Sue Skledar

Biographical Information:

Sue Skledar received her Bachelor's Degree in Pharmacy from the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) School of Pharmacy, and her Master of Public Health Degree from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Sue’s career at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Pitt combined has spanned 35 years, and has involved advancing health-system pharmacy practice and serving in academia. She served in operational, clinical, and leadership roles at UPMC, and academic roles at Pitt Pharmacy progressing from voluntary faculty to Professor. Her experiences at UPMC involved work as a staff pharmacist, hospital-based clinical pharmacist, operations and decentralized pharmacy manager, and from 1996-2012, Director of UPMC Presbyterian's Drug Use and Disease State Management Program, which was the formulary management and drug use policy program for the facility. She has been a clinical faculty at Pitt Pharmacy since 1992, teaching and precepting students. From 2012-16, Sue moved into a UPMC health-system role for formulary management across their 20-hospital network. In early 2016, she transitioned full-time into the Experiential Learning Program at Pitt Pharmacy, and is currently in that role.

Current employment, practice, and academic responsibilities:

As Director of Experiential Learning and Professor at the School of Pharmacy, Sue is responsible for development and evaluation of student introductory and advanced pharmacy practice learning sites and practitioner continuing education programs. The Pitt Pharmacy Experiential Learning team, together with faculty and volunteer preceptors across the globe, has created over 1500 learning opportunities for students in a wide array of facets of pharmacy practice, research, academia, industry, and many more. Sue is responsible to guide these experiences for meaningful learning, help to create new opportunities for all students, while meeting ACPE accreditation standards. With her experience in hospital and health-system pharmacy, Sue co-coordinates the Health-System Pharmacy course, and coordinates the first-year student Health & Wellness Fair. She leads the Pitt Pharmacy Experiential Learning Committee, PA Coalition of Experiential Learning Leaders, and is Chair of the Student Education and Learning Experiences Section Advisory Group of the ASHP Section of Phamacy Educators. She is also an active member of AACP's Experiential Education Section and the PQA Education Advisory Council.

Significant projects and accomplishments:

While in clinical practice, Sue was part of teams that developed innovative hospital-based student internships, clinical scientist training programs, and advancing the role of students in health-system settings, such as inpatient vaccine programs and drug use policy/protocol design and evaluation. At Pitt Pharmacy, Sue has been an active contributor to advanced student learning programs such as the Pharmacotherapy Scholars Program, the Interprofessional Geriatrics Course, curricular Areas of Concentration, and created the current Pitt Pharmacy on-line Preceptor Development Program. Most recently, she served as co-editor, leading a team of national experts, on the ASHP Preceptor Competency Assessment Program, which just launched in December 2022. She has received PITT/UPMC Residency Preceptor of the Year Award in 2010 and 2011, Faculty Preceptor of the Year from Pitt Pharmacy in 2016, and the Cohen Teacher of the Year Award from Pitt Pharmacy in 2021. 

Promotion of Health System Pharmacy Practice:

Sue co-coordinates the Health-System Pharmacy longitudinal course, which incorporates fundamentals of hospital pharmacy practice, including sterile product preparation, interpreting medication orders, parenteral nutrition, hospital leadership,  principles of formulary development, and advanced roles in health-system pharmacy. Through a series of workshops, preceptor networking event, and lectures/seminar, led by experts in the field, health-system pharmacy practice is "brought into the classroom" to supplement the individual learning that students receive on their required IPPE experiences. Sue also contributes with expert faculty in our foundational service learning course for first-year students, where students are immersed in diverse community health sites and environments across the Pittsburgh region.

Sue has been a member of ASHP since her days as a student at Pitt Pharmacy, since her internship was in a small hospital in Pittsburgh. A long-standing ASHP member, Sue served ASHP in the Section of Inpatient Care Practitioners (SICP), and as Chair and Vice-Chair of the SICP Educational Steering Committee and Director-at-Large for the Section of Inpatient Care Practitioners. She was the inaugural Chair of the Section of Pharmacy Educators Student Education and Learning Experiences SAG, and continues in that role this year. She is a Midyear Clinical Meeting abstract reviewer, and a student pharmacist CV Reviewer. In 2012, she was a national faculty mentor for the ASHP Mentored Adult Immunization Impact Program, in conjunction with ASHP Advantage. She has served on the ASHP Advisory Group for Publications, Ad-Hoc Advisory Panel on Population-Based Medicine, American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy Editorial Board, and was Network Facilitator for the Surgery/OR/Anesthesiology Section. Combined, she has presented over 100 posters and platform presentations at ASHP’s national meetings.

Susan has received national and regional recognition for her work in design and application of continuous quality improvement principles to clinical pharmacy programs to promote safe medication practices and for evidence-based formulary development from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), American Pharmaceutical Association, Institute for Safe Medication Practices, National Association of Healthcare Quality, Hospital and Health-System Association of Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania Society of Health-System Pharmacists. She, as part of interdisciplinary care teams, is a two-time honoree of the ASHP Best Practices Award in Health-System Pharmacy in 2000 and in 2012. She was an individual winner of the APhA Pinnacle Award for Healthcare Quality Improvement, and was recognized as a Fellow of the ASHP. In 2013, she received the ASHP Distinguished Service Award for her work in inpatient pharmacy practice advancement and interdisciplinary collaboration.

ASHP is an incredible resource for students, new pharmacists, experienced pharmacists, administrators, and clinicians, and its scope is relevant across so many areas of pharmacy practice. When mentoring students about their careers, I often say that they need to find professional organizations that can be their anchor throughout their career for advances in the profession (i.e., credentialing, prescribing privileges), and for advances in therapeutics. Keeping current with both facets of healthcare is important today, and ASHP can be that organization on both fronts. The webinars, toolkits, professional meetings, and educational opportunities are a valuable resource for both new graduates and experienced practitioners. The content designed for preceptors in the ASHP Preceptor Toolkit, the Preceptor Competency Assessment Program, and the Pharmacy Competency Assessment Programs, along with the many certificate and board review programs of ASHP are particularly valuable for continued learning and career advancement. 

Professional Advice:

Experiential learning is an exciting and always-changing facet of pharmacy education, comprising over one-third of PharmD program curricula. My advice to new preceptors is to understand what the school expects from your rotation, and from you as a preceptor, and then have open discussions with your learners to see what they hope to gain from an experience with you. Some students have defined career paths and some are on a journey of discovery, and it is important to spend time with each student to get to know what they are aspiring to, and then find out how your learning experience can teach them fundamentals, and then relate that to the student's personalized career path. Many students have had wonderful learning experiences on rotations that they expected. We have seen students have eye-opening experiences with a preceptor in an area they did not expect to embrace, and career trajectories have been completely changed due to a positive preceptor/student interaction. The impact preceptors make on their students is immeasurable, and we are grateful for their efforts with our learners.