Episode 1: Crystal Hodge, PharmD, BCIDP

Dr. Hodge is an Associate Professor of Pharmacotherapy with the University of North Texas Health Science Center, College of Pharmacy in Fort Worth, and practices as an Infectious Diseases Clinical Specialist Pharmacist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Transcript

[00:00] Introduction

Welcome to the very first episode of the Red Ribbon Report, a podcast series where we get to hear from real people with real stories and real perspectives from the HIV workforce. I am Dr. Wari Allison, your host for today's episode, and I am the Vice President of Health Policy at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, and Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy. I am thrilled to have you join us. From HIV care professionals to researchers to patients. Our goal is to let our guests tell their stories and take us on a journey to give us a better understanding of their lives and experiences. A major objective of the series is to give future healthcare professionals insight into being part of the HIV workforce.

Today's episode is particularly special because we are not only introducing the Red Ribbon Report podcast, but we are also interviewing our very first guest. 

[01:08] About the Podcast

Before we dive in, a little bit about the podcast and how it got started. 

This podcast is part of a program called Targeted Access Knowledge and Education on HIV for Health Professions programs or “TAKE on HIV” for short. This program exists to integrate the National HIV Curriculum e-learning platform into health professions programs. High quality HIV care requires support from a wide range of health care workers and health professionals. Our program aims to help address the national shortages in the HIV workforce by creating a pipeline of future competent health care professionals adequately trained to manage the treatment and care of people with HIV.

The Red Ribbon Report will feature in-depth conversations with people working in the field of HIV, people with lived experience and their caregivers. We are interviewing a wide range of folks: clinical service providers, community health workers, pharmacists, patients, students. The interviews will explore various career paths, experiences, and key topics from the National HIV Curriculum (NHC). 

[02:24] About Dr. Crystal Hodge 

Before we start our first conversation with Dr. Crystal Hodge, I want to take a moment to thank you for being here with us today. Whether you are a health care professional, someone living with HIV, interested in learning more about HIV, or seeking a career in the HIV workforce, we are glad you are here. So, let's get started. 

Today we will be speaking with Dr. Crystal Hodge, a pharmacist with expertise in infectious disease. A little about Dr. Hodge. Dr. Hodge earned her PharmD from the University of Texas at Austin and completed a PGY 1residency at Emory University Hospital, followed by PGY two in infectious disease at Emory University Hospital Midtown. She is now an associate professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center College of Pharmacy and serves as an inpatient infectious diseases clinical specialist pharmacist at UT Southwestern Medical Center. She is board certified in infectious diseases. Her interests include multi-drug resistant infections, immunocompromised patients, fungal infections, public health, and teaching. Her research focuses on specific, targeted and optimized management of pathogens, stomp out ID through the pillars of outcomes, utilization, and therapeutics. Dr. Hodge aims to make her role obsolete by advancing patient care and public health efforts in infectious disease management. 

[03:58] Icebreaker

Dr. Allison:

So, Dr. Hodge, welcome to the Red Ribbon Report podcast. We are honored to have you here. Let's do a quick icebreaker to kick things off. So, could you tell me what was your favorite winter activity as a child? 

Dr. Hodge:

Hey Wari, it's nice to be here. I'm honored to be here. And my favorite winter activity is, kind of goes along with me being a self-proclaimed nerd in that my favorite activity is to read. And as a kid, that usually meant that I didn't read for fun a lot during school. But then when I hit that winter break season. I was buried in a book, and that was one of the first things that I did, was I was always trying to find, oh, I get to read for fun now. Like so that was my main, winter activity. 

[04:41] Who is Dr. Hodge?

Dr. Allison:

That sounds awesome. I'm a reader too. So, who is Dr.  Hodge? We've already outlined your impressive biography but tell us about who you are and your story. How did you get to where you are today? 

Dr. Hodge:

Yeah, so it's a little bit of a long story, has a lot to do with serendipity. And I'm a religious person, so I think that God had a hand in that. But for me, it actually started with a book. So probably around middle school, I read this really tragic book where this little girl died of cancer, and it broke my heart. And so, I was talking to a teacher about it, and my teacher actually helped. She was great. And she helped me come up with this idea of actually doing something about it. And don't just stay heartbroken, do something about it. And so, she came up with a way for me to create a book drive so that we could donate books to the children's hospital, where there was a pediatric cancer wing. And so that was how I first got started into actually doing things, which was kind of cool. 

