Grad to Watch: Jenna Sauvé launches career in antimicrobial stewardship

A course in antimicrobial stewardship at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy inspired Jenna Sauvé (2T0) to focus her pharmacy career on addressing antimicrobial resistance. Now graduating this June from the Faculty with a master’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences, Sauvé is using her background in clinical care, research and education to work toward improving how antimicrobial stewardship is taught to pharmacy students across Canada.

“I was blown away by this looming threat of antimicrobial resistance and how the public is largely unaware of or underappreciates the severity of the issue,” says Sauvé. “As pharmacists, we are well-positioned to help tackle the threat of antimicrobial resistance, and I became very interested in antimicrobial stewardship as a career path.”

Sauvé started the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy in 2016 after studying physiology and pharmacology at Western University. She was drawn to the pharmacy profession through her interests in both the science of pharmacology and her desire to provide patient care.

After graduating in 2020, she started a hospital residency at University Health Network. At the same time, she began a part-time master’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences with Marisa Battistella, associate professor and clinician scientist at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, to enhance her research and teaching skills.

“After the first exposure to antimicrobial stewardship through the PharmD program, and as I started to do my clinical rotations and then my residency in the hospital, I really got to see the impact of antimicrobial resistance on patient care and in real-life settings.”

From the beginning of her graduate degree, she knew she wanted to focus her research project on antimicrobial stewardship, which encourages appropriate use of antimicrobials to improve patient care and reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance.

“After the first exposure to antimicrobial stewardship through the PharmD program, and as I started to do my clinical rotations and then my residency in the hospital, I really got to see the impact of antimicrobial resistance on patient care and in real-life settings,” she says. “We saw some pretty challenging cases where we didn't have antibiotic options to treat infections, and the outcomes of those cases have always stuck with me and fueled my passion for antimicrobial stewardship.”

Research project aims to improve antimicrobial stewardship education in pharmacy programs

Sauvé’s research project aimed to improve how pharmacy students are taught about antimicrobial stewardship. Preliminary research had shown that antimicrobial stewardship content in Canadian pharmacy curricula is minimal and highly variable among programs. With Battistella’s supervision, Sauvé led research to involve experts from various health care professions in questionnaires and panel discussions to develop a consensus-based competency framework for antimicrobial stewardship content in pharmacy curricula.

With input from the experts, Sauvé developed competencies that describe essential knowledge, skills and behaviours required of pharmacy graduates in the area of antimicrobial stewardship, in order to help guide how this topic is taught in pharmacy programs and prepare new graduates to engage in antimicrobial stewardship. She plans to present the framework to different pharmacy programs across Canada, and eventually to publish and make the work publicly available.

“Our goal was to create a curricular framework that programs could implement to make sure that all pharmacists who are going through pharmacy school get the exposure to that content and have the knowledge and skills they need to be able to enact antimicrobial stewardship in their careers,” she says.

Adds Battistella, “The methods that Jenna used in the development of the competencies for an antimicrobial stewardship course in pharmacy could also be used for designing other courses in our new PharmD program.”

“The Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy encourages students to strive to do more with pharmacy and push the boundaries of what pharmacists can do.”

Sauvé is now working as an antimicrobial stewardship pharmacotherapy specialist at University Health Network. She works closely with clinical teams to optimize how they use antimicrobials at the patient level, while also developing policies and guidance to support appropriate antimicrobial prescribing across the hospital network. The role encompasses clinical care, research, and education – all aspects that Sauvé enjoyed through her PharmD and master’s degrees.

She hopes that as her career progresses within antimicrobial stewardship, she’ll be able to contribute even more to pharmacy education and research, thanks to the education she received at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.

“The Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy encourages students to strive to do more with pharmacy and push the boundaries of what pharmacists can do,” says Sauvé. “The knowledge and skills, as well as that attitude of advancing the profession, have already helped me in my career and will continue to help going forward.”