Pharm.D. candidate Michael Patti was selected as a Pharmacy Quality Alliance–CVS Health Foundation Scholar. The program offers an opportunity to present the results of a quality-based project at its 2018 poster session and a scholarship to get there.
Patti is being mentored by Stefanie Ferreri, Pharm.D., clinical professor and executive vice chair of the Division of Practice Advancement and Clinical Education.
The program is a partnership between PQA and the CVS Health Foundation to support and recognize student excellence in projects centered on quality-related initiatives. Twenty student pharmacists were selected based on applications they submitted outlining the project they hoped to complete if they were selected.
Patti’s project is titled, “Categorizing Community Pharmacies Using Identified Core Components of Medication Synchronization Programs.”
“The goal is to facilitate future research comparing quality measures to level of medication synchronization performance,” Patti said. Medication synchronization allows patients to pick up all of their prescription refills on a single day each month and work closely with the pharmacist on sticking to their medication regimen.
Patti said the project will develop, gather, distribute and analyzing data from an online survey tool to assess community pharmacies’ performance in medication synchronization.
Patti said that being selected for the PQA-CVS Scholars Program is a great honor. He said he’s excited to have an opportunity to present his research to important members of the pharmacy quality community and looks forward to the feedback he’ll receive to aid his future research.
“Being recognized by PQA shows that community pharmacy research is a valuable pursuit that can make a major impact on health care,” Patti said.