Pharmacy

Students enrolling in the doctor of pharmacy program at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy began experiencing an enriched curriculum in the fall of 2015.

• You won’t sit through a lot of long lectures. You’ll be active. Professors will challenge you to think critically and to solve problems in the classroom, and you will be applying important concepts as you learn them.
• You will be immersed in patient care early and continually in your education as a member of an interdisciplinary health-care team.
• You will pursue scientific inquiry and learn to create innovative solutions to real-world problems.

Health Care Is Changing

The U.S. health-care system is in need of change to improve both the quality and the delivery of patient care and to reduce health-care costs.

In response, numerous calls have emerged for reform in health-professions education to better prepare students.

We are responding to this need, and we are building on our experience as innovative pharmacy educators to better prepare our graduates to be exemplary health-care professionals in a system that seeks to be more collaborative, efficient, and effective.

Employers Want More

At the same time, employers within and outside health care are increasingly seeking inquisitive individuals who are able to think critically, communicate clearly, adapt to change and work effectively in teams to solve complex problems. All too often, students possess great discipline-specific knowledge but lack the skills essential to survive in an increasingly competitive and global society.

We Are Innovating

As if the changes in health care and employer demands aren’t enough, the amount of information about health and medicines that aspiring health professionals must master has grown substantially. We no longer accept the outdated assumption that a professor’s job is to teach you everything you need to know. We recognize that you are a native of this highly interconnected world where information is easily available and freely accessible and technologies abound to support your learning.

In response, we have improved not only what we teach but how we teach to better position you for success.

Our Strengths Build Your Skills

At a time when innovation is crucial, we are building on our strengths to better prepare you with the skills you will need to improve human health and health care.

• We will foster habits of inquiry, innovation, and discovery.
• We will ensure that you are learning within complex systems of care.
• We will provide opportunities for you to function in and lead teams toward improvement and change.

Year 1

During your first year, you will focus on the foundations of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences through an active-learning approach that centers on you.

Our goal is to expose you to the underlying fundamentals and give you the chance to apply what you are learning, to solve complex problems, to think deeply and critically, and to develop the skills necessary to be a self-directed, lifelong learner.

A Fast Start with Familiar Favorites

We won’t ask you to spend months revisiting prerequisite course work you’ve already completed. Instead you start with our unique Pharmacy Bridging Course that involves six modules in the first month:

• Organic chemistry
• Biochemistry
• Physiology
• Biostatistics
• Evidence-Based Learning
• Pharmacy Toolkit

During the Pharmacy Bridging Course, you review the basic subject matter while exploring its connection and application to pharmacy-specific problems.

Foundations of Pharmacy

You’ll be ready for the challenges of the active classroom thanks to online modules that deliver the information you need to you outside of class.

Next up are seven courses exploring the following subjects that provide the foundational knowledge for patient care:

• On Becoming a Pharmacist (fall)
• Pathophysiology of Human Disease (fall)
• Molecular Foundations of Drug Action (fall)
• Evidence-Based Practice (fall)
• Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery Systems (spring)
• Pharmacokinetics (spring)
• Clinical Pharmacology (spring)

These courses have been newly designed and built from the ground up with you in mind. Rather than focusing on discipline-specific minutia, we’ll be working to reinforce the notion that there’s a patient at the end of every lesson. By engaging in deep learning, you’ll work alongside our world-class faculty to prepare for patient-care experiences.

You’ll be ready for the challenges of the active classroom thanks to online modules and pre-class readings that deliver the information you need to you outside of class.

The factual content of the courses is thoughtfully packaged and available to you for self-directed learning outside of class. Class time is devoted to faculty-student interactions and higher forms of thinking and problem solving.

Click for an overview of year one of the Pharm.D. curriculum.

Foundations of Patient Care

An eighth course prepares you for early patient care in a real-world setting by emphasizing connections among content areas and giving you the foundational knowledge and skills needed to begin caring for patients.

Hands-On Learning

In parallel with the major courses noted above, you’ll be engaged in a set of courses that allow you to practice and develop proficient skills in pharmacy. These courses include self-guided online modules in Pharmaceutical Calculations and Medical Terminology, as well as a laboratory course in Pharmaceutical Compounding. In addition, you will earn an Immunization Certificate that will allow you to immunize patients as early as your third month on campus.

Courses

• PHCY 500 – Pharmacy Bridging Course (3.0 hours)
• PHCY 501 – On Becoming a Pharmacist (1.0 hour)
• PHCY 502 – Pathophysiology of Human Disease (3.5 hours)
• PHCY 503 – Molecular Foundations of Drug Action (3.5 hours)
• PHCY 504 – Evidence-Based Practice (3.0 hours)
• PHCY 505 – Medical Terminology 1 (0.5 hour)
• PHCY 507 – Pharmaceutical Calculations 1 (1.0 hour)
• PHCY 509 – Immunization Certificate Training Program (0.5 hour)
• PHCY 513 – Pharmaceutical Compounding (2.0 hours)
• PHCY 506 – Medical Terminology 2 (0.5 hour)
• PHCY 508 – Pharmaceutical Calculations 2 (1.0 hour)
• PHCY 510 – Foundations of Clinical Pharmacology (3.5 hours)
• PHCY 511 – Foundations of Pharmacokinetics (3.5 hours)
• PHCY 512 – Pharmaceutics & Drug Delivery Systems (3.5 hours)
• PHCY 516 – Foundations of Patient Care (2.0 hours)

Years 2 & 3

To Learn, One Must Do.

