Kayla E. Friend, Pharm.D.| 2024 Emerging Leaders In Healthcare

Kayla E.Freind, Pharm.D.

Growing up in Rhode Island, I was heavily influenced by my grandparents throughout my formative years. My grandmother’s experience with the healthcare system inspired and then ultimately paralleled my early career training in hospitals and the challenges of navigating our complex healthcare system. I received my doctor of pharmacy (degree) from the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy and completed two years of postgraduate residency at the Connecticut Veterans Affair Health System with a focus in geriatrics.

Passionate about solving problems and improving patients’ experience by simplifying the complex, I joined CVS Health’s innovation team in 2013, where my team and I are dedicated to improving patient experience and health outcomes.

Please describe a turning point in your career — an event, a eureka moment, an encounter or a salient piece of advice from someone.

There have been many pivotal moments in my career where I’ve leaned on the guidance of many mentors, leaders and friends. However, I find it essential to ensure I have space for self-reflection for critical decisions made at career turning points. The importance of filtering advice through my own lens of values and experience has helped ensure that my inner voice is heard and helped build self-confidence in my decision-making abilities. An early career example is when a close professor and mentor encouraged me to do a residency program post- graduation from my Pharm.D., helping me realize that it would set my entire career on a different trajectory. Another is when I declined applying for a promotional role while my dad was battling brain cancer, a decision that allowed me more time with him as well as an opportunity to finish a project in the role I held that was a pivotal initiative. I hope I have many more eureka points in my career to come, but this process of networking, surround-sound feedback, and applying self-reflection has been crucial during turning points in my career.

What are your top two priorities as a leader in your organization and healthcare?

First, promoting a culture of collaboration to create sustainable solutions to simplify care. Second, unrelenting focus on patient experience by understanding their unique situations because healthcare is personal. Using 360-degree feedback, our team fosters an environment to better understand the patient experience, expand our perspective and build our empathy.

If you could change one thing about U.S. healthcare, what would it be?

My real answer is proprietary; however, I will say that we need to give patients more ability to lead their care decisions and to create systems and processes that allow them to self-serve in their own care.

Name a book or article that everyone working in healthcare should read.

No longer being on the front line of healthcare daily, I seek any opportunities to see things through the patient’s eyes. A moving book I read recently was “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi, a memoir that reflects his journey as a promising young neurosurgeon who is faced with stage 4 lung cancer. Beyond the poignant life, purpose and mortality themes that he surfaces, his unique perspective on being both a part of the healthcare system and finding himself on the other side of the bedside as a patient reveals so authentically the power of the patient in decision-making and the importance of empathy in healthcare.

How do you strike the right work-life balance?

The first step for me was recognizing there is no such thing as work-life balance so that I’m not chasing an unrealistic expectation. Actually, I find it freeing to know that you cannot do it all; thus, it helps focus my decisions to decide what is most important. For me, it’s more a process of continuous self-reflection and intentional decision-making. Anytime you choose to do something, there is another thing you are not doing, and so I intentionally choose to lean into different areas of my passions with continuous self-reflection and evaluation of need.

If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

I cherish every dinner I get to have with my husband and three young children to share news about our day, talk through our challenges, laugh at their jokes, and look forward to events in the future.