Sarah L. White

Bio:
White received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Wingate University School of Pharmacy, located in Wingate, North Carolina, in 2015 and became board certified in pharmacotherapy in 2020. White completed her undergraduate work at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, after graduating from Tupper Lake Middle/High School in Tupper Lake, New York, in the heart of the Adirondack Park. The Adirondacks are a very rural area, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the city. White’s passion for rural healthcare was born after participating in the Board of Cooperative Educational Services' New Vision program at Adirondack Medical Center. This program allowed White to shadow staff at every level of the hospital from environmental services to administration and showed White how important pharmacy was to the operations of a hospital. White previously practiced in retail and independent pharmacy but always knew that her passion lay in small, rural hospital pharmacy.

Current responsibilities:
As a clinical staff pharmacist, White is responsible for everything from verifying orders to pharmacokinetic dosing and monitoring to checking compounded sterile products and cart fill. Additionally, White rounds with the medical team, helps precept pharmacy students, and is part of the rapid response/code team.

Describe the facility where you work:
Sampson Regional Medical Center, located in Clinton, North Carolina, is a 146-bed independent, community-based hospital that serves as a training facility for Campbell University pharmacy students, along with medical students, interns, and residents.

What type of significant projects have you been involved in recently?
One of the first projects that I worked on after getting my BCPS and returning from maternity leave was to integrate pharmacy into GME resident rounds. The relationship that pharmacy has now developed with the attending and resident physicians is one that I am immensely proud of, and has also lead to teaching didactics to the residents and medical students. Another project that I have recently worked on was to integrate a new drug-interaction and dose-checking software into the hospital electronic medical record, which required significant collaboration with members of several different departments. Last year, as part of my role on ASHP's Section of Inpatient Care Practitioners Education Steering Committee, I worked on and moderated a webinar on just culture. The webinar was a great experience and taught me a lot about collaborating with pharmacists remotely.

What kind of advice would you provide for someone new to your specialty area?
Working in a small or rural hospital presents some truly unique challenges and opportunities. You learn to do great, boundary-pushing things with limited resources. But you also have the opportunity to make a huge difference in the lives of the people of the community that, oftentimes, you live in.

What is your current involvement with ASHP?
I am currently a member of ASHP's Section of Inpatient Care Practitioners Education Steering Committee and am working as a major project workgroup leader.

How would you explain the value of ASHP to a friend or colleague?
In a field as broad as pharmacy, there is no way to be an expert in everything. ASHP's resources have collected the expertise of so many brilliant pharmacists and made it available in a single place. The connections I have made through ASHP have been invaluable to my professional practice and personal development, and I have learned an incredible amount through their resources.

What is the value of ASHP for the profession?
ASHP condenses an incredible amount of information and expertise into a single place and is a great resource for any hospital pharmacist. Not only do they help disseminate information, but they also do an incredible job advocating for our profession and try to expand the boundaries of our practice.