Resistant Microbes, Antibiotic Abuse, and the Threat to Public Health

Resistant Microbes, Antibiotic Abuse, and the Threat to Public Health
Fathom

Randolph E. Regal

Dr. Randolph Regal was born and raised in the city and outskirts of Detroit, Michigan. In his latter years in high school, he regrettably eschewed athletics and college-prep academics to pursue a career as a professional trumpet player. After 1 1/2 years at the Boston Conservatory of Music and another few months in Chicago studying with Arnold Jacobs of the Chicago Symphony, he decided to shed the bohemian life of the musician to pursue marriage, family, and a new career. Once enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1977, he decided to pursue pharmacy, and earned both his BS and Pharm D degrees in 1984. Throughout his eight-year tenure as a student, he worked fulltime in unionized factories and warehouses and helped his wife raise their five children.

His initial years in practice saw him working in the pharmaceutical industry and a small community hospital in Hillsdale. Meanwhile, he began moonlighting in retail pharmacies. While working in Hillsdale, he also began a part-time venture as an independent consultant-pharmacist to extended care facilities, a pursuit that he continues to this day. What followed was an 8 1/2 year stint as Clinical Pharmacy Coordinator at Heritage Hospital in Taylor, Michigan. There, with the help of very strong administration and nursing support, and a great pharmacy staff, he developed a state of the art service named, "Pharmacy to dose and do everything". In 1997, he left Heritage and accepted a clinical faculty position at the University of Michigan's Hospital and College of Pharmacy as one of two inaugural anti-microbial cops to launch and maintain the institution's first-ever Antibiotic Restriction Program. Although he transferred to Internal Medicine at Michigan in the summer of 2001, he still maintains his research and support/advisor role to Infectious Diseases, and doesn't plan on ever giving up his role as "The Quinolone Curmudgeon" any time soon.

Aside from his professional life, he has an avid interest in US and world history, has coached several soccer teams, and is a closet poet and humor writer. He also enjoys yard work and gardening, and would like someone "to invent a weed that does not grow well and sell it and sow it throughout the biosphere." His most important goal in life is to "raise his children to be independent thinkers who are honest, reliable, responsible, and hard working, and a bit less stubborn than I have always been."

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