CPNP was honored to present the Saklad Memorial Award at the April 2010 CPNP Annual Meeting to Dr. Raymond C. Love, PharmD, BCPP, FASHP. This award celebrates the life and work of the late Judith J. Saklad. Dr. Saklad was a founding member of CPNP and nationally recognized as an innovator of pharmaceutical care to children and adults with serious mental disorders, developmental disabilities and mental retardation. Dr. Love was selected by his peers as a senior psychiatric pharmacy practitioner who has achieved a level of professional distinction and like Dr. Saklad, demonstrates the qualities and ideals of professional enthusiasm and a passion for optimizing patient care.
Dr. Love is currently a Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. His career is a virtual storyboard of identifying a pharmaceutical care need and then finding a way to address it. As an example, he established the first psychiatric clinical pharmacy services in the state of Maryland at the Allegany County Health Department and was the founding director of pharmacy at the Thomas B. Finan Center in Cumberland. In 1985, he established the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy Mental Health Program in order to bring the services he piloted in western Maryland to citizens throughout the state. Another of Dr. Love’s many accomplishments includes helping establish the University of Maryland’s first AHEC and serving as a preceptor for pharmacy, medical, dental, nursing, social work and pastoral care for students and residents. The ASHP accredited psychiatric pharmacy practice residency he helped pioneer at the University of Maryland was the first school of pharmacy residency and served as the model for all of the University’s pharmacy residency programs.
As a patient advocate for those with severe and persistent mental illness, in 1989, prior to the approval of clozapine, Dr. Love developed Maryland’s Clozapine Authorization and Monitoring Program (CAMP) in order to ensure that clozapine was both available and used safely in those individuals for whom it was needed. This Maryland Mental Hygiene Administration program served as a national model for the safe use of clozapine in other states and in the Veterans Affairs system.
In the arena of scholarly activity, Dr. Love has been a reviewer for over 20 psychiatric and pharmacy journals and served on national and international advisory boards and committees including technical panels for both the National Institutes of Health and the National Quality Forum. He has received over $40 million in contracts and grants and has numerous publications, presentations and book chapters.
A recognized leader in pharmacy practice, Dr. Love has exemplified leadership skill in completing two terms as a commissioner on the Maryland Board of Pharmacy, chairing the Board’s Practice Committee and leading the committee which proposed Maryland’s Pharmacist Collaborative Drug Therapy Management legislation. As a Board member, he was a key part of Maryland’s response to the post 9/11 anthrax attacks that affected Maryland citizens and in the mobilization of pharmacists after Hurricane Katrina. Lastly, Dr. Love is a founding member of the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists and a staunch advocate of the organization’s role in promoting excellence in pharmacy practice, education and research to optimize treatment outcomes of individuals affected by psychiatric and neurologic disorders. Dr. Love spent a few minutes at the recent CPNP Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas to talk about his career and his philosophy of practice.
