40 under 40 — Bryan Hayes

Pi Tau, 2000 — Recognized in: 2018

Dr. Bryan Hayes graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2000 with a degree in chemistry. He was president of the Pi Tau chapter in his senior year and continued as the alumni repfffresentative for two years following his graduation. After working in drug discovery for two years, he went back to school to pursue a Doctor of Pharmacy degree. In 2005, he graduated from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and then completed a one year, post-graduate pharmacy residency at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, MA. Bryan then moved to Baltimore with his wife to complete a two-year, clinical toxicology fellowship at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy/Maryland Poison Center. His current position is attending pharmacist for emergency medicine and toxicology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is board-certified in Clinical Toxicology and is president-elect for the American Board of Applied Toxicology.

Since finishing his training in 2008, Bryan has become a leader in emergency medicine, toxicology, and pharmacy practice. He was the first emergency medicine pharmacist at the University of Maryland Medical Center, a role he served in until 2016 when his family moved back closer to home to the Boston area. Bryan is a regular speaker at national emergency medicine and pharmacy conferences. He has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters in medical literature and is featured on several popular emergency medicine podcasts. He currently serves on the Editorial Board for the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy and has achieved fellowship status in both the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists for sustained contribution to the fields of toxicology and pharmacy practice.

Bryan’s educational passion is teaching practical emergency medicine pharmacology to improve bedside patient care. With this in mind he created the Capsules series, a free, online curriculum that distills complex principles into easy-to-apply concepts. Capsules is hosted at ALiEMU.com (Academic Life in Emergency Medicine University) with over 5,000 users. Bryan is active on Twitter as @PharmERToxGuy and is chief science officer for the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine blog. He has been honored with an Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Maryland Department of Emergency Medicine’s residency program and Preceptor of the Year Awards from both the University of Maryland Medical Center’s pharmacy residency program and the Maryland Society of Health-System Pharmacy. In 2017, Bryan became the first pharmacist to receive a faculty appointment from the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Emergency Medicine.

With regard to his experiences in Zeta Psi, Bryan sees it as being an extremely formative role in the development of his leadership skills:

“Zeta Psi played an unanticipated yet prominent role in my early leadership development. Before entering college, I didn’t know much about fraternities. However, even as early on as the pledging process, I learned various ways in which Zeta Psi promoted and supported its young leaders. In fact, during one of my summers, Zeta Psi funded me to attend a week-long leadership institute conference. I served as the philanthropy chair in my sophomore year, followed by treasurer my junior year, and ultimately president as a senior. Leading a diverse brotherhood in a uniform direction while also representing the chapter’s interests at the university level was a challenging, but rewarding experience. These roles, and the skills gained while serving in them, helped shape not only my early post-collegiate life, but still are important to this day. Just a year into my post-graduate education, one of my biological brothers was involved in a terrible motor vehicle collision that ultimately took his life. Even three years out from my undergraduate days at WPI, there was an overwhelming outpouring of support from my Zete brothers. It confirmed, again, that joining Zeta Psi was the right decision for me. Almost 15 years later, I now lead a team of highly- skilled emergency medicine pharmacists at one of the top hospitals in the nation, Massachusetts General Hospital. My daily interactions with physician, nurse and pharmacist leaders is vital to the success of our work and to patient care. The foundation from my four years at Zeta Psi’s Pi Tau chapter provided me the tools early on to strive for excellence.”

At the end of the day, Bryan identifies his greatest personal achievement as “being a husband and dad to two beautiful girls”.

Thanks to brother Curtis Odom for the biographical statement.