Angela Chu

Reasons for selecting this career path:

I chose to pursue academia after residency, because it was a natural extension of my passion to teach and mentor others. Throughout college and residency, I served as a mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Initially, I thought I would be a residency preceptor to fulfill a similar role, but after my academia APPE, I had an epiphany that I wanted to be more involved in our students’ and residents’ careers. The long hours preparing teaching materials, and answering student questions at all hours of the night did not bother me. I was actually invigorated when I kept my purpose in mind – to train the next generation of pharmacists. To this day, I stay true to my purpose and have been fortunate to be a part of my students’ and residents’ career transitions from learner to pharmacist to preceptor.

Professional Interests:

My practice area is in neurology medicine and my research areas are in well-being, the scholarship of teaching and learning, neurology, and critical care.

Interest in the NPF Executive Committee:

I have loved serving on the NPF career development advisory group this past year. It has been refreshing to work with other new practitioners who are eager and enthusiastic to move ASHP and our profession forward! Our group, like all of the members in the NPF, are full of creative ideas to meet our members’ needs as they transition from student or resident to practitioner. I wanted to continue to be a part of this amazing work and felt that I was ready to take on a larger role at this point in my career. Now that I am in my twilight years of being a new practitioner, and have experience as a faculty member and residency preceptor, I felt that I had more to offer to other new practitioners and advisory group members. My passion is to mentor others and this is one of the best avenues to give back to our profession by helping future pharmacists become future leaders.

Benefits of being involved in ASHP as a New Practitioner:

I have been a member of ASHP for ten years. Personally, ASHP awarded me my first grant under the New Practitioner pharmacist leadership development grant, which helped cultivate my principal investigator skills and opened doors for me to be competitive for future grants. ASHP does an excellent job developing pharmacists from the time that they are students to new practitioners to experienced leaders. The New Practitioner Forum is unique in that it addresses questions specific to new pharmacists who might not know what they don’t know or feel embarrassed to ask. It also offers a supportive community of pharmacists who currently or very recently have been in each other’s shoes.