The Patient Always Comes First

Liu is the assistant dean of clinical and professional affairs at Touro College of Pharmacy. A usually serious man, he was chuckling away recently while watching “Despicable Me” on a business flight from Los Angeles to Detroit. Suddenly, mid-laugh, mid-flight, he heard one of the most alarming mid-air requests: Is there a doctor on board?

“I waited a couple of seconds for a doctor to respond,” says Liu, 39. “No one did, so I jumped up.” He ended up saving the life of an elderly woman who was coming in and out of consciousness, and likely badly dehydrated, with oxygen and sips of orange juice. When the plane landed, the woman was cleared by her physician to continue her journey home. “Pharmacists must engage in medical emergencies, regardless of whether it’s in a controlled medical setting or in a public setting with limited resources. Your engagement may be the only difference between life and death.”

To that end, Liu not only teaches his students but has created opportunity after opportunity to have them practice what he preaches. He wants future pharmacists to have the same chances he had to experience frontline clinical pharmacy, in all of its aspects. He has more than a decade of experience in adult critical care medicine, managerial clinical pharmacy and, in his early 30s, was director of pharmacy residency programs for world-renowned health systems, including Yale New Haven Health.

Arriving at Touro at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Liu headed up a testing program for professors, staff and students on the school’s many campuses throughout the region. When a vaccine was available, pharmacy students helped him document and handle distribution and care. “Before COVID, most people thought pharmacists were these people behind the counter,” he explains. “We learned, and we teach our students that they belong where they are needed, to answer questions, offer comfort, explain what and why patients need certain care and medications. I believe pharmacists are underutilized and I hope I am inspiring my students to help change that.”

Liu, a New York City native who lives in Connecticut with his family, teaches several classes. He also brings in medical experts to enhance student learning. He takes his future pharmacists out of the classroom and into the real world through partnerships he’s developed with Mount Sinai Health System and NYC’s 1199, the leading union for healthcare workers. Liu also leads the continuing education program for the College, which provides exceptional education for experienced pharmacists all over the United States. The through line, for Liu, is that Touro’s pharmacy school is experiential. That is, students rotate in hospitals, community centers and pop-up clinics, bringing their knowledge and care to all patients. “Part of our work,” Liu says, “is to help reduce the healthcare disparity.”

No matter his years of academic, clinical and administrative experience, Liu, who won the Touro University Presidential Faculty Award for Extraordinary Service, remains most satisfied when teaching newbies. “First-year students are my favorite,” he says. “I want to capture their enthusiasm and interest and curiosity. I want to inspire them and show them everything pharmacy can bring to the world. I want to mold them to be the best in the field. I mean, how cool a job is that?”