College of Pharmacy Professor Receives Fulbright Specialist Award

Ebtesam Ahmed ’07Pharm.D., Clinical Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice in the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, was recently awarded a Fulbright Specialist Program Award that enabled her to share her extensive knowledge of palliative care and pain management with pharmacy students and faculty members in India.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the US government designed to build lasting connections between the United States and other countries.

An alumna of the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Dr. Ahmed joined the faculty in 2008 after completing her residency at the University of California at San Francisco. “Our role [as faculty] is unique because while we teach in the classroom, we also have clinical appointments at hospitals where we have affiliations,” she explained.

Dr. Ahmed has taught pain management and palliative care globally to pharmacists, physicians, and health-care professionals. She has conducted numerous training workshops in pain management, palliative care, ethics, and end-of-life care.

During her studies at St. John’s, Dr. Ahmed was fascinated by oncology and the reasons why cancers form and spread. “While doing my residency, I was really keen on working as an oncology pharmacist,” she recalled, adding that during this time her mother was dying of ovarian cancer. 

All the while, Dr. Ahmed had never heard of the term palliative care. During her first rotation at UCSF, her preceptor invited her to observe a team whose goal was making sure their patients were not in pain.

“I fell in love immediately because they appreciated that holistic, humanistic approach.”

She currently serves as a Clinical Pharmacist at the Supportive Oncology Clinic at the Ruttenberg Treatment Center Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital. “The team I work with is very interdisciplinary, including physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplain, volunteers, etc. The whole idea is that we work collectively to help improve patients’ quality of life.”

She added that her work is both humbling and rewarding. “It’s essential to pay attention to the human component.  People want to be heard, seen, and touched. You hold their hand and say, ‘I see you. You’re not alone.’ That’s a basic human need.”

Dr. Ahmed always wanted to carry out her work on a global scale. In 2013, she joined the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC).This organization seeks to empower individuals, governments, and organizations to increase access and optimize the practice of palliative care. Today, she is on their Board of Directors.

“A lot of what we do is about advocacy, access to controlled substances, access to education, and training programs. It’s very policy driven. We work with countries to train physicians, pharmacists, and nurses.” At the same time, they help revise often-restrictive policies in these countries, she noted.

Another motivating force for Dr. Ahmed is the fact she is a cancer survivor. “If I did not work in palliative care, I think my experience undergoing treatment would have been so different, because I knew exactly what was going to happen in many ways. I had to have difficult conversations with my family. I knew what to share and what not to share. I knew the most important thing was how to advocate for myself.”

The experience only increased Dr. Ahmed’s empathy for patients who are overwhelmed by their experience, and do not enjoy the access to the kind of care she had, especially in countries like India.

In 2022, while undergoing treatment, Dr. Ahmed felt a great need to step up her involvement in this arena. At the time, she put her name on the list for the Fulbright Specialty Program. Applicants either find a host institution that aligns with their interests or seek a program to which they can apply.

Last March, a program opened at C.L. Baid Metha College of Pharmacy in India, whose goal was to exchange knowledge and establish partnerships benefiting participants, institutions, and communities both in the US and overseas through various educational and training activities within public health.

Dr. Ahmed applied and was accepted within a month for the six-week program. She left on August 1. 

“My role had multiple facets,” she explained, including meeting with their clinical pharmacy department and evaluating their teaching methods. In the US, clinical pharmacies are well established, she said. “In India, clinical pharmacy is still a baby. It’s in its infancy, so much of what they teach is theoretical, and they’re not necessarily applying it.” She spent time reviewing their lectures and providing them with her lectures and the resources necessary to become more clinically oriented.

Dr. Ahmed stressed that students there had never heard of palliative care, so she spent time lecturing each class on its concepts and practices. Students also presented cases to Dr. Ahmed for her feedback. “It was great because you could see the lightbulb go off in their head.”

Finally, Dr. Ahmed visited local hospitals where she gave presentations on palliative care and pain management. “It was great planting the seed,” she stressed.

Even though the program only lasted six weeks, Dr. Ahmed remains in close touch with the students and faculty members she encountered in India. “They were also teaching me,” she said. “It was beautiful to be immersed in that culture. They are so humble—very polite, very decent.” 

She hopes to develop a memorandum of understanding between St. John’s and C.L. Baid Metha that will enable the schools to share resources and offer student exchange programs.

Dr. Ahmed tells her students that dispensing prescriptions and giving patients the correct medications are critically important, “but it’s also important to treat people as humans.”