As I left off before the holidays, I had just wrapped up my last pharmaceutical industry fellowship program interviews at the ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exposition. A silent cloud fell over the life of “Ami” as employers regrouped to discuss the next steps for their candidates. I was walking along Santa Monica pier when I received my fourth and final onsite interview offer. Who? Me? Are you sure? I was astonished that different groups and partner companies were willing to give me the opportunity to meet their teams onsite and interview with them. This was an incredibly humbling moment to realize that my hard work and dedication over the past 5 and half years were coming to fruition.

It was different times for pharmacists and pharmacy in the 1960s; the name of the medication rarely appeared on the prescription container label unless specifically requested by the prescriber, and pharmacists were not to discuss therapy with patients, deflecting all such questions back to the physician. Patient-centered thinking was just beginning to be adopted by the profession and incorporated into the education and training of pharmacists. It was not until later that the profession embraced, thru adoption of the Code of Ethics for Pharmacists, a statement that the goal of the profession was to assist patients with getting the best outcomes from their therapy.

Also during this era, the role and potential contributions of student pharmacists to APhA and the profession was gaining momentum. 

You know you are chronologically old when a colleague invites you to provide a retrospective of APhA–ASP events as you’ve seen them throughout your years with APhA–ASP. The perspective is part insider and part outsider, just as Tinkerbell said to Peter Pan: “You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming?” 

APhA–ASP has undergone many changes in 50 years, but I only can speak to 41 of them.