GLUCOTROL AND GOOGLE: PROFESSOR WORKS TOWARD RELIABLE DRUG INFORMATION

News – The Bengal
Madison Shumway
Staff Writer
Pharmacy professor Rebecca Hoover wants healthcare providers to know how to find reliable information about prescription drugs, and a recently awarded grant may help.
The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy gave its New Investigator Award, which funds the independent research and conference travel of 16 early-career pharmacy faculty members across the country, to Hoover, a clinical assistant professor in the Pharmacy Practice and Administrative Sciences department.
The grant will allow Hoover to develop her proposal, “Drug Information Education for Students in Non-Pharmacy, Non-Prescribing Health Professions,” and investigate how drug information research skills can best be taught.
“This grant has been such a game-changer in that it’s allowing me to physically do the work by taking some colleagues to help me analyze it,” Hoover said. “Also, I’ll be able to go to a conference here in a few years and be able to share that research.”
Drug information is Hoover’s specialty. She completed a specialty residency in drug information before coming to Idaho State in 2013. The field combines pharmacy with communications and education with the goal of providing reliable resources for healthcare providers and patients.
Hoover found her way to her career in drug information after earning bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry, microbiology and English from the University of Idaho and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
This background of science and arts aids her as a pharmacist, she said.
“Communications is such a big component of healthcare, and being able to educate your patients … that fundamental communication component is priceless,” Hoover said. “I think people really underrate it.”
Hoover, the current director of Idaho Drug Information Center, sees a need for both accurate drug information resources and instruction in finding reliable ones.
There’s a crucial difference, she said, between websites like WebMD and databases like the one ...


Read more