The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, or ASHP, has awarded three University of Florida College of Pharmacy students with an Outstanding Professional Development Project Award for their work with the Student Medication Reconciliation Program. Third-year Pharm.D. students Christina Chang, William Chmely and Christopher Gale received the award at the 2020 ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting, Dec. 6-10.
The three students are chairs of the Student Society of Health-System Pharmacists, or SSHP, program that helps provide quality medication reconciliations for high-risk patients at UF Health Shands Hospital.
The program, which ran from August 12, 2019 to March 13, 2020, allowed student pharmacists to review how patients take their medications and compare that with newly ordered medications. Medication reconciliations help identify and resolve discrepancies to improve safety outcomes.
 “Since implementing our program, students have experienced first-hand the importance of medication safety through providing medication reconciliation services, discovering discrepancies in medication lists and preventing dangerous drug interactions,” said Victoria Grusauskas, student president of the Gainesville SSHP chapter. “Execution of this program will also increase the demand for pharmacy services, as other health care professionals and hospital administration observe the decrease in medication errors in future internal studies.”