Conferences & Meetings - Iowa Pharmacy Association College Night

My speech for Iowa Pharmacy Association College Night 
(I was asked to be a IPA College Night panelist to discuss IPA student opportunities)

Good evening everyone! I am Shiny Parsai and I am a third year pharmacy student.

So I like to think of IPA as a good craft beer.  Just like a good beer there are so many flavors to fit everyone’s palette and also you can brew your own.  Iowa Pharmacy Association is very similar because there are opportunities in IPA that would fit your own personal palette and you can brew your personal brand of advocacy.

So how did I become involved in IPA?

I became involved in IPA by attending College Night two years ago and listening to how other pharmacy students and pharmacists have been involved. I was impressed by all the unique opportunities and I wanted to learn more about pharmacy at the state level.  Each year, IPA has several committees and task forces for students to be involved in and I began by serving as a student on the Health System Liason Board.

Serving on the board helped me gain a deeper understanding about the Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative.  This summer, I called pharmacy directors across the state of Iowa, encouraging them to complete the hospital self-assessment survey created by the American Society of Health System Pharmacists. The survey assesses how pharmacists provide care in the health system setting.  It looks at what services pharmacists should be providing and what technology can be used to enhance those services with the ultimate goal of advancing pharmacy practice.

In addition to serving on the Health System Liason Board, I also attended the IPA annual meeting and recently the Bill Burke Leadership Conference.  Though I did not realize it at the time, being involved in IPA has helped me be more aware and passionate about issues in the pharmacy profession such as PPMI, provider status, tech-check-tech, and tele pharmacy.  IPA is a great way for you to engage and to learn about these and numerous other pharmacy issues. 

So as you sit here today, wondering if and how you should become involved in IPA…I encourage you to try something new within IPA and to gain a deeper understanding of our profession.  I know pharmacy school is hard, there a lot of long days and nights as we all work towards our goals.  If you are waiting for the right time to be involved, to engage, and to learn…I am here to tell you that the time is now.  And while you work on your dreams to become a pharmacist, remember that IPA is right there with you…working to develop the practice setting, the job, and the recognition that you want as pharmacists when you graduate.  So I challenge you to dream big, innovate, and to brew your personal brand of advocacy in pharmacy.  Thanks for your time. 

Poster - 2014 American College of Clinical Pharmacy Annual Meeting

My poster for the 2014 American College of Clinical Pharmacy Annual Meeting

My abstract for the 2014 American College of Clinical Pharmacy Annual Meeting

Systematic Literature Review of Randomized Controlled Trials to Evaluate the Efficacy of Medical Marijuana for Analgesia

Shiny Parsai, M.S., Pharm.D. Candidate, Ronald A. Herman, Ph.D.; The University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, Sarah J. Johnson, Pharm.D., BCPS-AQ ID; The University of Iowa Healthcare

Purpose: Medical marijuana has had an evolving and controversial role for the treatment of pain.  This review summarizes and evaluates the current evidence from randomized controlled trials to examine the efficacy of medical marijuana as an analgesic. Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted using PubMed, IDIS, IPA, and CINAHL databases.  Articles were included if analgesia was a measured outcome in humans, the intervention involved tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or derivative, was a randomized controlled trial, and was in English. Two authors did an initial screen of the abstracts to eliminate irrelevant articles and then a detailed review of the full text to identify the articles to be included in the evidence tables.  The third author reconciled differences if there was not a consensus. Data extraction included author name, date, type of pain, sample size, study design, intervention, efficacy, and adverse effects.  Evidence was organized and analyzed in separate evidence tables by type of intervention: inhaled cannabis, oral cannabis extracts, dronabinol, THC+CBD spray, and synthetic analogs. Results:  The initial literature search produced 133 unique articles.  Systematic review of abstracts, yielded 66 for full text review and 67 were excluded.   Full text review resulted in 48 articles to be included in the evidence tables. Conclusions:  Across each intervention type at least half of the studies showed a reduction in pain scores when compared to placebo.  There were 11 of 48 studies that indicated no difference from placebo for analgesia, with at least one study in each intervention type. There were 6 studies that compared the THC compound to another analgesic. It was not different from ibuprofen in one study, diphenhydramine in another study, and it was equivalent to codeine in two studies.  It was inferior to dihydrocodeine and to morphine in separate studies.  Adverse events were a concern in some of the studies.

Abstract - 2013 Obesity Society Annual Meeting

My abstract for the 2013 Obesity Society Annual Meeting

Subjective and Objective Methods to Examine Sleep Amount in Free-Living Families

Shiny Parsai, Randal Foster, Lorraine M. Lanningham-Foster Ames, IA

Background: Obesity and sleep insufficiency appear to be linked, possibly due to excess energy intake during wake time contributing to weight gain. To better understand the relationship between insufficient sleep and obesity, we need accurate and practical tools to quantify sleep. The purpose of this study was to compare two objective tools and one subjective tool to study sleep in free-living families. Methods: The study included 18 families (10 men, 17 women, 11 boys, and 5 girls). Subjects participated in a week-long study to monitor their sleep using an accelerometer (MSR145), a pattern-recognition system (SenseWear WMS® Mini armband), and sleep logs. BMI was calculated using height and weight and body composition was measured using air displacement plethysmography (BOD POD®). The objective tools were compared to the sleep log using regression analyses. Post-hoc tests were used with ANOVA and ANCOVA with a Bonferroni correction applied to give an overall significance level of P < 0.05. Results: The objective tools estimated similar sleep duration data from the subjects when compared with the sleep log. The accelerometer had a better correlation than the pattern recognition system when compared with the sleep log (0.399 vs. 0.1785, respectively).  Sleep duration was inversely correlated with age for all measurement tools. Conclusions: Future additional studies targeting free-living families to study sleep amount and obesity using these objective tools would be beneficial. It is also possible that the relationship between sleep duration and obesity may be explored in existing data sets where these objective measurement tools have been employed for other purposes such as physical activity assessment.