Providence St. Mary Medical Center is a non-profit health care facility established in 1880. It has 142 licensed beds and is located in Walla Walla, Washington, serving southeast Washington and northeast Oregon.
St. Mary is a Level 1 cardiac center, regional cancer and spine center, and Level 3 trauma center. Service areas include hospitalist services/internal medicine, critical care, neurosurgery, general surgery, orthopedic surgery, rehabilitation, cardiology, nephrology, emergency medicine, ambulatory care and hematology/oncology.
Our pharmacy department provides centralized order entry with unit dose and IV admixture distribution. Our clinical pharmacists provide service to the entire hospital, including pharmacokinetic consultation, drug information, antimicrobial stewardship, total parenteral nutrition consultation, anticoagulation, transitions of care, patient medication education for discharge, and pharmacotherapy infusion clinic.
Clinical pharmacists are involved in hospital and medical staff education, committee participation, clinical pathway development, medication utilization evaluation, adverse drug reaction monitoring and reporting, and quality assurance and competency assessment.
The pharmacy residency program at Providence St. Mary Medical Center (PSMMC) began in 2009 and has greatly contributed to enhancing the value of patient-centered care and helping to meet quality metrics.
Since its inception, the program has grown from two to four annual resident positions. The benefits from our program have been evident through the exponential expansion of clinical pharmacy services. These services start as year-long quality improvement projects conducted by the pharmacy residents.
By the end of the program, residents will have the ability to demonstrate significant, sustainable, and cost-effective improvements to the pharmacy department, the hospital, and surrounding community. Some of our past residency projects include, but are not limited to antimicrobial stewardship program, clinical pharmacy service expansion within ambulatory care and emergency department, transitions of care, 24-hour pharmacy department, patient assistance program, hazardous drug safety program, remote intravenous compounding verification system, opioid stewardship within the emergency department, and diversification of pharmacotherapy clinic services.