The good teacher does see where things usually start, right? And I would watch the news my family every night, and I would hear about how we would have these major progressions in cancer and how HIV was a big problem. I was like, one day I'm going to grow up, I'm going to cure cancer, I'm going to cure HIV. And, you know, I had little kid dreams, right? But as I kept watching the news, they were making this progress and I was like, okay, well, they're going to cure it before I even have the chance to. So, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And then I had another good teacher, and I got to do the scientific research and design course and decided to do chemical engineering, actually.

So, I went to undergrad with chemical engineering. I was really fortunate that I did a lot of AP classes in high school, so I got to jump into some of my major sequence cloud courses, pretty much my first semester, and found out that I actually hated chemical engineering. It was not what I wanted to do, even though I had this idea that I could design drugs. So even if I couldn't find the cure to cancer or HIV anymore, maybe I could still contribute to medicine. I didn't really like chemical engineering because it seemed to be a little bit more geared towards oil and gas. And to be frank, I probably wasn't the best at it. 

But I spoke to an advisor and they actually recommended medicinal chemistry in the pharmacy program. But in order to get into pharmacy, you needed a job. So, I started working as pharmacy technician. I really fell in love with patient care. Right. And so, in the community setting, I worked at Walgreens. I had a fantastic manager, one of the best I've ever had. She helped me not only get the experience I needed prior to pharmacy school, but in pharmacy school, she was very flexible with me being in pharmacy school and let me prioritize school. And then I have like covered for the other technicians so that they could spend time with their families during breaks. Right, so that we could offset. And so, I really appreciated that. And while I was in pharmacy school, even though pharmacy was hard and ID is extremely hard to learn in school, I don't think I really realized how much I liked it until our infectious diseases, until I was actually in residency. So, when applying for residency, there were 4 or 5 different areas I wanted to go into, including infectious diseases and oncology. That was still in my brain. But then when I got into residency, I had enough of the foundation ID knowledge that when I actually got to apply it in residency, that's where I was like, “Oh no, this is cool. Like, this is where I need to be. Like, I'm actually excited to come to work every day.” So, I think it's a lot of excellent mentors and a lot of serendipitous moments of people helping me find the right path. So, since I've been practicing at ID, I've met a lot of wonderful people like you who've been able to help me get into more of the research side. I've been able to be at my practice site and working with people with HIV, and so it's been an extremely rewarding career. And then of course, the teaching piece as well. 

Dr. Allison:

Gosh, that that's amazing. And I love that bit where you said “fall in love with ID”, because I think those of us that work in the HIV field, we fall in love with it with infectious disease, right? We fall in love with HIV care and all the things that we're able to do within that.

[08:28] A career in the HIV field

Dr. Allison:

So, what led you to work specifically in a career in the HIV field, within ID, within infectious disease? Can you walk us through that journey? 

Dr. Hodge:

I mean, it's kind of a similar journey, but I would say that while I've been in infectious diseases, the fact that we're in 2024 and there are still people dying of infections like, blows my mind. I really dislike that. So, my goal and you and you alluded to this earlier is my goal is that my job won't exist because people won't need my skillset anymore. Having that goal means that I have a very public health mindset, right? How do we prevent infections? How do we prevent people from getting admitted to the hospital where I practice? Right. I think one of the miracles that is happening in medicine that I've been able to witness is how much prevention has changed in HIV, and just the dramatic journey that HIV care has gone through in the last 40 years has been phenomenal, and I have loved being able to see that change working in a HIV. It's been a lot of what I've been exposed to at the hospital setting, mostly I see people with opportunistic infections. But then how do I encourage public health pieces right into those prevention tools? How do we set up infrastructure to try to encourage greater uptake of prevention tools like PrEP, like treatment as prevention? I work in Texas. We have a reasonably sized HIV population here. For those of you that are listening, there's still about 20% of people who are even unaware that they have HIV.

