President's Message from Alex Oschman

"Put your mind towards anything and you’ll achieve what you want. And will you succeed? Yes! Yes, you will indeed, 98 and ¾ percent guaranteed." – Dr. Seuss

What a year it has been! I can’t say that when I took office as your president this time last year, that I could have predicted events over the past year! I hope many of you were able to attend our first VIRTUAL spring meeting. I want to again thank Becca, Jim, and all the members of the planning committee who did a wonderful job transitioning our regular meeting to a virtual format in such short notice! I thought you would be interested in some statistics from our spring meeting. We had approximately 300 attendees, representing 3 countries (India, Ireland, and the US), and 11 states. Of those attendees approximately 150 were students. In addition, we had 15 exhibitors for attendees to visit and talk with. I don’t know about you, but I am blown away by the outcome of our virtual meeting and it is because of the hard work and dedication to MSHP of our members and Q&A.

For those of you that were not able to attend the MSHP luncheon, I spoke on how important our history is in shaping our future. Each of our past leaders helped to bring MSHP to where it is today. Our success is a sum of our many parts, people, experiences, successes, and failures over the last 50 years. Throughout this past year as your president, I have worked with our board and committees to reorganize our strategic plan to incorporate multi-year goals, reorganize our committee structure and board agendas to be more efficient while improving workload and continuity for MSHP. We have increased our social media presence and worked to ensure our deadlines are met. In addition, we have formalized the resident workgroup efforts and our partnership with the Missouri Pharmacy Association to routinely provide pharmacy technician continuing education. We have added students to our board and committee meetings along with working to improve our processes regarding membership. Perhaps our biggest advancement this year is our increasing involvement in public policy with the development of the Tech-Check-Tech guidance document, increased collaboration with other state pharmacy societies, and participation in the Pharmacy Leadership Collaborative for Missouri.

As this is my last message to you as your president, I want to thank you all for your hard work, dedication, and energy. This is our 50-year anniversary. If COVID-19 has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that we are resilient and to not take things for granted. MSHP is our organization. Don’t take it for granted. Let’s see what we can achieve in the next 50 years, because one day, someone will be looking at our actions and how they shaped the future.

Alex Oschman, PharmD, BCPPS

MSHP President