Here, I introduce my guest for this series, pharmacist Michael Shuman, PharmD. Michael has worked in several different areas of psychiatric pharmacy, including in multiple inpatient and outpatient settings. He currently works in the inpatient state hospital system and provides tremendous patient care to those with severe mental illness.
Ethan: My guest today is Michael Schuman. Uh, clinical pharmacists working in the state mental hospital system. Michael has a genuine and inquisitive nature about him. And I've always enjoyed our open-minded discussions about drugs, their mechanisms of action, the root cause of different psychiatric disorder. And effectiveness and safety profiles of our treatments. He brings excitement and engagement to patient care and academic discussions, as well as an unrelenting, thirst for knowledge, openness, and acceptance of uncertainty and overall curious disposition. He's a self-described information nerd and has an incredibly [00:01:00] admirable bedside manner. He spends more time with patients than I've ever seen from a pharm D and thinks about his patients and how to optimize their care around the clock. He helps to manage patients with severe mental illness. Never takes negative patient encounters personally, and fights relentlessly for what he thinks is best for them.
Michael, tell us a little bit about your professional journey.
Michael: Sure. I knew early on that I wanted to work in mental health in some degree, probably in pharmacy. I, came at it from more of a chemistry standpoint. So I stuck to this pharmacy world. Went to University of Kentucky, graduated with my pharm D in 2011. Decided to move, travel around, try to get some experience. Did a year of residency in Buffalo, New York, in a state facility. Moved from there to north Chicago suburbs. Had a chance to work in a veteran setting, do a second year of residency. Completed that, [00:02:00] and then went on and took a split faculty position, working in a clinical practice site, ambulatory care. At a va working a lot with post-traumatic stress disorder as well as schizophrenia, managing medications, both psychotropic medications as well as nons. Psychotropics. Got my board certification in psychiatric pharmacy had a chance in 2019 to move closer to family in Kentucky. So, Dragged my wife out of the Chicago suburbs back to my home state of Kentucky and now working inpatient , within the state system, but still really with my heart for working with Clozapine, working individuals with histories of trauma, but also getting a chance to do some of my things. I enjoy gotten into gardening strangely enough, but, whether it's hiking, running, things like that it's good to be back when I have access to Red River Gorge and Natural Bridge and all these places that I've been around my whole life.
Ethan: So fill us in on what you're doing professionally now.
Michael: So a lot of what I'm doing [00:03:00] now is, really on the micro and the macro level, trying to do as much as I can to educate individuals. I love learning about medications, learning about treatment options, the pros and the cons and the risks and the benefit. And I like sharing that with people. So I try as much as I can to do some, teaching and education. So that's where I've, had opportunities to work with pharmacy schools, work with psychiatry residency programs, which has been really great. And then also kind of on a bigger level, trying as much as I can to start identifying some of the, gaps in our systems and trying what little I can do to educate and inform and hopefully begin to advocate for services in our state. And, even just try to raise awareness and demystify some of the stigmas associated with mental health care.
Ethan: Nice. What do you think about this topic?
Michael: I'm excited to be here cuz Yeah, this is not something we talked about for me in pharmacy school when we talked about the history of, [00:04:00] drugs and effectiveness and how the FDA regulates things. We glossed over some of the advertisement piece. But the more I've been in practice and the more I think back even to my experiences thinking about ads I saw growing up compared to what I see now, even just in how they, target even beyond physicians, but to, to other medical providers and even how pharmacists involved it. It's definitely an important subject. And I said one that I don't think it's talked about a lot.
Ethan: I'm in the same boat as you all throughout medical school. This was not something that was emphasized or didn't receive a whole lot of education on it. Outside of maybe individuals that you would work with that would, let you know that it is something that is kind of existing in the background of healthcare . .