MentorVIEW With Gigi Davidson,
Director of Pharmacy at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine

Gigi Davidson has vast experience working with young pharmacists who rotate through her pharmacy as part of their self-selected educational experience. And what an experience it must be!

Gigi is regularly able to attract top-flight pharmacists while often paying them up to 40 percent less than what they could command in another pharmacy setting. Obviously, money is not motivating Gigi's staff. So what is?

PharmacyNOW was curious to know, and we're sure you'll find Gigi's comments and insights valuable as they transfer over to your pharmacy career.

Before we get started, however, permit us to tell you a bit more about this mentoring superstar. Her favorite color is green -- "Although I really like them all." Her favorite down time activity is gardening --"Dirt therapy is an instant cure for whatever ails me, but I also love to travel and read." And her favorite book? " ... That's a hard one. I have many. I love anything by Tom Robbins. My recent favorite was 'Traveling Mercies' by Anne Lamott."
Now, on with the MentorVIEW!

PNOW: Why would a pharmacist go through a program in a veterinary teaching hospital?

GD: Almost everybody loves animals, has animals or knows somebody who has animals as pets or companions. So there is a need to know about drug therapy in animals. I always tell my students that pharmacists are in the best position as health care professionals to offer pharmaceutical care for all species. Even though they're typically trained to offer care for one species, as a whole, pharmacists still know more about pharmaceutical care than veterinarians or physicians. They're trusted professionals. Because pharmacists know a lot about drugs, people will ask pharmacists about drug use in animals; most often, patients don't stop to think that pharmacists have not necessarily been trained in veterinary pharmocotherapy. Obviously, pharmacists in a retail setting are in control of prescription drug distribution as well as over-the-counter drugs that could inadvertently be used in a harmful way in animal patients. This is why pharmacists need to know about veterinary patients.

PNOW: Can you tell us a little bit about what you do at North Carolina State's Veterinary Teaching Hospital?

GD: I function almost in an identical capacity to any director of hospital pharmacy. My patients are just a little different. We're a veterinary care referral center. We have 23 specialties in the hospital, including dermatology, ophthalmology, oncology, neurology, cardiology - all the ologies. And we provide clinical service, drug distribution and teaching for all students and patients of the College of Veterinary Medicine. Therefore, we have typical unit dose drug distribution, an oncology add mixture service for our chemotherapy, and an investigational drug service. Plus, we do a lot of clinical research with new drugs that are in the pre-market approval status for veterinary patients. We also do a lot of teaching and have a lot of fun.

PNOW: What's a really great day for Gigi Davidson?

GD: Oh, I have mostly great days. I really, really like what I do. A good day is an interactive day. A day that I know I have undoubtedly, positively effected the outcome in a patient. One story that comes to mind is about a little dog named Otis. Otis went on vacation with his owner to Italy and came down with a blood parasite called babisiosis. It's not something that's a big problem in this country, but Otis came back on the verge of death. Through several steps, I found out what the antidote was. I found out who the researchers in this country were that had it. I obtained some of the drug, received permission from the FDA to treat this animal, and went and picked the drug up myself. I took the drug to the airport, and flew it at my own expense down to Louisiana where the dog lived. I didn't hear anything back for about a week, and then I got this wonderful letter and photograph from the owner and her dog, a recovering animal. That's a good day.

PNOW: You've had a lot of involvement with working with young pharmacy students. What has been your role with these people?

GD: I became involved in a formal mentoring program with pharmacy students in 1989. This was the first year I actually accepted pharmacy students from the surrounding pharmacy schools in North Carolina. It was very unstructured at first. The students were just very interested in animals and veterinary pharmacy. They came over and just hung out. However, it has evolved into a guided tour through the most important part of veterinary pharmacotherapy - which is that cats are not small furry people. I try to have our students leave veterinary pharmacy with an awareness and appreciation for treating more than one species. That is my last message to them: branch out - don't limit yourself to one species. I just try to increase their awareness.

PNOW: Are all of the students choosing to come to you?

GD: That's correct. It is an elective rotation and it's very competitive. I have probably four applicants for every spot that I have. And so, unfortunately, I do have to turn some away.

PNOW: Is that an outcome of their interest in animals or is there something special that you're doing to attract them?

GD: I think initially it may be the animal draw. That's always a really good card to play. With time, it has evolved into having a reputation of being a caring rotation. I spend a lot of time with my students. I get into what interests them, where they're going. I want to know what they want to do while they're here. I want to know what they want to learn and help them get there. I give them my undivided attention when they're here, and I'm honest with them. They appreciate this collegial kind of relationship. It's more of a horizontally oriented hierarchy in veterinary medicine than maybe it is in human medicine - a little less vertical. The students are comfortable in that environment; they feel valued and really like to come here.

PNOW: How much time are you spending with a student in a month?

GD: At the beginning of the month I provide them with a calendar. I'll say everything on this calendar is negotiable, but here's the time that I am willing to spend with you doing these activities. So on a typical day, I'll spend three to four hours of one-on-one time with an individual student. The other time out of an eight-hour day is spent sending them off to have their own learning opportunities. Then they come back and we debrief, hash it out and see what they did.

