Dr. Andrea Sikora, Clinical Associate Professor at the extended campus in Augusta, is the guest editor for a Critical Care theme issue of the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacists (AJHP) published this week. Dr. Sikora recruited critical care scholars and clinicians from across the country to write articles for this carefully crafted issue that maps the next steps for the field of critical care pharmacy. Her editorial, by the same title, frames the special issue, describing how the collection of articles “take a scoping approach, examining the current state of critical care pharmacy, including best practices and core elements of an aspirational future state, before incisively analyzing both core opportunities and threats to that future.” This highly anticipated issue lays the groundwork for the future of critical care pharmacy.

Several UGA faculty and alumni are featured authors in this issue, including:

• Defining the “ideal state”: A primer on critical care pharmacy practice models – Susan Smith
• Heterogeneity, Bayesian thinking, and phenotyping in critical care: A primer – Timothy Jones (alumni) and Aaron Chase (alumni)
• The road less traveled: Developing pharmacist clinician-scientists through divergent training pathways – Christy Forehand (adjunct faculty)
• How critical is it? Integrating critical care into the pharmacy didactic curriculum – Trisha Branan, Andrew Darley, and Anthony Hawkins
• Queue the quarter life crisis: The value of mentorship for early career pharmacists – Pam Ku (Wellstar MCG/UGA preceptor) and Kelli Keats (alumni of UGA residency program and Wellstar MCG/UGA preceptor)