Michael Phan, PharmD, ('18)

Michael Phan, PharmD (’18)

Hello – my name’s Michael Phan and I graduated as part of CUSP’s inaugural Pharm.D. cohort in 2018. I’m currently doing a fellowship under the tutelage of Dr. Daniel Tomaszewski here at CUSP, where we are researching pediatric pain management. In my free time, I enjoy being active! Hiking, exploring state and national parks, biking… as well as some sports such as tennis and snowboarding. When I have less free time, I usually spend my short breaks looking at cute animal videos.

Career

I started this fellowship in August of 2018 and have remained here since then. As I mentioned earlier, my work is focused on research in the pediatric setting. The primary scope of it focuses on pain management – specifically opioid use – in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. Most of the research is conducted at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), which has provided me an opportunity to work with various workers in the healthcare field. It’s been fun to be a part of so many collaborative teams to improve our healthcare methods and ultimately our patients’ lives.

Goals as Alumni Advisory Board Member

My primary goal is to strengthen professional alumni engagement. A strong alumni community can be beneficial for a variety of reasons; having a large cohesive group of alumni will help develop important services such as providing career support, social engagement, and community service. To do this, the value must be created within the organization, which can be accomplished by having meaningful socials and providing opportunities for careers.

Memories at CUSP

There are plenty of great memories that I had at CUSP. Some of my fondest memories are shared with each of my cohort’s class presidents, who are all fellow AAB members. I remember how Jackson Tran, our P1 class president, booked a party bus for our inaugural formal which ended up attracting a few of our professors onboard. In our final didactic trimester (T6), our P2 class president, Michael Sayer, would bring a cooler full of ice cream and popsicles every Wednesday for the entire trimester to cheer everyone through the tough curriculum. And for our final graduation banquet, Lauren Dea, our P3 class president, planned one of the best banquets that CUSP ever had!

Messages to CUSP Alumni and Students

Work hard, stay connected, keep an open mind, and be good — you never know how things will play out down the line and pharmacy is undoubtedly a small world. Remember that your actions, attitudes, and behavior will be noticed. There will be times when your seamlessly insignificant statements will end up becoming someone else’s biggest memory of you!

Also on a different note – to any fellow alumni or current students at CUSP: feel free to contact me if you have any questions or needs! I don’t know all the answers, but I’ll try my best to help out. You can find my profile on the CUSP community website with my contact information on there.