The uptake of PrEP is pretty low. So how do we engage in some of that? And I think that's where a lot of our research interests have over lines or overlapped. So, I've been really blessed with different opportunities to help people, both in the hospital setting and then also through the research realm. 

[10:10] Accessibility of HIV Care

Dr. Allison:

So, one of the things I always say when I hear people say, I want my job to become obsolete, I want my job to no longer exist, is that sometimes, you know, I think we all think about the cure for HIV. And what I always say is that if the cure comes, the problem is the cure won't be available to everyone that needs it. 

Dr. Hodge:

Yeah. 

Dr. Allison:

So can you speak a little bit to that in terms of your experience of working right across the DFW area at UT Southwestern, how that plays into public health, accessibility of care, right. Accessibility of resources, and how not everybody… it's not equitable.

Dr. Hodge:

So, I will say I don't have a lot of specifics, but one thing that I can speak to is because I practice primarily at UT Southwestern, we actually don't have a lot of wraparound services for people with HIV. We don't have that infrastructure already set up. And across the street we have Parkland Hospital, who has a lot of infrastructure for people with HIV. And so oftentimes with transitions of care, it's like, “How do we connect them to Parkland’s system?” Which is a little bit of a loss for our hospital system. So, there's a lot of things that we don't have access to at the hospital that sometimes I'm relying on my colleagues at Parkland to do, for example, or some of the things that I try to advocate for, that it still blows my mind that we don't have or even things like universal HIV testing. So at Parkland, for example, every patient that's admitted is tested for HIV, which is pretty standard of care at our hospital because of concerns from what I'm told. I won't say that this is actually the truth. From what I'm told, because of legal and liability concerns, not everyone is tested for HIV when they hit the door, unless we recommend it.

So even some discrepancies in how we test for HIV are very prevalent to me on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, you're right, if a cure comes out. I hope it gets to everyone that that's even things like PrEP. With our long acting injectables, we're seeing huge discrepancies and the uptake of things like that, not just because of the information but from access. Right. How do we get the long acting injectables to the areas that need it the most? How do we get it covered by insurance? When drugs are first on the market, there's often some form of patient assistance program. But then when they're no longer on patent, that goes away. And then how do we navigate that? 

Dr. Allison:

Yeah. You speak to something that's really important. And the importance of collaboration, the importance of good referral pathways, right to help people access what they need, help patients access what they need. 

[12:36] Involvement in the HIV Care Continuum as a Pharmacist

Dr. Allison:

So, I love pharmacists. 

Dr. Hodge: 

I'm glad 

Dr. Allison:

I do, I do I you know, you know, as an ID physician, you know, I, I can't say enough about how wonderful PharmDs’ are. And in my experience, you know, you, you just you just fundamental and essential to the care team, for infectious disease and for HIV, both on the inpatient side and on the outpatient side. So, can you please describe how pharmacists can be involved in the HIV care continuum? 

Dr. Hodge:

Yeah, I was thinking about this. And this is a little bit of like a big ask, right. Because the HIV care continuum is, is pretty all encompassing. So, the technical steps are HIV diagnosis, linkage to care, receipt of HIV, medical care, retention of medical care, and then achievement and maintenance of viral suppression. Right. Those are the technical steps for the care continuum. The analogy I like to use is for any area where there is medicine involved, it's an opportunity for a pharmacist to be involved. So, in any one of those steps, there's drugs, right? There's or even the idea of preventing and trying to identify risk for the need for a drug. There's an opportunity for a pharmacist. 

