Student Pharmacists See Action at U.S. Public Health Service Internships

Seven SOP PharmD students spend their summer break helping to advance the health of the nation

By William Albanese III
October 7, 2009

Each year, a few students from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy choose to spend their summer break participating in the Commissioned Officer Student Training and Extern Program (COSTEP) with the U.S. Public Health Service. This year, however, a record seven student pharmacists were accepted for prestigious COSTEP assignments with only 29 positions available nation-wide. Fourth-year students Andrew Kim, Ashley Burns, and Jackie Finocchio, and third-year students Janet Shaw, Kathleen Morneau, Catherine Lee, and William Albanese spent the better part of their summer helping to advance the health of the nation, while also setting a new record for the number of Maryland students who were accepted into the COSTEP program.

While on assignment, Maryland’s student pharmacists participated in a wide variety of practice settings such as assisting in medication therapy management clinics with the Indian Health Service (IHS) in New Mexico, advocating for the profession of pharmacy through policy writing and professional development at IHS headquarters in Rockville, MD, and conducting research projects, monitoring drug labeling, and ensuring that drug advertisements are following the proper regulation at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Catherine Lee saw firsthand the important role pharmacists serve on a multidisciplinary team at an IHS facility. A typical work day for her at an IHS hospital on a New Mexico Indian reservation consisted of recommending warfarin dosing changes in the pharmacy’s coumadin clinic, updating database objects in the hospital’s state-of-the-art Electronic Health Record system, and performing drug utilization reviews with ad-hoc requests from physicians. “The experience and opportunity to work at an IHS facility was rewarding beyond measure,” she says.

In addition to work, students also got the distinct honor of touring other federal agencies, departments, and private organizations that are otherwise closed to the public. Each week tours were taken to learn more about daily operations at places such as the National Institutes of Health, the Bureau of Prisons, the Office of the Surgeon General, the US Pharmacopeia, the American Pharmacists Association’s headquarters, the Pentagon, and other sites.

Some COSTEPs even had the fortunate experience of spending this past summer working alongside University of Maryland alumni. Commander Andrew Haffer, PharmD ’96, of the Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications at the FDA, served as a preceptor, working together with his students to police drug advertisements to both professionals and consumers.

Captain James Bresette, PharmD ’07, Deputy Director for the Office of Clinical and Preventive Services at IHS, oversaw Shaw, Morneau, and Albanese, who worked on improving health care for Native Americans by advocating for legislation for local tribes and assisting in the implementation of clinical programs that have been proven effective through evidence-based outcomes. Bresette and his division, which includes the IHS Pharmacy Program, exemplifies the IHS’s avant-garde style that has done wonders for the profession of pharmacy and for health care overall. These very same programs that have been employed by IHS with the help of Maryland student pharmacists are being used as background information and testimony for health care reform within IHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and on Capitol Hill, addressing the under-utilization of pharmacists throughout health care.

“Completing a JRCOSTEP is an amazing experience and an outstanding opportunity,” says third-year student Katie Morneau. “I have seen and been a part of affecting change in the profession of pharmacy and have been given opportunities I would have never had anywhere else.”