Entrepreneur Corvino makes most of opportunities

Mike Corvino is an entrepreneur’s dream. He has an innovative approach to capitalizing on opportunity when it knocks. And when it doesn’t knock, he goes out and finds it, drags it to his door, and makes it knock. He’s parlayed his pharmacy education into a multi-faceted career.

Among other things, he:

• works at Fetter Health Care Network as an ambulatory care pharmacist and diabetes educator
• teaches three pharmacology classes for the physician assistant program at Charleston Southern University
• is the cohost of the evidence-based medicine podcast called CorConsult Rx
• runs the CorConsult Rx social media pages
• hosts the CorConsult Rx Flash Briefing on Amazon's Alexa device

Corvino’s path to success is good template for aspiring pharmacists. A Pharm.D. is a lifetime pass into a giant theme park and there are a lot of rides if you walk around. Corvino started at Walgreens, first as a traveling pharmacist and then as a pharmacy manager, and began to get an idea of how big the park could be.

“While working as a pharmacy manager, I helped to grow our medication therapy management (MTM) program which was my first opportunity to spend more one-on-one time with patients,” he said. “This led to my district manager allowing me to complete MTM visits with patients at other local pharmacies and eventually most of the Walgreens throughout the state.”

He didn’t stop there. During his days off, he shadowed clinicians at multiple clinics, attended “Bar and Grill” at MUSC with College faculty members Wayne Weart and Scott Bragg, participated in journal clubs/topic discussions, traveled to conferences, and kept expanding his knowledge. He started creating pharmacotherapy infographics for social media, which eventually turned into the CorConsult Rx podcast, and decided to earn board certifications in diabetes care and education, pharmacotherapy, and ambulatory care. All the “extracurricular” activity paid off.

• The social media/podcast content and recommendations given by colleagues earned him a job offer teaching for Charleston Southern University’s Physician Assistant Program, creating and teaching content for Pharmacology 1, 2, and 3. He’s now in his third year teaching there.
• With help from mentors/colleagues such as College faculty member James Sterrett, he was offered a chance to work at Fetter Health Care Network. During the last two years at FHCN, he’s been involved with getting the facility accredited as a center for diabetes education, starting in-house treatment for patients with hepatitis C treatment, and working on many other clinical programs.

“My short-term career goal is to continue growing my knowledge base and to simply be ready for any other opportunities that come my way,” he said.