And I think one of the easiest examples is to think about your community pharmacists, because they can really help there be there as a resource. It's freely accessible to pretty much everyone. They're not always a 24-hour store, but there are a lot of 24 hour stores out there where you can go and ask, like, “am I at risk for this?” Should I get testing for this? There are a lot of pharmacies that have a combination with a clinic associated with it, where you can get testing. So, can we use our community pharmacies to help identify risks for testing? Right. So that's part of that continuum. There are some states that actually let pharmacists be part of PrEP clinics, and so that they can actually administer PrEP medications, they can do some of the monitoring with labs. Texas is not one of those, unfortunately, or at least not that I'm aware of. But I do know that some of my colleagues in other states that are part of those clinics or part of rapid HIV start clinics where they can be involved, there, in addition to our community pharmacists who, by the way, I just also have to shout out immunizations because my public health brain, but there's also our ambulatory care pharmacists. So, as we get better HIV medications and people are becoming virally suppressed, HIV may no longer be their highest acuity. Disease state anymore. Are people with HIV who are virally suppressed, are living for a very, very long time. So, which is a wonderful thing. It also means that they're living old enough to have multiple medical comorbidities. Right. And so, our ambulatory care pharmacies can be a wonderful resource there to help with the multimorbidity management drug-drug interactions helps with transitions of care. I actually have, one of my colleagues here is an MK pharmacist, and she's had a couple of patients where she's like, hey, this patient can't get an appointment with us for a while. Like, what can I do in the interim? So really trying to help with those transitions. 

And then of course, there's always the infectious disease pharmacist or the HIV specialist pharmacists who can be part of that HIV clinic, who can be in the in the clinic and integrate it and really be a model. And, and parkland has several of those that I think do a wonderful job.

Dr. Allison:

Thank you for a really comprehensive answer. I just want to, for our listeners, make sure that we just define PrEP. We hear us talking about it a lot, and its pre-exposure prophylaxis and its medication that you can take now either by mouth or by an injection, to prevent, HIV. 

[16:08] Typical Day

Dr. Allison:

So, what does a typical day look like for you in your current role? I know you work here at the University of North Texas Health Science Center with it, with teaching. But I know, as you've said and our listeners have heard that you also do clinical service delivery, at UT Southwestern. What does a typical day look like for you, and in what capacity do you work with people with HIV?

Dr. Hodge:

That's a wonderful question. And I get that question. Or at least the question about what does my typical day look like? A decent amount. And actually, one of my favorite things about my job is that I don't have a typical day. I love the diversity of activities and having to wear different hats and having to think in different ways, because I find it challenging. And I and rewarding, to be perfectly honest, I want to kind of give a framework. My workload distribution is about 30% teaching, about 30% clinical, and then it varies somewhere between 20 and 25-30% research and then between ten and whatever the remainder of that would be for other service. So that could be service at the school with the IRB, or it could be service and professional organizations. So, for me that would be like the Society of Infectious Disease Pharmacists. So, it's always a balancing act, like how do you balance the different responsibilities and the different hats that you wear? I do both didactic teaching. I also do experiential teaching. So, I have students that go on rotation with me at the hospital. I do research in the clinical area, which has been overlapping and not just clinical research, but also implementation research. And that's where a lot of our joint research has been. And then I also try to do some scholarship of teaching and learning, because it's I want to be the best educator it could be. So how do I assess that it's actually working right. And how do we how do we make sure that this is something that scalable and that we can do on a larger scale?

Most of my interactions with people with HIV is at the hospital setting. When I'm at the hospital, I'm there for about a week at a time, and it's the full week. Everyone has a every clinical faculty member at the college pharmacy has a slightly different model, but my model is that I'm at the hospital for a full week, about one week a month, and I have to figure out a time that fits in between teaching so that I don't have to leave the hospital.

And then I round with both general ID consults and with transplant ID consults depending on the week when week a month and I'd. Last week I was on transplant ID, for example. I see more people with HIV on the general ed side transplant. Sometimes I'll see it because we do transplant people with HIV or with HIV positive organs from donors.

Most of the time, what I see there is like our pre-evals where I'm recommending PrEP, for example, or PEP if needed. I do work with the student organization, so like the Infectious Disease Interest Group. And so, they've done some work in the HIV realm and trying to reach out to the community, like our Aids Outreach Center. And then with different research projects like the one that we're on with TAKE on HIV and we're our local AETC. So, I'm curriculum education faculty there as well. So how can we integrate the National HIV curriculum into organizations, into our College of Pharmacy curriculum? How do we make sure that it's accessible or that my colleagues who maybe aren't ID pharmacists to know that it's a resource and they can use it as well at the hospital. So different ways, I guess 

Dr. Allison:

We love our acronyms in, in science and infectious disease. And I just want to spell out some of the acronyms that Dr.  Hodge used for the benefit of our listeners. So, she talked about PEP, which is post-exposure prophylaxis. And she talked about IRB with it, which is institutional review boards. And those are really important in research to get various permissions for things we need to do for for research.

