PGY2 Infectious Diseases Pharmacy Residency Program

This residency offers a broad and diverse array of learning experiences in the specialty practice of infectious diseases. Graduating residents go on to work in a variety of settings, ranging from inpatient to outpatient to academia.

Wake Forest Baptist Health offers a one-year PGY2 Infectious Diseases residency designed to provide experiences in all areas of ID pharmacotherapy. An emphasis is placed on clinical practice and antimicrobial stewardship. One position is available each year. This residency is accredited by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP).

Purpose:

The PGY2 Infectious Diseases Pharmacy Residency builds on Doctor of Pharmacy education and the PGY1 pharmacy residency program to contribute to the development of clinical pharmacists in the specialty of infectious diseases. This program provides residents with opportunities to function independently as practitioners by conceptualizing and integrating accumulated experience and knowledge and incorporating both into the provision of patient care or other advanced practice settings. Residents who successfully complete this ASHP-accredited PGY2 pharmacy residency are prepared for advanced patient care, academic, or other specialized positions, along with board certification. 

Key outcomes of training in this program include:

• Provide pharmaceutical care to patients with infectious diseases through participation on interdisciplinary teams to ensure safe, effective and appropriate antimicrobial therapy.
• Develop professional and interpersonal skills to become a confident, competent and caring practitioner.
• Apply principles of antimicrobial stewardship to clinical practice to affect patient outcomes and antimicrobial resistance in a positive way.
• Provide education effectively to health care professionals, trainees and patients.
• Develop skills to perform clinical and in vitro research as it applies to the care of patients with infectious diseases.
• Manage multiple aspects of a contemporary pharmacy practice.

Why Wake Forest Baptist?

See it All!

Wake Forest Baptist is a health care system composed of an academic medical center surrounded by multiple community hospitals and a network of clinics. The geographic referral area for Wake Forest Baptist is large, and the patient population served by Wake Forest Baptist is diverse. This means the PGY2 ID resident will gain experience managing a wide array of infections, ranging from common cases of pneumonia to rare mold infections and everything in between. 

Comprehensive Training

The Wake Forest Baptist PGY2 ID residency provides training experiences in all major ID practice areas. Whether it’s the inpatient consultative service or the antimicrobial stewardship service or the ID clinic, the resident will gain the skills needed to take on any ID role. This comprehensive training helps ensure the resident gets their preferred job after graduation.

Academic Team Environment

As a preeminent academic medical center in North Carolina, patient care services at Wake Forest Baptist are staffed by multidisciplinary teams composed of physicians, pharmacists, nurses and learners. There is a long-standing history of integrated pharmacy services at Wake Forest Baptist. Physicians value input from pharmacists and respect their contribution to patient care. The academic team environment affords optimal learning opportunities for the PGY2 ID resident.

Unique Experiences

The learning experiences offered to the Wake Forest Baptist PGY2 ID resident are not available at other programs. Here are some examples of these experiences.

• Gain first-hand experience with one of the nation’s only ID clinics run by a Clinical Pharmacist Practitioner (CPP)
• Participate as a member of the Center for Antimicrobial Utilization, Stewardship and Epidemiology (CAUSE), the Wake Forest Baptist antimicrobial stewardship program
• Provide on-call service for the CAUSE pager, the institution’s mechanism to review requests for authorization of restricted antimicrobials and provide advice or guidance about antimicrobial therapy
• Serve as secretary of the Antimicrobial Subcommittee of P&T
• Participate in collaborative initiatives with the microbiology lab (e.g. constructing the antibiogram, contributing content to guide interpretation of results, developing rules for reporting susceptibilities)
• Attend weekly Micro Lab Rounds where the resident gains specialized knowledge about pathogens and diagnostic lab tests in a show-and-tell format
• Join forces with faculty at a local School of Pharmacy to provide antimicrobial education to pharmacy students during the Academia learning experience
• Co-precept pharmacy students and PGY1 residents on the ID Consult services

Commitment to Research

An emphasis is placed on active participation in research by the PGY-2 ID resident at Wake Forest Baptist. Opportunities include both clinical outcomes research as well as in vitro or microbiology projects. Research projects completed by the PGY-2 ID resident often lead to publications or presentations at national meetings.