Elsa M. Pedro Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor at the School of Pharmacy, University of Puerto Rico, and a clinical pharmacist at the Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC). She holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree and is dual board certified as a Board Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist (BCPS) and a Board Certified Oncology Pharmacist (BCOP). She has also completed three certificate programs in pain management.
When the CCC hospital opened in 2017, she helped build its Pharmacy Department from the ground up, developing the structure, procedures, and clinical systems needed to deliver specialized pharmaceutical care to cancer patients. As part of her current responsibilities at the Comprehensive Cancer Center, she collaborates with investigators on their clinical studies, contributing through Investigational Drug Services. In addition, she is developing a Pharmacotherapy Oncology Clinic. In this role as an oncology pharmacist and pharmacotherapy specialist, she works to prevent, identify, and resolve drug-related problems in order to optimize pharmacotherapy outcomes and provides patient education on therapy management, among other duties.
Her research interests focus on clinical outcomes and practice-based research in patients with cancer and pain management. Her goal is to generate evidence that improves the quality, safety, and effectiveness of pharmaceutical care for oncology patients.
As a CAPAC mentor, she looks forward to introducing students to clinical and practice-based oncology research and to the role of the pharmacist as an integral member of the cancer care team.