And then Dr.  Hodge also talked about AETC and that stands for AIDS Education Training Centers, which are all across the country. And we have an AIDS Education Training Centers here at the Health Science Center. 

[19:58] What do you wish you had known when you first began working as a pharmacist in the HIV field?

Dr. Allison:

So, moving on with our conversation. Dr.  Hodge, what do you wish you had known when you first began working as a pharmacist in the HIV field?

Dr. Hodge:

So, I think as a pharmacist, it's really easy for me to get tunnel vision and focus on the drugs. But one of the biggest things that I've been learning over time is it's not just knowing what the drugs are and what's the best one, but also kind of what you alluded to earlier is how do we make it accessible? Right. And so, thinking about how the whole model works and thinking and having a little bit more holistic mind, I think it's really imperative for all of the health care team, but especially for pharmacists. And that's something that I don't think I had a great grasp of initially. And so, things like Ryan White services or patient assistance programs, how do we have those wraparound services to really make sure that we can help with transitions of care and maintenance and getting people to staying in that retention and care, I think, is a big part of it.

And understanding the business side of health care, I really shy away from the business side of health care because it's not something I find particularly enjoyable, and it can get me pretty angry sometimes. But I do think that the understanding that can be really important in making yourself more efficacious in how you take care of people. 

One of the one of the key things about making sure that we're taking care of our people with HIV and patients in general, is having more of that holistic mindset and that holistic care model. And I think that's something that we need to be advocating more. And I wish I knew more of that when I first joined the field. 

[21:23] Lessons learned

Dr. Allison:

So, what are some of the lessons learned from working with people with HIV or people with lived experience, whether that's, you know, as a carer or as a having a family member with HIV or being a friend of someone with HIV, what are some of the lessons learned?

Dr. Hodge:

So I think there are a lot of lessons that I've learned over the years in taking care of people with HIV, because I'm an impatient pharmacist, what I usually see are people who are coming in with opportunistic infections, which means that there's some barrier to access for their HIV meds, whether that is a physical barrier like they can't or, a financial barrier, or it's just something that wasn't offered, or maybe they didn't have the right follow up, or sometimes it's just that they don't want to take pills anymore. Right? Like that also happens. So I think that I've learned a lot about trying to make sure that we identify what the actual barrier is for that patient, so we can see if there are opportunities to overcome that, and making sure that we're appropriately thinking about transitions of care, because it's really easy for me to say, here's the you know, Tenofovir Alafenamide (TAF), Emtricitabine, Biktarvy, that most people are on right now. Right. And just say that's the first line, go for it. But if that's not what the person wants, because maybe they don't want to take food or they don't want to take a pill, then we have to come up with something else. And so how do we how do we navigate that? And I think that I've also learned a lot about liability and logistics in those conversations, because some of the stigma that these patients are facing comes from the fact that it's a reportable condition. Right. And so how do we how do we navigate that in the legal ramifications for making sure that we have a proper chain of custody? For example, if someone comes into the E.D. and maybe they've unfortunately been sexually assaulted there has to be a proper chain of custody for that evidence. So how do we make sure that we have that infrastructure in place? That also happens with HIV, because it's part of that testing workup. What are the legal ramifications? And people don't necessarily always want to disclose if they've got HIV. And so those are some of the things that I maybe don't always think about or didn't think about when I was initially learning the medicine behind it in the biology. And then, you know, when you think about people, people are complex.

And so, thinking about those different transitions of care opportunities and logistics. 

Dr. Allison:

That's such an important observation, right, that there's medicine, but there are people behind the medicine and the disease. Right. And people are complex, and people's lives are complex. 

[28:58] Rewarding part of working with HIV

Dr. Allison:

So, what has been the most rewarding part of working with people with HIV, or if it's not specifically that, can you tell us what has been your favorite or most impactful story that you can recall?

