MacDougall named Divine Family Endowed Chair in Clinical Pharmacy

Conan MacDougall, PharmD, MAS, has been selected as the new holder of the Divine Family Endowed Chair in Clinical Pharmacy. The chair was created in 2003 by Philmore G. Divine, a 1945 UCSF pharmacy school graduate, to “support the research, teaching and service activities of the holder of the Chair related to his or her work in the area of clinical pharmacy.”

Divine, who died in 2006, was an entrepreneur and industry leader in the development of wholesale drug ordering and drug distribution systems used by pharmacists and hospitals. MacDougall, a faculty member in the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy, will apply investment income from the endowment principal to investigate models of therapeutic reasoning used by pharmacists and other health care providers.

Therapeutic reasoning is the process that leads to the selection of a therapeutic course of action in an individual patient. This differs from what is known as diagnostic reasoning, which is the process that leads to the medical diagnosis of an individual patient case. While the latter has been studied extensively, the process of therapeutic reasoning has not, explained MacDougall.

The results of diagnostic reasoning studies have been used to “design methods to more effectively teach medical trainees on making diagnoses, and in identifying practitioners who are expert diagnosticians,” MacDougall added. “Greater insight into the therapeutic reasoning process should be similarly useful in the design of instruction in therapeutics for pharmacy learners, pharmacists, and other health care professionals.”

MacDougall will hold the Divine Family Endowed Chair in Clinical Pharmacy through June 2020. The position rotates among Department of Clinical Pharmacy faculty members every two years and is awarded through a competitive review.

The minimum required to establish a UC San Francisco endowed faculty professorship is $1 million. “Endowments, such as the Divine chair, help ensure the ongoing quality of our work in the School as we continue our relentless questioning and methodical approach to discovery—all with the health of the patient as our goal,” said B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, UCSF School of Pharmacy dean. “We are very grateful to the Divine family for the clinical pharmacy inroads this endowment will make possible into the future.”

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About the School: The UCSF School of Pharmacy aims to solve the most pressing health care problems and strives to ensure that each patient receives the safest, most effective treatments. Our discoveries seed the development of novel therapies, and our researchers consistently lead the nation in NIH funding. The School’s doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree program, with its unique emphasis on scientific thinking, prepares students to be critical thinkers and leaders in their field.