PGY1-2 Program in Medication Safety

The format of PGY1 MUSP year will mirror that of a PGY1 Acute Care Pharmacy Resident at Inova Fairfax Medical Center. The PGY1 MUSP will complete the same longitudinal activities as a PGY1 Acute Care and be required to complete the same core rotations. The two programs diverge with respect to electives – PGY1 MUSP residents will complete 1 Stewardship Experience and 1 MUSP-Focused elective, accounting for 2 of 3 elective slots. In addition, the PGY1 MUSP resident participates in approximately monthly topic discussions both internally (POD) and externally (MUSP Safety Collaboration).

Program Description – PGY2 Medication-Use Safety and Policy Residency

Medication reliability and safety are integral to the provision of optimal pharmaceutical care, and the Inova pharmacy departments continually review medication incident reports, adverse drug events and medication errors to identify potential areas for improvement of systems. 

The Medication Safety Officer is tasked with overseeing the safe medication practices across the system in partnership not only with the pharmacy teams, but also with the providers, nursing teams as well as allied healthcare partners, The scope of work is not only in the acute care setting, of which Inova has five, but also in the ambulatory space as well as the retail setting. Since the resident will be working directly with and under the auspices of the Medication Safety Officer, there are ample opportunities for the resident to impact patient care across a wide spectrum of disciplines and settings.

The resident will have the opportunity to experience Information Systems technological impact to medication use, safety officers' roles, as well as data analytics and report development and interpretation.

One of the longitudinal experiences that the resident will do to achieve their PGY2 certificate is writing for publications in multiple venues as well as a research component where the expectation is an IRB protocol submission to the active system IRB.

Committees and interdisciplinary team work across the span of the health system will allow the resident a robust and varied year of experience. The resident will also have a teaching experience as Inova serves as an Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience sites for pharmacy students from both the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy and the Dunn School of Pharmacy at Shenandoah University.