Infectious Disease Care

Midwestern University Chicago College of Pharmacy celebrates American Pharmacist Month! The College is hosting a variety of activities that showcase what pharmacists and pharmacy students do best: care for patients. To see all that we have going on this month, go to our American Pharmacists Month Web page.

Here is Dr. Marc Scheetz, Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice describing how he works on improving patient outcomes at his clinical site, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL.

Infectious diseases (ID) pharmacotherapy is one of the many inpatient career opportunities that can allow you to realize your full potential as a pharmacist. In the 1960s the Surgeon General, William Stewart, was attributed with saying that it was time for the United States "to close the book on infectious disease." More than 50 years later, I am sad to inform that we are long way from this ideal, though not for lack of effort.

The field of infectious diseases is both challenging and rewarding. This field of medicine remains one of the few areas where we can offer patients true "cures." As pathogens continually emerge as resistant to standard therapies and are usually one step ahead of the curve, much of an ID pharmacist's time is spent attempting to restore the advantage to the patient. Many success stories are seen in patients walking out the hospital, returned to their normal state of health.

ID pharmacists often direct care at the level of the patient, as well as at the population level. For the individual patient, the ID pharmacist is frequently confronted with resistant bacteria and tasked with maintaining a balance of patient safety. Doing so requires a real-time assessment of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacogenomics. Maintaining anti-infective drug concentrations within a therapeutic window becomes a mantra toward restoring patient health. Similar principles are applied at the population level where ID pharmacists are commonly involved in designing hospital and system formularies that effectively treat the most patients without increasing pathogen resistance.