Tamara Malm, Pharm.D., MPH, BCPS, is an assistant professor of pharmacy practice and administration at the University of Saint Joseph in Hartford, Connecticut. She serves as a preceptor for the ambulatory care rotation for pharmacy students in the adult primary care clinic at Yale-New Haven Hospital. This clinic provides many services, including hypertension, addiction, diabetes, anticoagulation, and urgent care, but most of her time is focused in the transitional care clinic. Developing clinical pharmacy services in the transitional care clinic was the focus of her PGY2 research project, which has turned into an extremely rewarding position. The primary goal of the clinic is to provide continuity of care for patients between the hospital and home. Important issues such as medication accessibility, affordability, and education are addressed at follow-up appointments with a multidisciplinary team consisting of an attending and resident physician, licensed practical nurse, social worker, pharmacist, and pharmacy student. Malm aims to expand this service during the next year by adding home and virtual visits by pharmacists, pharmacy students, and residents to reach even more patients during critical transitions. Malm believes that educating patients on their medications and making interventions on medication discrepancies keeps her focused on the significance of her position, while educating pharmacy students and asking meaningful research questions helps expand her breadth of knowledge.

Malm’s journey to pharmacy began when she packed up her horse, cat, and personal belongings to move to Lexington, Kentucky, for undergraduate training at the University of Kentucky. She fell in love with the Bluegrass state and decided to stay and complete both her Pharm.D. and MPH degrees in 2013. The clinical challenge of her neurocritical care experiential rotation drove her to pursue postgraduate training. She completed a PGY1 residency program at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, North Carolina. With determination, persistence, and leadership, she successfully completed her research project, “Ensuring Safety and Accuracy of Admission Medication Histories in a Technician-Run Service.” Her mentors Kathey Rumley, Pharm.D., Leigh Gurley, Pharm.D., and Carol Labadie, Pharm.D., taught her how to manage others, develop and redesign a clinical service, track and trend medication errors, provide constructive feedback, and relay important results to key stakeholders. Malm believes the PGY1 residency program was one of her most rewarding experiences thus far, and over the course of that year, she recognized her strengths in leadership, management, and medication safety. Malm completed a PGY2 residency in health-system pharmacy administration at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, and then achieved credentialing as a Board Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist (BCPS). She is extremely thankful to all of her mentors during both her PGY1 and PGY2 residencies, who helped develop her clinical management acumen and provided her with challenging opportunities at every turn.

As a student, Malm recognized during her first ACCP Annual Meeting that ACCP is a unique and special professional pharmacy organization. Malm believes that there is so much to be gained at each ACCP meeting, including opportunities for organizational involvement, networking, idea sharing, and expanding therapeutics knowledge. She attends a wide variety of programming sessions at each ACCP meeting, but her favorite sessions include recent updates in drug therapy, new and innovative practice models, and the best paper presentations. She is inspired by the range of experience among the pharmacist attendees at the sessions, and this motivates her to push the boundaries of pharmacy practice. Malm has been very active in ACCP since joining several years ago. She recently completed her term as the vice chair of the ACCP Resident Advisory Committee (RAC), where she helped develop informational videos about ACCP and the RAC. Furthermore, she is actively involved in increasing both student and resident involvement in the Clinical Administration PRN, career roundtables, and premeeting symposium at the ACCP Annual Meeting. Malm is still a new practitioner, but “ACCP has already established a permanent place in [my] professional life and [I look] forward to contributing to the College even more in the future.”

Malm believes that the most underserved patients in the United States are those with a language barrier. Through her work with underserved populations in Connecticut, she has been inspired to learn Spanish to help patients understand their own health and medications. She hopes to combine her love of traveling and clinical pharmacy to help patients outside the United States.

Malm realized that she was meant for clinical pharmacy and that she truly loved her job when she was told “I don’t know what we would have done without a pharmacist here.” This statement provides her with enough fuel to get through all of the tough days and continue learning and growing as a practitioner. Malm advises new practitioners to always say yes at the beginning of their career. She feels passionately that because there are so many different career paths in pharmacy, you owe it to yourself to try everything. She understands that taking on many different projects may stretch you a little thin but believes that you should push yourself to your limits to see what you can handle.