Lina Hamid, PharmD, BCIDP
We celebrate Lina Hamid, an antimicrobial stewardship and infectious diseases clinical pharmacist at M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center. From her roots in Ethiopia to the corridors of one of Minnesota’s premier academic medical centers, Hamid has carved a career defined by intellectual curiosity, a deep commitment to teaching, and a persistent drive to protect patients, and entire communities, from the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. Her work sits at the intersection of person-centered care, pharmacy education, and public health.
From Molecular to Clinical Science
A biochemistry major in undergrad with a love of chemistry and natural sciences, Dr. Hamid was drawn to the molecular; she wanted to understand how things work at their smallest, most fundamental level. “I really enjoyed it, and I was kind of figuring out a path to take with that,” she recalls about her microbiology class.
Lina approached her career exploration methodically, shadowing in clinics, hospitals, and an independent pharmacy, and making comparisons. The Independent pharmacy felt too much like her entrepreneurial dad’s business world, which was not a space she envisaged herself in. Medicine was ruled out just as quickly: “I’m not very good with bodily fluids, especially blood.” Clinical pharmacy in a hospital setting, by contrast, felt like the right fit. “After shadowing pharmacists in the hospital, I was like, I think this is what I want to do.”
Born in Dire Dawa and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Dr. Hamid came to the US after high school. For pharmacy school, Minnesota winters did not exactly tug at her heart strings. “The snow and the cold in Minnesota weren’t compatible with my upbringing,” she says, laughing. She set her sights on California and enrolled at the University of Southern California, a move that proved consequential in ways she had not anticipated, careerwise.
A Class. A Gamechanger.
Dr. Hamid discovered the specialty that would define her career in her third year. Her infectious diseases (ID) therapeutics professor opened the course declaring that infectious diseases was very hard, but assured students she wasn’t going to make it tricky. A practicing ID pharmacist, the professor brought real cases from the hospital into the classroom. “She would bring examples from her practice, and that kind of helped me connect the dots, not just didactics,” Hamid recalls. “That was fun.”
The combination of her longstanding love of microbiology and her professor’s applied approach sealed it for her: she wanted to be an infectious diseases pharmacist. Following her PGY1 residency in Minnesota, PGY2 ID training at Boston Medical Center, she landed her first out-of-training position in Houston, Texas. A year and a half later, a position at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, brought her home again.
The Goal: Right Drug. Right Dose. Right Duration.
Dr. Hamid has been in her current role since March 2020, a start date that, given the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, felt like being thrown into the deep end. But armed with the right tools and clinical knowledge, her daily practice as an antimicrobial stewardship and ID clinical pharmacist continues to be with precision and purpose – then and now. Each morning, she reviews patients who have been started on broad-spectrum antibiotics, assessing whether therapy is optimized, and flagging patients who warrant formal stewardship rounds with an ID attending. Notes are written, teams are paged, and recommendations are made; all with the same primary goal: the right drug, the right route, the right dose, for the right duration, and only when truly indicated.
The stakes of this work extend well beyond the individual patient. Every unnecessary antibiotic course carries risks for the patient, in the form of infection and adverse effects; and for the broader population, in the form of accelerating antimicrobial resistance. “By having a strong antimicrobial stewardship program, you’re preventing infections such as C. diff and reducing antimicrobial resistance,” she explains. The work she does each day is, in every sense, both a clinical intervention and a public health endeavor.
Dr. Hamid’s leadership extends into system-level work. As a clinical specialist, she participates in several committees, including serving as the stewardship representative for the system C. difficile committee across M Health Fairview, and as a representative on University of Minnesota Medical Center’s hospital infection control committee, a multidisciplinary body charged with preventing infection outbreak in the hospital.
A Learner-centered Approach
Dr. Hamid is passionate about teaching. She precepts fourth-year pharmacy students from the University of Minnesota on five-week ID elective rotations, PGY1 residents on their elective stewardship rotation, and PGY2 ID residents through a three-block longitudinal stewardship curriculum.
Lina’s approach to precepting is very learner-centered. On the first day of rotation, she asks each student what their learning style is, and how they learn best? “It’s easier for a preceptor to adjust their precepting style than to have a learner adjust their learning style,” she simply states. She is attentive to the anxiety that students commonly bring to ID rotations. “A lot of learners come in super intimidated,” she acknowledges - a reality she remembers from her own experience as a student. She credits her teaching philosophy to her USC professor’s opening words, that ID is hard, but the goal is learning. “I’m not comparing you to other learners,” she tells her students. “I’m comparing you to wherever you started the first week.” That reframe, she says, creates an environment for learning versus performance under pressure.
Lina tailors the rotation to each student’s career path. A student whose career path is community practice will gain understanding of how stewardship principles translate to the questions worth asking at the dispensing counter. “My goal is, how can I make this rotation applicable to your future?” she says. Teaching, for Hamid, is not about replicating herself. It is about making each learner more capable in the world they are entering. She is clear that the exchange is bi-directional: “I learn so much from them.”
One Health: A Holistic view of Antimicrobial Stewardship
Dr Hamid emphasizes that antimicrobial resistance does not respect the boundaries of a hospital unit, a zip code, or even a species. She has therefore taken steps to extend her practice reach accordingly. Lina is an active participant in the Minnesota One Health Antimicrobial Stewardship Collaborative (MOHASC), a Minnesota Department of Health initiative that brings together human health, veterinary, and environmental health sectors to address antimicrobial use and resistance across all three domains.
Through the collaborative’s human health working group, Hamid is helping develop patient education resources to be made freely available through the Minnesota Department of Health website. The resources, which cover topics from upper respiratory infections to antibiotic disposal and drug take-back programs, are designed to be clear, practical, and accessible. But Lina’s long-term vision goes further. She envisions translating those resources into the languages spoken by Minnesota’s diverse communities and ensuring that the guidance reaches the intended populations.
Road Trips & Recipes
Outside of work, Dr. Hamid’s world has recently undergone its own kind of recalibration. A new mother, Lina finds herself assessing what matters, what can wait, and what “being present” means. “I’m kind of taking inventory of what is priority in my life,” she reflects, “and being cognizant of not spending too much time at work.”
Lina loves to travel, whether it’s a quick weekend road trip or exploring other countries. She believes that experiencing new places and cultures “opens your mind in ways everyday routines can’t,” enriching her understanding of the world and the people in it. An enthusiastic cook, she has recently taken to the genre of quick, one-pan recipes being promoted on social media. She acknowledges the practicality given the new-parent life. “You just pop it in the oven and it’s ready,” she affirms.
When Minnesota weather cooperates, she and her family take full advantage of the state’s trails, parks, and natural spaces. For someone who actively sought for the California sun, it does look like Minnesota has once again become home.
A Message for the Future Pharmacist
For pharmacy students still finding their footing, Dr. Hamid’s advice is both simple and grounding: “Believe in yourself and reach out to your resources.” Those resources, she is quick to clarify, can be anyone - a colleague, a mentor, a preceptor.
Dr. Lina Hamid is candid about the fact that paths to success are not uniform. Her own journey, from Ethiopia to USC, through a PGY2 in Boston, a stint in Houston, and ultimately back to Minnesota, looked nothing like a straight line. And that, she suggests, is perfectly fine. “The only thing that stays consistent is believing in yourself, regardless of where you go. You might take a different route than the next person, but you’ll end up where you want to.” For Dr. Hamid, infectious diseases/antimicrobial stewardship clinical pharmacy is that place she wanted to be and thankfully is.