Longtime ISMP Vice President Judy Smetzer, BSN, RN, FISMP, has announced that she will be retiring at the end of February, but will continue as a contract employee for several months to help transition her position responsibilities. Judy has been one of the leading voices in the field of medication safety. She started with ISMP as a Fellow in 1997, and has served as one of the primary authors and editors of the five ISMP newsletters, which currently reach more than 1.5 million subscribers.
For the past 25 years, she has been one of the chief writers and editors for the ISMP Medication Safety Alert!® Acute Care newsletter. She has been one of the editors for the ISMP Medication Safety Alert! ® Nurse AdviseERR® and ISMP Medication Safety Alert!® Safe Medicine® newsletters for 20 years, and the ISMP Medication Safety Alert! Long-Term Care AdviseERRTM for nine years. Judy also has helped lead landmark ISMP studies associated with medication safety funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including ISMP’s medication safety self-assessments.
She is a certified trainer in Just Culture and has educated numerous healthcare organizations about the need to provide support for practitioners who are “second victims” of adverse events. Three annual honorary scholarships have been established in her name to help healthcare practitioners earn certification in Just Culture (https://www.ismp.org/news/just-culture-company-and-ismp-announce-creation-honorary-judy-smetzer-scholarships).
Judy’s tireless work in medication safety has been recognized by the American Public Health Association’s Avedis Donabedian Award and the Terra Pharma Way-Paver for BPOC Award, and she is the only nurse to have received the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Board of Directors Award of Honor.
Ann Shastay, MSN, RN, AOCN, who has served as ISMP’s Managing Editor since 2008, has been promoted to Senior Manager of Publications. She will oversee the review, editing, and production of all ISMP newsletters, as well as other tools and documents posted on ISMP’s website.
For more about Judy and Ann, visit: https://www.ismp.org/about/staff.