Taylor Mitchell pursues a career in veterinary pharmacy and promotes the unsung field

By Haley Tenore

Taylor Mitchell spent part of her childhood on a farm in southwest Missouri near St. Louis, caring not just for cats, dogs and rabbits but horses, chickens and cattle, too. Like many animal lovers, she had hopes of becoming a veterinarian.

However, Mitchell has gravitated to a different, though related field. Mitchell, a third-year student pursuing her Pharm.D. in Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Pharmacy, is exploring – and promoting – the growing area of veterinary pharmacy.

“There’s not enough training for pharmacists in advocating and understanding veterinary patient medications,” Mitchell said. “My goal is to bring awareness to the fact that veterinary patients are an overlooked patient population that pharmacists have the very unique ability to serve.”

Her efforts go beyond direct animal care: Mitchell has founded the VCU chapter of the American College of Veterinary Pharmacists and serves as club president.

“It was scary starting the chapter,” she said. “I am grateful that I had a good community surrounding me that helped push me to really start it.”

Mitchell now serves on the ACVP national board of directors as the lone student pharmacist member, helping like-minded students establish chapters at their schools and helping the national organization increase student engagement.

Human and veterinary pharmacy have notable overlaps, with animals often receiving the same medications as their owners. But dosages often differ: Depending on species, animals can have varying metabolisms, and a dosing mistake in a pharmacy could be a fatal error.

Mitchell recalled the case of a dog with hypothyroidism that was not improving. The pharmacist had filled the original prescription as though the patient were human – and the dog was receiving medication based on micrograms instead of milligrams, which are 1,000 times larger.

“So, the dog, thankfully, was underdosed,” Mitchell said. “But because there was that gap in knowledge of the pharmacist, had it been reversed and the dog was overdosed, it could have been very bad.”

Mitchell’s route to VCU had a few twists and turns. The farm girl from the Midwest went to the coast – as in, Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina – and earned her undergraduate degree in biology and marine sciences. An internship at a local animal center allowed her to work with animals from many      circumstances, and she also worked at a veterinary clinic.

Mitchell then moved to Virginia to pursue her master’s degree in biomedical sciences at Liberty University in Lynchburg. She worked as a veterinary assistant, which she said taught her to be a “jack of all trades” in animal care, helping to monitor animals being treated and support other surgical needs when necessary. She also learned more about prescribing medications for animal patients.

“What I found a lot of passion in was the treatment of different disease states, and being able to help a patient who can’t speak and just seeing the physical transformation that they’re able to have,” Mitchell said of the experience, which set her on her health professional path.

At VCU, Mitchell is a member of Phi Lambda Sigma, the pharmacy leadership society that promotes peer mentorship. She first was involved in the organization through its mentorship program as a first-year student, and her student mentor provided guidance that ultimately empowered Mitchell to establish the ACVP chapter.

“With that mentorship program, I was able to grow and learn more about myself, especially stepping into a founder and president role in the organization that I had founded,” she said. “They really provided me with a good backbone of … how to proceed in leadership.”

To support her VCU efforts, Mitchell has attended the past two ACVP national conferences. The first was at the Indianapolis Zoo, where she shadowed veterinarians – in addition to networking with other veterinary professionals and learning about updates to veterinary medicine and pharmacy.

“It was just really cool to be able to interact and just see the different animals that they have and to gain a better understanding of the state of zoonotic and other areas of veterinary pharmacy,” she said.

Mitchell now hopes that the lessons she shares at VCU could inspire others to pursue veterinary pharmacy.