Pharmacy Students and Their Experience In the First Pharmacy Program in Alaska

Pharmacy Times spoke with students at the Idaho State University College of Pharmacy and its partner program at the University of Alaska Anchorage College of Health.

Liv Swonger, PharmD Candidate: So we're a smaller campus here, we have about 40 students. And that really has allowed us to develop relationships across the graduating classes, which I really appreciate because going into the program, it was such a new environment for me. And I really relied on the experiences of my upperclassmen to help me to help me navigate pharmacy school and getting my doctorate and so it's really nice to be able to pay that forward as a third year Pharmacy student. Also, there's strong connections between our campus the Alaska Pharmacists Association, and the profession of pharmacy at large. I feel like I've contributed to this as a student through my community outreach. But additionally, when traveling on my rotations, I've been extremely lucky and I'm so thankful of pharmacists in that area, who have offered me housing and shared their lifestyles of living and integrated me socially within the community. And this is really just one example of how my own lived experiences of how stakeholder support within Alaska is an integral role in our succession in our success as a profession.

Jessica Goodman, PharmD Candidate: It's been really cool. Um, first of all, not people we're not a lot of people really know about the program up here. Pretty much everyone that program up here isn't born raised Alaskan, I'm one of the few who's not actually. So it's kind of cool, because people are always like, "Oh, my God, you're studying in Alaska." I think also kind of on the same thing as the roll thing. There's a lot of opportunities just because there's only so many of us students, it allows for a lot of opportunities for us to go out and do things that a lot of places elsewhere, cannot do like a lot of other schools, like even Idaho, like they have both their campuses there. And then they have like ITCOM and like medical schools and stuff. So they're like competing a little bit more for opportunities and spots and hospitals and outreach events. Whereas up here like it's pretty calm, we get all these opportunities. There's almost too many opportunities. Like, I want to do everything and I don't have the time to do everything.