Dr. Hodge:

From a story perspective, I think, you know, this is just going to like adherence purposes. When I was in training, one of my residency program directors had a patient who didn't want to take a particular medication, and I forget exactly what his complaint about the pill was, but I don't know if it was the size or if it was the color or what was it. But my RPD actually just bought some like an eye mask, and as long as the patient was wearing the eye mask, they were able to take the medication fine. But if they saw it, they like triggered something in that person where they didn't want to take it. And so even just simple things like that, I think it is highlighted how impactful we can be if we actually have true conversations with people and trying to identify those barriers.

In terms of the other part, that's really rewarding for me. I love teaching about the history of HIV, and this sounds a little corny. As a pharmacist, for me to focus so much on the drugs. But my God, have the drugs changed? Like we went from some seriously toxic drugs that had to be time to very specifically, very frequently and was a huge impact on people's quality of life, not just from, taking medications all the time, but like they had significant side effects associated with it all the time. So now we're down to where most people can take one pill once a day or a long acting injectable, which is huge. Like that transition. I mean, I haven't been practicing for the whole 40-year time period, but just thinking about it gives me a lot of hope. Like we are in such a phenomenal era, not just with the drugs, but also thinking about those prevention tools I mentioned earlier and in the public health implications of that. Like, it's so cool to watch and see that trajectory and be able to teach that as well.

Dr. Allison:

That the history is important. And we have come a really, really, really long way, but we've got a long way still to go. 

[26:01] Inspiration and motivation

Dr. Allison:

How do you stay inspired and motivated to keep working in this area, to continue with this type of work? Because there are some days.

Dr. Hodge:

There are definitely some days where like what is happening, “How do we help this person?” and everything feels like that's fighting against you. 

You know, honestly, I think that's one of the reasons that I love to teach is because I have students who are really inspiring, and they want to do cool things. They're like the old version of me that thought they were going to find the cure to cancer after reading a book, right?

So, I really enjoyed teaching students and getting to focus on the, the impacts that we can make, right, or the changes that we can make. And I really enjoy being able to kind of combat their maybe their initial thought of HIV that maybe comes from a place of limited exposure or stigma and combating a lot of that misinformation and saying like, no, this is not true for this patient population, or this is not how things actually happen.

This is not how HIV is transmitted, for example. Right. Like there's the “HIV Hugs” that happens from time to time, which I think is a really cool activity. So, I think being able to combat a lot of that is really helpful for me. And, and being able to, to teach and I this is a little bit flippant, but I like to jokingly say that I am brainwashing the next era of students.

And that's kind of what I want to do. Like, I want to I want to normalize and destigmatize a lot of things, including HIV, mental health, a lot of those things. And so having that impact and focusing on the fact that I it can have an impact that way, helps recenter me and motivate me. 

Dr. Allison:

You talked about “HIV Hugs”. Could you tell us a little bit more about what that's about?

Dr. Hodge:

Yeah, I'm to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if that's the official name or not, but I know that there are different platforms that sometimes people take. The most common one that I've seen as I've been on different college campuses where people will say, have a sign, it says “free hugs” and so they're just willing to give out hugs. But it'll also say that they're HIV positive in there. And so, it's combating that stigma of people with HIV don't transmit HIV through hugs like that's not the actual mechanism of transmission. It's through their blood. And so it's okay to hug people with HIV. And so having those activities on campus and really having that opportunity to give somebody a hug, I think it's a dual piece where you get the stigma fighting piece. But also, if I'm not mistaken, I think hugs are just generally good for serotonin levels. So, I think that that's a good practice, in general. 

Dr. Allison:

The science behind why hugs make you feel good. 

Dr. Hodge:

Yeah.

Dr. Allison:

It's interesting how that same there's so much stigma associated with so many different infectious diseases. We see it over and over again. 

[28:48] Self-care

You talked about mental health, and this segues really well into the next part of our conversation. This type of work is stressful, can be stressful, and if we want longevity in it, we have to practice self-care. That becomes important. And I wonder for you, how do you do that? How do you practice self-care? What's important in that context for you? 

Dr. Hodge:

Yeah, I think self-care has like a whole spectrum of different things, right? Like what do you do in the moment? How do you what do you do as preventative? 

I think one of the biggest things for me is that I could not survive without music. Music is just so integral. And to who I am so very often have headphones in. And I know some people think it's rude, but on my value list like music is higher and I'm sorry, but it's just it helps my mental health so much.