There is a fundamental body of information you must learn, but you don’t have to learn all of it in the classroom. Deeper learning occurs when you retain information for a long time and when you can apply that information to new situations. The deepest learning is most likely to result from the things that you do. To take advantage of this, we are moving some classroom instruction out into the real world, where you spend a great deal of time involved in caring for patients and learning to function in complex systems as a member of an interdisciplinary health-care team.

Early Patient Care

You will begin working with patients immediately after your first year. When you learn something new, we want you to be as close to the application of that knowledge as possible.

Throughout the second and third years, you will have a total of six months of patient-care activities alternating with School-based courses and activities.

We plan to complement your experiences with self-directed online learning tools addressing contemporary therapeutics. A key advantage of this approach is that you’ll be learning things in the classroom just in time to apply them in the real world.

School-Based Activities

Alternating with your patient-care immersion experiences, you will spend blocks of time back on campus. During these School-based blocks, you will engage in problem-based learning in pharmacotherapeutic decision-making that integrates advanced clinical pharmacology and pharmacokinetics. We also set aside time for you to study emerging topics and take elective courses.

Seeking Solutions

Beginning in the third semester, you will participate in a project designed to foster inquiry, critical thinking and innovation. This experience focuses on real-world problems and shows you that there is a common process for identifying and framing problems so that you can develop effective solutions.

Our goal is to train your mind to naturally seek solutions to problems you encounter in order to address society’s needs through innovation. This positions you to be a curious and creative professional, change agent and leader. These “habits of mind” and problem-solving abilities will define you as an inquisitive and scholarly practitioner ready to take on the challenges of a rapidly changing health-care world.

Think About It

Learning by doing is an incomplete proposition. What really enables you to learn is reflection. In other words, you have to do and then think about what you did.

Setting aside time to talk about what you’ve seen, done, and learned with professors, preceptors and peers is a crucial step in the learning process.

Our immersive, experiential learning opportunities are complemented by mentored reflection on patient-care and health-system experiences. In addition to reflection, your time back on campus provides opportunities for other faculty-mentored activities, including the following:

• Integration and connection of foundational and pharmacotherapy knowledge to patient care
• Exposure to advanced concepts, emerging topics, and leadership and professional development
• Elective course work
• Individualized career-path exploration

Courses

• PHCY 591 – Immersion Experience 1 (8.0 credit hours)
• PHCY 601 – Patient Care Lab (1.5 credit hours)
• PHCY 609 – The US Healthcare System (2.0 credit hours)
• PHCY 611 – Applied Clinical Pharmacology (3.0 credit hours)
• PHCY 617 – The Patient Care Experience (2.0 credit hours)
• PHCY 621 – Pharmacy Innovation and Problem Solving (4.0 credit hours)
• PHCY 630 – Foundations of Pharmacotherapy (4.0 credit hours)
• PHCY 601 – Horizons: Changing the Landscape of Health Care (1.0 credit)
• PHCY 631 – Integrative Pharmacotherapy I (5.0 credits)
• PHCY 636 – Leadership and Professional Development I (1.0 credit)
• PHCY 691 – Immersion Experience 2 (8.0 credits)

Year 4

Pharmacy Practice and Patient Care

During the fourth year of the curriculum, you leave the classroom behind and immerse yourself in advanced patient care. This is your opportunity to mature in your approach to pharmacy practice and gain a variety of experiences to help you bring your intended career path into focus.

Under the guidance of a preceptor, you will find yourself serving as an integral member of many interdisciplinary teams, recommending strategies to optimize drug therapy to improve clinical outcomes and educating patients and their families about the optimal use of medications. In addition, you will gain a greater appreciation for the health-care ecosystem and the importance of building a well-coordinated and highly collaborative approach to improving health and health-care delivery. You will learn to master the use of a wide array of health information resources, to assume responsibility for medication optimization, to think critically and innovatively as you approach real-world problem solving and to uphold the highest standards of ethical decision-making and professionalism. You will likely have opportunities to work with and learn from pharmacy residents, as well as engage in the teaching and development of second- and third-year pharmacy students.

During this year, you are primarily engaged in pharmacy practice experiences beginning in the summer for a minimum duration of nine months. You will be assigned to a region of the state to complete the majority of your experiences. Pharmacy faculty based at these locations will personally guide and mentor you in your final year. You will practice in community pharmacies, health systems, outpatient primary care settings and within inpatient clinical and specialty teams applying your knowledge and skills to improve patient care and health-care delivery. In addition, opportunities exist for rotations in other areas, such as global engagement, the pharmaceutical industry, academia and government, with nearly one-third of your fourth-year experiences structured as elective opportunities to develop your interests and prepare you for your pharmacy career.

1. PharmCAS application fee
2. Biographical data
3. Postsecondary institutions attended
4. Academic course history
5. Work experience
6. Extracurricular activities
7. A personal statement
8. Official transcripts from all accredited U.S. institutions attended
9. PCAT score (more information about the PCAT)
10. Two letters of recommendation
11. TOEFL or IELTS

Scholarships

UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy Scholarships

First-year pharmacy students do not receive School scholarships. After completing their first year, Pharm.D. students become eligible for approximately $865,000 in competitive scholarships, awards, and grants each year.