School of Pharmacy Graduate Continues to Innovate

Adaptability is a valuable asset in a rapidly changing world, especially the uncertain world of 2020. It’s a skill Julia Chisholm honed at the University of Wyoming and one she uses every day as the ambulatory pharmacy operations manager at the University of Missouri.

“Responding to COVID, you never know what’s coming, and you never know what’s next,” she says. “When we started, we didn’t know if it was a sprint or a marathon, and I think we’re somewhere in between.”

A Missouri native, Chisholm came to UW seeking new experiences. She found plenty of those between swimming and diving team freshman year and the Tri-Delta sorority, and it didn’t take Chisholm long to dig into her true passion: health care.

“The field of health care has always fascinated me,” she says. “My first job was actually as a pharmacy clerk. My friend’s mom was a pharmacist, so I was able to help in high school as a cashier. I fell in love with the way you have interactions with patients. You’re able to provide education in a more consumer-facing environment, and I’ve really just loved pharmacy ever since.”

By her sophomore year at UW, Chisholm had enrolled in the School of Pharmacy. Three years later, Chisholm, like other fourth-year pharmacy students, started doing rotations—leaving the classroom to gain hands-on experience in the wider world.

“What I really liked about UW was you are able to build out a custom program to match your interests—as long as you meet all your requirements,” she says. “So I was able to set up a rotation in another place that didn’t already exist. I really liked the flexibility. It was the first time I was really encouraged to think outside the box.”

Chisholm’s rotations brought her many places, including Phoenix, Ariz.

“While at UW, I spent my summers in Phoenix while on an internship, so I was what they call a reverse snowbird—in Phoenix for the summer and Laramie for the winter,” she says. “I knew that I loved the warmth, so after I graduated, I moved to Phoenix and started practicing in a retail pharmacy setting with a focus in HIV and infectious diseases.”

Chisholm spent seven years in Arizona before making the big move back to her home state of Missouri. The move also represented a change in her role as a health care professional.

“Now I’m in more of a leadership role, so I get to grow my team of people that helps front-line patients,” Chisholm says. “I really like the transition I made about eight years ago into leadership, especially as a woman in an academic medical center, being able to think outside the box and bring new innovative ideas to solve problems in rural and suburban health care.”

Navigating the challenges of rural health care was one of many skills Chisholm picked up at UW.

“Wyoming was really a good place to learn that,” she says. “With more cows than people in the state, you have to think about different ways to deliver health care wherever patients are.”

That entails a number of creative ideas—from delivering prescriptions in unconventional ways to patient instruction via teleconference. And all of these challenges and considerations have become more pressing in the face of the coronavirus.

“Patient care doesn’t take a break for a pandemic—it actually steps up,” Chisholm says. “We were thinking about different ways to reach those patients who maybe were not able to have the same public transportation that they used to, not able to have visitors accompany them to medical appointments or to pick up their medications from the pharmacy.”

Chisholm has demonstrated an ability to innovate in other ways, returning to school in 2018 to earn an MBA from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville. Chisholm says the new degree is helping her advocate more effectively for her patients.

“I was really passionate about the patient care side, and I know what it’s like to be a clinician,” she says. “The next step for me was to understand not just the language of health care but the language of business.”

Throughout it all, Chisholm says she stays in touch with her fellow School of Pharmacy alumni.

“The network of pharmacy is small, so there are several of us sprinkled across the county who really unite because we all went to UW and have some similar experiences,” she says. “I really enjoy, at national meetings, getting to go back and see the faculty who are still there, as well as learn about some of the other graduates. We stay in touch with fellow alumni through the profession of pharmacy.”