Understanding Where We've Been to Inspire Where We're Going.

While waiting for our first leadership elective class to begin this semester, one of the students made a comment about how pharmacy practice used to be not that long ago. The third-year students read Sara White’s Whitney lecture, “Leadership: Successful Alchemy,”1 to frame a conversation on leadership and identifying themselves as “little L” leaders. The student was intrigued to realize that pharmacists had not always been integrated into multidisciplinary teams and that unit dose and intravenous admixture services were great advances in their time. During the first class, we identified that none of the students had been in a hospital setting without an electronic health record. Lost are the understanding of transcription errors and the appreciation of a Bates stamper to assist with typing prescription labels and creating medication profiles. Each of our leadership elective classes begins with a student pair presenting a Whitney award recipient and a brief overview of their award lecture as it relates to the topic of the week. We create a personal philosophy and a leadership development plan, explore personalities and networking, and discuss communication, mentor relationships, and organizational and personal change throughout the 10-week course. Whitney recipients Jim McAllister, Charles Hepler, Paul Abramowitz, Jannet Carmichael, Tom Thielke, Henri Manasse, and Dan Ashby help set the stage each week, and each leader reflects on their experiences as they present their vision for the future of pharmacy. The students continue to marvel in how the practice of pharmacy has changed, and I believe this understanding helps them appreciate the responsibility of their generation in continuing the advancement our profession. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Foundation created the harveywhitney.org Web site as a repository for Whitney award information and access to the lecture series. Hospital Pharmacy recently published a 2-part Director’s Forum series, “Measuring Change in Health-System Pharmacy Over 50 Years: ‘Reflecting’ on the Mirror.”2,3 A comprehensive survey of hospital pharmaceutical services conducted in 1963 provided a baseline for establishing goals for the profession in 6 paradigms known as the Mirror to Hospital Pharmacy published in 1964.4 Examining the progress made on the 6 paradigms provides a historical viewpoint and presents a starting place to develop strategies to continue the advancement of pharmacy services. Sara White has invested countless hours interviewing great pharmacy leaders to share their personal stories and provide inspiration for continuing to challenge our practice model.5 Harold Godwin shares ideas on pharmacy innovation and justification of comprehensive pharmacy services. Paul Pierpaoli discusses academic health-system practice, mentoring, and residency training. Mary Jo Reilly reflects on change management and professional organization involvement. Others offer insight to the profession by sharing stories, including Bruce Scott, Dave Zilz, Billy Woodward, Pam Ploetz, John Gans, and Sharon Enright. One of the most powerful stories you can tell is your own. Make the time to share with your students and residents how the practice of pharmacy has evolved during your career and where you see the profession going. Challenge the new practitioner to maintain their involvement in the profession and encourage seasoned practitioners to continue or renew their engagement with our practice. We know times change, and we must choose to be an active participant in that change while celebrating our previous successes.