President’s Letter: Can Persistence Equal Success?

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.   Robert Collier

By Megan Ehret, PharmD, MS, BCPP-President, CPNP

As CPNP is gearing up for another inspiring Annual Meeting, I sit back to reflect on the past year and what our organization has accomplished and where we are going as a profession. Although not quite the end of our fiscal year or my term as President of CPNP, the Annual Meeting marks a chance to kick off a new committee year at face-to-face meetings, update our membership on our activities, and celebrate our successes and friendships.

In this edition of CPNP Perspectives, you will find articles detailing our focus as an organization on further developing our profession, our expertise, and our members. Additionally, we will be elaborating on these topics at the CPNP 2019 Forum on our Future on Sunday, April 7 from 5-6 PM in Salt Lake City.

These areas of focus are not new. They reflect our areas of consistent, persistent focus. They reflect years of making incremental gains that build on each other over time. They reflect staying the course on our overarching mission and vision while evaluating and implementing goals and objectives that are in sync with the realities of the external environment and the sea of change swirling around us. Ultimately, CPNP strives to:

• Grow our profession to improve outcomes for those living with mental illness, neurologic illness, and/or substance use disorders
• Share and demonstrate our expertise to other members of the health care community
• Engage our members to cultivate new leaders, amplify their impact on patient care, and to enable the future of psychiatric pharmacy

Our mantra of persistence shouldn’t be a surprise to our members. After all, we are following your lead. As psychiatric pharmacists, you have been challenged to increase awareness of the value you bring to the treatment team and prove yourselves time and time again and yet you persisted.

CPNP has persisted as well and is experiencing milestones such as:

• Record breaking memberships at 1500+ active and resident members
• Nearly 1400 student members hailing from our pharmacy schools and 45 CPNP student chapters
• Amazing pre-registrations to CPNP 2019 at 921 and counting
• Over 265 abstracts being presented at CPNP 2019
• Over 59,000 page views to our newly Pub-Med indexed Mental Health Clinician (MHC) journal

The work is never done, nor will it ever be. That’s ok-we are all in it for the long-haul. And though we will continue to chip away with persistence day after day, I look forward to pausing to celebrate our successes together at CPNP 2019 this week. Whether you are here with us in Salt Lake City or carrying the weight at your practice so your colleagues can attend, I will be raising a glass to your persistence at our Forum and our welcome reception this evening in Salt Lake City!