hopes they may establish themselves here and continue to provide care for Valley families.
 
There are over 160 components to the ASHP accreditation standards being surveyed, and there are four categories of findings:
 1. Full compliance
 2. Partial compliance
 3. Non-Compliance
 4. Consultative Recommendations 

We are surveyed based on scoring from 0-100%; they look towards 100% on best practice versus the minimum compliance standard used on other surveys. It is typical to have 20-30 citations. The surveyors stated that this was one of the best reports that they have done in the past several years and that we are doing a great job! I am proud to report we have NO areas of non-compliance and only eight areas of partial compliance, which means the other 160 components were at full compliance of those high standards.
 
The survey was presented to the Commission on Credentialing in August 2016 and I am happy to report that we received six years of accreditation (the maximum amount of time)!!  
It truly takes a team to ensure our program runs well and I want to acknowledge and thank our exceptional preceptors who dedicate their time to training future generations of pharmacists in patient care.  I am very proud of our team and look forward to the next six years.

Alice Robbins, PharmD, BCPS
Professional Development Manager & PGY1 Pharmacy Residency Director
Community Regional Medical Center