Board Profile: Avery Spunt, ICHP President
by Rochelle Rubin, Pharm.D. and Huzefa Master, Pharm.D., BCPS
September 12, 2008
Professor
Avery Spunt, RPh, Med, FASHP is currently Associate Dean for Clinical
Affairs and Director of Experiential Education at Midwestern University
Chicago College of Pharmacy. He graduated from the University of
Illinois, College of Pharmacy (UIC) and entered the Marines shortly
after graduation. When he got out of the Marines, he considered two
career choices: hospital pharmacy practice or law enforcement. Since
Professor Spunt did not get the law enforcement job he desired, fate
landed him in the hospital pharmacy position and a rewarding career
began.
He started at the University of Illinois Research and
Education Hospital (R&E Hospital) as a staff pharmacist. When
Richard Hutchinson joined the hospital as the new Director of Pharmacy,
clinical pharmacy was born in Illinois and Avery’s career changed. Dr.
Hutchinson was a Michigan trained Pharm.D. who brought in other Doctors
of Pharmacy with clinical training to R&E Hospital. For an entire
year, Avery worked the evening shift in a satellite pharmacy, which
“felt like a residency”. His achievements at the hospital included
establishing the unit dose system for patients and eventually
developing his own neurology and neurosurgery service with Dr. Garvin
and Dr. Sugar, two very influential physicians in Avery’s life. He was
able to reduce medication errors through this service which validated
the need for a pharmacist on the service and resulted in Avery’s
service in this capacity for the next 12 years.
Later Professor
Spunt pursued a Master’s degree in Education and took on more
significant roles within the College of Pharmacy. In 1991 he was
appointed the Assistant Head of Pharmacy Practice at UIC. Finally,
after 31 years of service at the UIC, he took his retirement because
“it provided an outlet to explore other opportunities”.
The
first opportunity he embarked upon was at the National Association of
Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) where he oversaw the NAPLEX, MPJE, FPGEC
exams, and Continuing Professional Development as the Competency
Assessment Director, or the “testing director” as he fondly refers to
it. Professor Spunt loved the job, but he wanted to teach and have the
opportunity to speak out on issues in pharmacy. As an employee of a
national organization he couldn’t express his views on Illinois
pharmacy. When an opportunity at Midwestern University, Chicago College
of Pharmacy became available, he applied for and accepted the position
as the Assistant Dean and Director of Experiential Education; he was
later promoted to the Associate Dean position he currently holds. Avery
stated that he has been blessed with great
bosses/supervisors/colleagues and worked with the brightest and best in
pharmacy throughout his career.
Professor Spunt’s desire to get
involved with ICHP began when he met many role models in institutional
pharmacy and higher education at local meetings. He met so many great
leaders that he wanted to be a part of the positive changes in pharmacy
that were happening at that time. Avery’s greatest mentor in his career
was Larry Boh from the University of Wisconsin, who he praises for his
contemporary mind and describes as a brilliant clinician and educator.
Throughout his career, ICHP and his mentors gave Avery the idea that
any person could change the world. As he developed in his own career,
he wanted to be that role model in the classroom and organizations.
Avery would love to see current younger and midlevel practitioners who
are members of ICHP get more involved to continue to change the
profession for the better.
Outside of his career, Avery loves
watching sports live and on television, but he asks that you do not ask
him a lot of trivia questions because he doesn’t necessarily memorize
the statistics. He supports his teams, mainly the Chicago White Sox,
Bears, and Bulls, and is proud to say that he was able to watch the
Bulls in the big run for championships. He is also an avid
photographer. In fact, he did press photography during pharmacy school
and after graduation, and his work has been published in many
newspapers and magazines.
Professor Spunt has had a long and
distinguished career in pharmacy. His vision for the future of pharmacy
includes a profession where every pharmacy graduate starts as a true
basic pharmacy clinician, then can pursue additional training in
marketing or research, for example, to achieve his own career goals. He
believes that there should be consistency for every interaction between
a patient and a pharmacist. For example, he hopes that one day every
pharmacist will interview all patients to establish their past medical
history and current medication regimen at each interaction. He also
believes that pharmacists should not have to explain what they do; the
world should know what to expect when seeing a pharmacist. Ultimately,
this will only happen if the profession adopts standards of care to
which all pharmacy practitioners adhere. With all the changes in the
pharmacy profession that Avery has witnessed in his career, his vision
seems attainable.
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