ACCP’s newest Practice and Research Network (PRN), the Pulmonary PRN, was approved by the ACCP Board of Regents on October 13, 2017. The Pulmonary PRN becomes ACCP’s 26th PRN.
The mission of the new PRN will be to improve the health of patients affected by pulmonary diseases by fostering practice innovation, supporting outcomes and translational research, and providing high-quality education to patients and practitioners. Interest areas served by the Pulmonary PRN will include pharmacotherapeutic considerations associated with classic restrictive (asthma) and obstructive (COPD) lung disorders, interstitial lung diseases (ILDs), autoimmune lung diseases, suppurative lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and obliterative bronchiolitis, pulmonary alveolar proteinosis, acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), advanced lung failure and lung transplantation, mechanical ventilation, and extracorporeal membranous oxygenation.
Founding PRN Chair Christopher Ensor, Pharm.D., BCPS, looks forward to the educational and scholarly activities to be undertaken by the new PRN in service of its ultimate goal.
"The vision of the Pulmonary PRN is to be the society-based organization for advancing pulmonary pharmacy practice, research, and education through collaboration, innovation, and leadership in an effort to optimize patient quality and quantity of life," he said.
The Pulmonary PRN will provide a forum for like-minded practitioners to collaborate in patient care, education, and scholarly activities germane to our interests. All activities that the Pulmonary PRN engages in will be focused on achieving this goal. The Pulmonary PRN fosters multicenter prospective and retrospective research projects to advance the field.
More than 100 ACCP members supported the formation of the Pulmonary PRN. The group will conduct elections for officers in 2018 during the regular summer election cycle. In addition, the new PRN will plan and develop an educational Focus Session to be presented at the 2018 ACCP Global Conference on Clinical Pharmacy, October 20–23, Seattle, Washington. The PRN’s first Business Meeting and Networking Forum also will be held during the global conference. For more information on the Pulmonary PRN, visit accp.com/prns/subscribe.aspx.