SCHOLARS@TAMU

I am an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University College and board certified in Ambulatory Care Pharmacy. I teach an Integrated Pharmacotherapy (IPT) course in opioid management and coordinate a course in Toxicology. I have devoted much of my professional time to pain management policy, training and education. I have served on several editorial boards including the Journal of Opioid Management, Journal of Pharmacotherapy specializing in Pain Management content, and Journal of Research in Interprofessional Practice and Education. As a clinical pharmacist, I serve at the Sacred Heart Community Clinic located on a large church campus in the Austin Texas area. As a healthcare team, the healthcare providers provide approximately 5000 medically underserved patient visits per year. These patients range from young adults to up to 65 years of age having conditions including pain, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, osteoporosis, anxiety and depression. In the first ten years of my practice, I served as an operating room pharmacist working with a pain management team of anesthesiologist and surgeons. My responsibilities included providing analgesic drug information, meeting accreditation requirements, maintaining analgesic/anesthetic inventory, and preparing anesthetic formulations in the operating room hospital setting. In the year 2000, I was promoted to a clinical pharmacist specialist in pain management position in a large academic, flag ship teaching hospital with fourteen affiliated hospitals in the healthcare system. In this position, I helped with programs in the healthcare system related to treating patients with acute, chronic, and end-of-life pain. A multidisciplinary pain committee was established having anesthesiologists, surgeons, psychologists, physical therapists, rehabilitation specialists, neurologists, pharmacologists, chaplain, and a social worker. Together we provided a broad-based approach to managing complex pain problems.