Like many health professionals who choose to dedicate their lives to helping others, Rebecca O\u2019Toole\u2019s career path was directed by a harrowing personal experience, which, while stressful and frightening, ultimately proved inspiring thanks to the compassion of the health-care workers on the case.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Toole was already a student in the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy but had yet to decide on a specialty when her mom was hospitalized with a serious infection that landed her in the intensive care unit. The Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, native rushed home to be with her family while her mother was placed on a ventilator, where she would remain for more than a month before making a full recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s totally fine now, but going through that experience really drove my interest in infectious disease and critical care,\u201d O\u2019Toole said. \u201cShe was there for an infection and they didn\u2019t know what was going on. We had to just sit and watch. The doctors were really amazing and saved her life, and I knew the pharmacists were part of that team behind the scenes. I thought, I could be that person for someone else; that\u2019s what I want to do. And I get to go do that now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Studying pharmacy was a natural fit for O\u2019Toole. A self-described \u201chuge nerd\u201d who loves reading science fiction novels and playing strategic board games like \u201cSettlers of Catan,\u201d O\u2019Toole always had a fascination for chemistry and biology, to go along with a passion for helping others. \u201cSo all these things kind of naturally pushed me toward a career in pharmacy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The ability to earn a Doctor of Pharmacy degree in just six years through the URI College of Pharmacy\u2019s 0-6 program\u2014in which students earn their undergraduate and graduate degrees within the same program without having to reapply to graduate school after finishing gen eds\u2014was a huge draw for O\u2019Toole. So was the flexibility the college allows students to pursue interests outside the notoriously demanding major, a luxury not all pharmacy schools offer students.<\/p>\n
\u201cURI\u2019s 0-6 program jumped to the top of my list, so I decided to come for a visit. When I stepped on campus, I absolutely fell in love with the beautiful trees, the beautiful buildings,\u201d O\u2019Toole said. \u201cI fell in love with the program and the flexibility they offered, especially allowing me to study abroad during my sophomore year, which was something that was really important to me. A lot of pharmacy degree programs are very prescriptive \u2026 you do this, then this, then this. You don\u2019t get to make a lot of choices. But that\u2019s not what I saw when I looked at URI\u2019s program. Having that super supportive environment where you can explore any interest, that\u2019s what drew me in.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Toole embraced that flexibility, studying art and history in addition to the demanding pharmacy curriculum, and traveled to Florence, Italy, to study for a semester during her sophomore year.<\/p>\n
She also embraced the wealth of experiential opportunities the college offers, beginning with a research assignment in Dean (then-professor) Kerry LaPlante\u2019s lab at the Providence VA Medical Center. She partnered with professionals from the Cleveland Clinic on a research project on telehealth prescriptions of antibiotics, which was published in the journal Clinical and Infectious Disease<\/em>. She also served clinical rotations at Women & Infants Hospital, Miriam Hospital, Roger Williams Medical Center, Genoa Pharmacy, and Rhode Island Physicians Inc.<\/p>\n She then got an opportunity with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s Office of Antimicrobial Stewardship, working on projects that fit perfectly with her interest in infectious disease. She helped merge drug databases to be used to analyze outpatient antibiotic use, updated the CDC\u2019s penicillin allergy fact sheet with new data, and created an interactive antimicrobial stewardship map for the CDC website.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was awesome; they really integrated me into the team right away,\u201d O\u2019Toole said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like I was doing busy work. I knew they were projects that were going to have an impact down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Toole will continue making an impact on health and health care after graduating with her Pharm.D. degree in May. She has already secured a position as a resident pharmacist at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver, where she plans to continue her research into infectious disease and critical care. In the future, she sees herself working on a critical care team in a hospital, and ultimately hopes to one day coordinate her own antimicrobial stewardship program. Teaching could also be in her future.<\/p>\n \u201cWith my own antimicrobial stewardship program, I\u2019d be able to precept and have my own students so I can pass along all I\u2019ve learned to them,\u201d O\u2019Toole said. \u201cMaybe further down the line, split my role between being a clinical pharmacist and a professor working in academia like all the wonderful professors here.\u201d<\/p>\n For now, O\u2019Toole is excited to celebrate her graduation with a cross-country road trip to visit family members scattered throughout the Midwest, enroute to her new home in Denver.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a fun mix of excited and nervous about moving across the country. I love going for walks on the beach; moving to Denver, I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be walks in the mountains,\u201d said O\u2019Toole, noting mentors like LaPlante and professors Todd Brothers and Kristina Ward have prepared her well for future endeavors. \u201cURI has given me everything I could possibly need. I would never change my decision to come here. It was the best experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like many health professionals who choose to dedicate their lives to helping others, Rebecca O\u2019Toole\u2019s career path was directed by a harrowing personal experience, which, while stressful and frightening, ultimately proved inspiring thanks to the compassion of the health-care workers on the case. O\u2019Toole was already a student in the University of Rhode Island College […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":53225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[35,1260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-pharmdmba"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53227,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53224\/revisions\/53227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}