Does anyone know what a pharmacy school curriculum is like

Question

I am looking into pharmacy school. I know it is a four year program but what does it entail exactly. I mean what do you study each year, etc. Does it involve animal research?

Answer 1

I'm looking into a Pharmacy program myself, and I just attended a tour of the University of Pittsburgh. This is how their program is laid out:

First two years: Pre-Pharmacy courses. These are the prerequisites such as General Chemistry, Biology, Calculus, English Comp., Economics, etc.

The actual Pharmacy program is very competitive. At Pitt, there are only 54 seats (out of 800 applicants) available if you don't have conditional admission to the Pharmacy school. Check what the conditional admission requirements are at your college of choice and try your hardest to meet the requirements, or else you might work your *** off for two years for nothing.

The first year is general profession courses, Profession of Pharmacy 1 and 2. You also take your basic anatomy classes as well as biochemistry, Drug Development, and Principles of Drug Action. You take experiential learning classes too (rotations at facilities) but you aren't exposed to nearly as much patient care are you are in later years.

The second year consists of more Profession of Pharmacy courses, as well as the experiential learning course. You begin to study disease separately (infectious, cardiovascular) and the pharmacotherapy thereof.

The third year (last year of your Profession of Pharmacy course) consists of one term courses of your medical sciences (oncology, hematology, immunology, pulmonology, rheumatology, endocrinology, psychiatry, neurology...) as well as Advanced Pharmaceutical Care and a professional elective. This year is not without its experiential learning, in which you'll be spending even more required hours meeting with patients in your assigned facility (retirement community, battered women's shelter, hospital etc.)

Year fourth spans three semesters (summer, fall, and spring) and is almost entirely experiential learning-type rotations. The course are, and I'm not kidding, Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Skills Enhancement. It's all rotations. I can't remember the exact number, but it's over 1,000 hours of experiential learning for that one year.

After completing the program, you can either leave school and get a job elsewhere, such as in retail or a long-term care facility, or you can stay on-board for a residency program to explore research in pharmacology or to develop a specialty. Residents make only 30,000 a year, but according to several sources, the time spent is well-worth it.

I've heard some horror stories about jumping right into retail pharmacy, just a warning.

Hope that helped. Sorry I wrote you a book. :P

Answer 2

For RELIABLE information about pharmacy, check the website of the AACP, that is the official organization that coordinates all information about accredited Colleges of Pharmacy in the US. They have links to every school, so you can check the exact courses required at any school you are interested in.

Pharmacy is a great career - you can have an interesting, highly respected job that pays a lot of money. But admission to schools of pharmacy is extremely competitive.... you have to be a very good student to be admitted. And as prerequisities to admission you have to take some very tough courses - chem, organic chem, biochem, physics, biology and others....

Good luck!