5 Metrics that Matter: What Pharmacy Schools Should Measure & Prospective Students Should Ask
This is it! The year 2021 is the start of a new decade. With time changing, as do all things change — ideally. We must change in order to grow. The pandemic has certainly served that mantra up in droves.
I get asked all the time about my own career — which I think of being first and foremost, a pharmacist, even though I’ve done other things professionally, and studied other subject matters, like business and law.
Pharmacy as well is undergoing significant change right now, which I think most of is for the better (outside of filling prescriptions AND giving vaccines due to the pandemic — props to my brothers and sisters that are stepping up and juggling all this). The pandemic forced that upon many professions, granted. But one area I haven’t seen enough change in and fast enough is in the area of schools of pharmacy.
If someone in my life was seriously thinking about going to pharmacy school right now, I’d suggest they ask when reviewing the different programs about the following 5 metrics or areas that are important to practice. If the schools don’t have good answers, they should automatically be cut from the list.
And of course, this is not a fully inclusive list — things like affordability/cost, and other metrics like faculty:student ratios should also be considered and are basic questions of any program. Try not to get sucked into the pretty campuses and the scintillating social activities on weekends either. (Hint: if you’re dedicated to learning pharmacy — you won’t be partying much anyway.)
The list of items I’m suggesting below are for the next generation of leaders in pharmacy….think of it as a list of questions for admissions in pharmacy, version 2.0.
Questions to Ask Schools of Pharmacy for the Future:
1.What is the diversity of job placements of graduates 📊 ? When schools say something like “95% of our graduates have a job out of pharmacy school,” that’s merely the tip of the iceberg around placement questions, in my mind. I’d want to see a specific pie chart of the variety of jobs that students were going into— “retail,” “hospital,” “residency” and “fellowship” do not offer enough detail. What types of retail settings? Independent pharmacy ownership, or in a chain? What types of hospitals? Rural, metro, or specialized? What types of residencies? Brand new residency programs with new practice settings, or well-established, firmly conservative typical traditional settings? Fellowships — same deal — what types? Where? New or old? Here’s an interesting way to ask about it too: “What percentage of graduates from this school had a title for their first job out of school that did NOT have ‘pharmacist’ in it?” or “How many students from this program co-created a brand new fellowship or residency with a faculty member?” Again — if the schools don’t have better answers for you after asking a few probing questions BEYOND the % of people who had a job at graduation, run away from the program as fast as possible and cross it off your list. If they all head in one direction, think about whether or not that’s an area you want to practice in — and if it isn’t, think twice.
Last, pharmacy schools shouldn’t just track the first gig out of pharmacy school with their alumni either. Does the school have longitudinal data around graduates and their career trajectories? What do alumni profiles for careers look like? Do they have strong affiliations with alumni, or just loose affiliations and only send letters asking for money as their sole form of engagement? Pharmacy is a lifelong career — not just a first gig out of school.
2. What makes this pharmacy school a unicorn 🦄 ? Every school of pharmacy pretty much offers the same core curriculum — and assuming pass rates are okay at schools (which you can and should review, BTW — courtesy of NABP), it is important to ask about the cool stuff for students OUTSIDE of the core. What electives do they offer? Are there electives that move students into different types of advanced rotations in their final year of school? What unique rotations does the school offer? What does the pharmacy school have that is UNIQUE that NO OTHER SCHOOL offers? Several schools have a MBA joint degree or MPH. Some have a law joint degree. Yawn. There had better be something cool and different that the school offers that no others do — because that’s a hallmark of being a leading, innovative school. For example — Manchester University in Indiana had one of the first, if not THE first Master’s in Pharmacogenomics (PGx) programs in the US. PGx is a growing area of practice. A few schools offer a joint PA-PharmD program. Now we’re talking. If the school just says pharmacy is it — again, think twice about keeping them on your list.
3. What does the school offer around Standard 4 of the ACPE 2016 Standards 🥇 ? I still think this might be the most important Standard of all in the 2016 standards because it tries to measure and quantify entrepreneurial thinking, innovation, self-awareness, and leadership. It’s also still one of the leakiest standards of all, because it wasn’t given a lot of description in the guidance document (which I hope was intentional). Regardless — you should ask about this specific standard. Many pharmacy schools shy away from it, because it is difficult to track and creatively measure. But the good schools and programs will embrace it and proactively share what they’re doing around this particular standard. If the school has nothing here — you know the drill. RUN.
4. What networking and extracurricular activities does this pharmacy school offer? You can start with the Dean of Students in the school for this set of questions. How many clubs/orgs/pharmacy fraternities does this school have? Does this pharmacy program have the same 20 professors in the same clinical setting (or no setting at all) teaching all of the curricula, or does the school invite in practitioners from the community to teach and share? The best schools with the widest variety of practice options also have the widest range of professional teachers — a mix of full-time faculty, part-time faculty (or full-time co-funded faculty) who are out in the trenches with a day job, and MANY opportunities to mix it up with students. Pharmacy is also a big small pond. Meaning that everyone who leads in pharmacy pretty much knows who the other leaders are — but are the pharmacy students at School XYZ exposed to them? Do they see a variety in faculty or just one flavor of faculty? (For example, all faculty from a hospital background only, or a retail background only.) Variety is the spice of life, and the spice of a great future-focused profession.
5. Interprofessional education OUTSIDE of healthcare? While this is a mandated standard and most pharmacy students will learn in the classroom and out along with other healthcare professions, a better way to investigate this is interprofessional education OUTSIDE of healthcare professions. For example, do the students create cross-campus projects? Do they learn in the classroom with other majors OUTSIDE of healthcare? Are there design labs or services for all students across campus that are opportunities to be creative? We all work with people not like us every day in the real world — so what is the school doing to prep students for the real world as well?
Aside from the fact that I hope ACPE and other leadership associations in pharmacy are starting to revise the 2016 standards soon if they aren’t already (as they’re starting to get a little dated), these are 5 questions that future-focused schools and leadership will be on top of when prospective candidates come calling to their pharmacy schools.
If you get blank stares when you ask these 5 areas of questions, you just made your own decision much easier, as you can cross them off the list and move on to schools that DO embrace these future-focused topics!
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Erin L. Albert is a pharmacist and taught in pharmacy academic for over a decade. Opinions here are her own.
