President's Letter: 2019 Off to Great Start

Megan Ehret, PharmD, MS, BCPP

While we continue to dig out from the holidays and numerous snow storms, CPNP is hitting the ground running for an exciting 2019. Some of the highlights include:

• The staff, board, and professional affairs Task Force are busy working on a profession awareness campaign. Part of the deliverables from this campaign with be a series of practice profiles illustrating how psychiatric pharmacists contribute to team-based care. We need your help as we seek a mix of innovative practices and standard practices so that the broad range of possibilities are put on display for people who are unfamiliar with the specialty. Please volunteer if you are interested in helping with this exciting campaign!
• CPNP has made a large commitment to developing new educational resources in the substance abuse realm. So far, CPNP has launched 6 toolkits on various disease states and treatments (see cpnp.org/resources). Work is now commencing on the development of a comprehensive opioid use disorder curriculum with hopes that some if not all modules will launch in late 2019.
• Thanks to the work of the USP 800 committee, the USP 800 compliance toolkit is now available and already saving pharmacists and health systems hundreds of staff hours. Be sure to make your health system aware of this amazing tool.
• Hard to believe we are 2.5 months out from CPNP 2019 to be held April 7-10 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Register by 3/7/19 to take advantage of the early bird registration savings.

While all of these things keep our staff, Board, and many of you as volunteers busy, we know you are equally busy interviewing students and residents for the upcoming training year. We enter this recruiting season with this great news from our 2018 Residency Program Director survey conducted by the Resident and New Practitioner Committee:

• 100% of residents from reporting programs were able to obtain positions after completing their residency program.
• 75% of these residents were able to obtain Psychiatric or Neurologic Clinical Pharmacist Positions.
• 90.4% of our respondents noting filling all their residency positions, reflecting an increase from the 2017-2018 residency year (80.7%).

We are optimistic our current residents and students find this same success in 2019.

As we move forward through the spring, the Board lives and breathes our goal to promote and grow the profession. We do this through all of the ways described above but also through outreach and advocacy. We recently attended the winter JCPP meeting highlighting the importance of and future of biosimilars. The May JCPP meeting will focus on the drug supply chain. CPNP continue its work with a coalition of healthcare professions focused on the behavioral healthcare workforce. I will be representing CPNP at the second summit meeting to occur shortly before CPNP 2019. CPNP has been invited to share its voice in the APhA House of Delegates and will be sending two delegates to represent CPNP positions.

With all of the unique activities and projects we are engaged in, I would be remiss if I didn’t take the time to thank each of you as members for your continued support and efforts on behalf of the staff and Board. Thank you for all that you do on the front lines to advance our practice and continue to touch the lives of so many with mental illness. I hope the 2019 is filled with joy and peace for each of you. I look forward to the signs of spring and to seeing you in April in Salt Lake City!