How Pharmacy Schools Can Better Prepare Students for Specialty Pharmacy

Jonathan Ogurchak, PharmD, CSP, sits down with Specialty Pharmacy Times to discuss how pharmacy schools can better prepare students for Specialty Pharmacy during the NASP Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

JO: You know, historically the disease areas, the drugs, the things that are being taught in pharmacy schools as it relates to specialty drugs tend to be reserved for the last lecture of a semester just to make sure they cover them so that way they could say that they covered them when it comes to board prep and board review and pharmacists sit for their NAPLEX.

More and more, pharmacy schools are able to incorporate these therapies into their curriculum, but the challenge becomes that so many new drugs are coming into the market that the drugs that I learned in school a decade ago weren’t even around and that’s what we practice with today. So better empowering students to become lifelong learners is paramount for pharmacy schools, because if you can teach a pharmacist to be a good pharmacist and a good learner, it doesn’t matter what the new drug is, they can apply it to a new situation, a new diagnostic class, etc. and just really take care of patients.