School of Pharmacy Launches Revised Curriculum

Curriculum enhancements will better prepare graduates for the expanding practice of pharmacy

By Becky Ceraul
August 26, 2009

The Class of 2013 starting classes this week at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy is entering the School under a revised and enhanced curriculum, one that promises to better prepare them for the expanding scope of pharmacy practice.

For the first time since 1993 when it was the first pharmacy school on the East Coast to launched an all PharmD program, the School of Pharmacy has made major revisions to its curriculum to embrace the new and broader role that pharmacists in the United States now play on the health care team.

“One motivating force for this revision was new criteria from the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education that requires our students to have 1,440 advanced pharmacy practice experience hours in settings outside of the classroom. These experiences are offered in community, hospital and long-term care pharmacies, ambulatory clinics, industry, the federal government, and other sites,” says Raymond C. Love, PharmD, associate dean of curriculum, instructional design and technology and a professor of pharmacy practice and science. “Under those new criteria, which were launched in 2007, our students will now spend their entire final year of pharmacy school on advanced rotations. As a result, we’ve adjusted our curriculum to fit more than 300 hours of introductory pharmacy practice experiences and all didactic coursework such as lectures, discussion groups, and labs into the first three years. Beginning with their first semester, our students spend nearly one-third of their education on rotations in real-world pharmacy settings.”

Additionally, after conferring with preceptors who oversee students on rotations, faculty, and alumni, the School decided to further emphasize the management of complex patients with multiple therapeutic problems, which many practicing pharmacists encounter.

“This resulted in a new pharmacotherapy course in the third year that gives our students practice in integrating therapeutics for multiple disease states,” Love says. “We’ve also added an abilities laboratory to every semester, integrated our offerings in pathophysiology, pharmacology and therapeutics in the first year, and expanded our offerings in pharmacy practice management and administrative sciences.”

New first year students at the School of Pharmacy are now expected to have completed several basic science requirements that were previously taught in the first year of pharmacy school. “Now our first year students will concentrate on pharmaceutical sciences and general principles in pharmacy practice in the first semester,” says Love. “In the second semester, they’ll begin learning about diseases, pharmacology, and treatment, all of which were second and third year topics previously. There will be much more lab time with an emphasis on communicating with and monitoring patients. Students will be responsible for a lot more, earlier in the program.”

The revision process began in 2005 with evaluation of each course’s Terminal Performance Outcomes and then two years’ worth of work in the School’s Curriculum Committee, which was charged with developing a framework for what the revised curriculum might look like. Once that framework was approved by the School’s Faculty Assembly, Instructional Planning Teams spent a year “creating” each course. “These teams consisted of faculty from all three departments to ensure that the courses being revised or created from scratch encompassed all aspects of pharmacy, from science and practice to policy and outcomes. They examined every course we offer, tweaking a few here and there and creating some new courses from scratch.”

Students in their second, third and fourth years at the School of Pharmacy will finish their degrees under the existing curriculum, while the new first year students will be taught the revised curriculum.

“Revising the School of Pharmacy curriculum to maximize the expertise of our faculty and preceptors was a massive undertaking,” says Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, dean of the School of Pharmacy. “The revised curriculum not only gives our student pharmacists the building blocks they need to practice but shows them how to apply those building blocks in real world settings. I am extremely proud of the contributions every faculty member made to this revision and am confident that the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy will continue to graduate outstanding leaders in the pharmacy profession under this new curriculum.”

“While our curriculum was excellent, it became apparent in discussions with others that there were challenges we needed to address,” says Love. “The ultimate benefit of this revised curriculum is that our students will be more confident in performing the complex tasks they will need to master to practice pharmacy, in whatever role they choose.”