PNOW: What are you doing in the three to four hours that you're spending with a student?

GD: Well, we do a lot of problem solving. I don't give them a lot of boundaries or parameters. For example, if there is a really interesting case in the intensive care unit, I'll send them to find out about it. However, I'm not looking for them to just go collect data and come back. I want them to go out, assess the situation, and come back and give me their impressions. We'll talk about the drugs that might be used on that animal, what they know about those drugs in humans and what's different about the use of these drugs in animals.

PNOW: What advice would you give pharmacy managers who want their positions to be compelling, despite the fact that they're offering less money?

GD: That's an excellent question. I still fight that battle. When you're first coming out of pharmacy school you may have a $100,000 of loan debt to repay so salaries are pretty important. Unfortunately, this might be the only consideration for some young graduates. I would encourage hospitals to really get in touch with those candidates and find out what they're interested in. What do they want to do? What's their specialty? Where do they want to go with pharmacy? Challenge them to make a decision, a choice between is it money or is it quality of life? You age and mature into appreciating a quality of life. After you've been on the front line at a high volume retail chain making $100,000 a year, you suddenly realize you don't have any time to spend that $100,000 because you're so worn out. I don't know how you convey that thought to young candidates, but a mentoring process helps. If those candidates can spend time in a hospital situation with somebody who loves what they do, who makes a difference in outcome every single day, they'll appreciate quality of life, satisfaction and fulfillment issues a lot faster.

PNOW: What types of things do you think the young pharmacists are valuing now that will help the pharmacies keep them happy and growing in their careers?

GD: That's a really tough question. I know that in my arena the one thing, maybe the two things, I have found that really turned young employees on is the opportunity to get involved either in teaching through CE seminars -actually presenting what they know and standing up in front of a group as an expert- and sharing their information and being respected. The other thing is publication. I give my students opportunities to publish in a couple of veterinary journals while they rotate with me. Nobody's ever asked them to do that before, and they're terrified the first time you ask them to write something. Then they are just thrilled to pieces when they graduate from a program and they've already got a publication under their belt. I think just an opportunity to share information and be respected by their peers and patients is something that really keeps them happy.

PNOW: What advice would you give to help cultivate the horizontal relationship that's so essential to the pharmacists you're involved with?

GD: Well, I think you have to just get out there with the other health care professionals that might perceive themselves on the top of the hierarchy. Just climb up there with them. It's real important to be visible, to get out there, to not be afraid to ask questions. I think a big fear in young people and even old people, is to look stupid or inadequate. The only way you're going to learn is to ask questions. And just by asking a simple question you can open up valuable interchange with anybody in the hierarchy, be it the patient or be it the physician or veterinarian prescriber. You just have to get out there. Visibility.

PNOW: What are young pharmacists saying they need that perhaps isn't being met in their professions right now?

GD: The pharmacists who are graduating, even though they've been in rotations for a year, don't truly know what to ask for and what to expect in a job. It's the rare student who is really focused on not taking any job until they get something that will meet their quality of life needs, their geographical needs. Most of them are ready to take the highest payer while they think it out. I think that's a contributor to the high turnover rate, people just trying pharmacy out for the first year they graduate and not really having any idea what they really want. I try to get my students to really think about how their day is going to feel and look like when they get out of school. And a lot of them have a hard time imagining that. But they look at me, then they look at some of their other preceptors and I think they can make judgments kind of based on what they observe.

PNOW: What can the seasoned pharmacy managers do to develop their mentoring skills further?

GD: They need to really connect with the mentee, to find out what makes that person tick, find out what you have in common, and kind of climb the mountain together. I liken mentoring to being a Sherpa. I think mentees these days seek out guides to help them climb the mountain, and I think that they're looking for qualified ones and ones who have already been up there a few times. They want to be taken up the mountain. Maybe not the same way somebody else went up the mountain, but they want to go up the mountain. I would encourage anybody who is in a mentoring role to take people up the mountain, to be willing to do that. Find out the way they want to do it, be willing to go up it different ways each time because that keeps it exciting and current and relevant. And to just really get in touch with shortening the distance between the paths that the mentor took to get where she is and where the mentee is and where she would like to be. Help them flatten out that learning curve.

PNOW: What advice would you give young pharmacists who are interested in a specialty?

GD: I think they need to declare their interest. They need to tell anybody and everybody that will listen to them what they want to do, what they like about the specialty, which part of the specialty that really turns them on, and seek out those mentors as specialists and beg to spend time with them. Networking is everything. If you talk about a specialty enough all roads will eventually lead back to you. That's actually how I ended up in veterinary medicine. I declared early that I really, really liked veterinary pharmacology even though there weren't any formal opportunities at that point. When an opportunity presented itself, I had told enough people that they connected me with the opportunity. And so here I am 18 years later in veterinary pharmacy.