Dr. Allison:

Don't be sorry. I'm right there with you. Music is high up there. 

Dr. Hodge:

Yeah, it's. And I need it loud most of the time. It depends on what my mood is. Right. So, it varies, but I need it to be loud where it resonates, and it can block out all the rest. And that's really when it's the most helpful, when it can block everything out.

Some of the other things that I do is like deep breaths. I, I've already mentioned I'm a religious person, so prayer can be really helpful. I also have a really lovable, goober of a dog who just makes me smile. And I love that. Or I hang out with my cat and my husband. And then, you know, I'm always a fan of the classic, like, hot baths and a good book. So those types of things can be really helpful to help me recenter.

Dr. Allison:

I love that your cat and your husband are in the same sentence. 

[30:15] Message to future pharmacists

Dr. Allison:

So, what would you like to say to anyone who may be interested in becoming a pharmacist? You can do it. And I don't mean that to be like the cheesy way, but I mean it does apply to just about anyone with a dream.

Dr. Hodge:

It's a little bit casual for me to say that anyone who wants to go into pharmacy can go into pharmacy, or if they're trying to figure out the different fields. One thing that I like to say is like, if you like medicine, but you don't really like to touch people, you like to have your bubble. And you may want to consider pharmacy, for example, because I'm not a provider, so I don't have to do physical exams.

I know in some states that can change a little bit, but that's not something that I personally want. I'm a little bit too much of a germaphobe for that. So that's one way to think about it, is I actually really like the medicine side, and I like to help people, but I don't necessarily need that, like physical interaction piece or some of the other pieces that come with that.

But being a pharmacist is really hard. I'm really lucky to have found this profession, but it is such a dynamic area. It's constantly changing. Like I said earlier, pretty much any place that has drugs, you can find a little niche for yourself. There's even veterinary medicine for pharmacists. There are pharmacists that go into cosmetology, but basically, if you like problem solving, and you like having that balance of patient care needs and like, what's the best evidence and I think pharmacy is a great field to go into.

I really like the drug side. Right. And for me, it's all about how do I have the most effective kill of microorganisms and pathogens so that I can potentially cure someone, right, with HIV. You know, 40 years into it, we still don't have a cure, which is a little frustrating, but we're making a lot of progress. And so how do we eventually get there?

For me, it's all about the about the cure. And so, I would say for anybody who wants to be in pharmacy or just thinking about pharmacy, find if there's an area within pharmacy that you like, whether it's community, whether it's clinical, whether it's like chemo, there's even an area growing and drug information. Pharmacists find a niche within it that you are interested in and go shadow somebody in those fields and follow them around for a couple days or a couple hours, maybe a couple days in different areas, see if it's something that you really like.

I personally think that having a job within pharmacy before pharmacy school is a great way to see if you like pharmacy or not. There are people who go into like being a medical scribe at a clinic or being an, I.V. room technician. Those are other options as well. You don't have to have a plan to go in, but you need to have an idea of why, right, why you want to go into it and why pharmacy over being are going into a DO school or nursing school. Right. And so how do you differentiate those things? For me, it's the patient care piece. I love patients, but I don't necessarily want to have the direct interactions all the time. And that's one of the reasons why I'm inpatient as well. Of course, I think infectious diseases is the coolest field within pharmacy, but I'm only significantly biased. 

[33:06] Conclusion

Dr. Allison:

So, thank you for a great conversation, Dr.  Hodge. 

That brings us to the end of today's episode of the Red Ribbon Report. Stay tuned, because in our next episode, we're going to dive into Dr.  Hodge's insights on the HIV workforce shortage in HIV education. 

We want to thank you, the listeners, for joining us today. If you liked what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to the Red Ribbon Report so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to talk about us on your social media. Join us again next time for the Red Ribbon Report, where we bring real people with real stories and real perspectives from the HIV workforce. Until next time we look forward to sharing HIV workforce conversations. 

[33:51 Credits]

The production of the Red Ribbon Report podcast is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant number HRSA-22-022 and AIDS Education and Training Centers Program (TAKE on HIV). This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.