When today’s students enter the Temple University School of Pharmacy hoping to earn a Doctor of Pharmacy degree (Pharm.D.), they have already completed two years of pre-professional education and earned excellent GPAs, are computer literate, carry cell-phones and beepers and are animated by the ambition to complete four years of rigorous professional study (for a total of six years of higher education) that will provide the gateway to a variety of careers.

Dr. Michael Borenstein (left) works with graduate student Jian Yin in the School of Pharmacy’s Drug Research Unit.

For these students, who are the latest crop of prospective graduates to enter TUSP, the experience of attaining a degree in pharmacy is far more complex than it was when the School’s first students enrolled a century ago. The curriculum for students in the 21st century includes a wide variety of courses that weren’t even thought of just a decade ago, let alone at the turn of the last century. In 1998, the School changed its core pharmacy curriculum in compliance with the national mandate from the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education (ACPE) to require a total of six years of study to earn the Pharm.D. degree.

Just like changes facing TUSP’s first students, today’s class enters the field of pharmacy at a time of great flux.

“The profession has always had a lot to offer students, even more so at this point. While most people focus on the community setting of pharmacy practice, graduates may choose any number of paths in a wide variety of corporate environments including hospitals, extended care facilities, managed care organizations, the pharmaceutical industry and governmental agencies, as well as clinical residency and fellowship programs that prepare them for academic positions,” comments Dr. Peter Doukas, dean of the School of Pharmacy since 1990.

“We are especially fortunate at Temple in that we are part of a comprehensive Health Sciences Center in the geographical epicenter of the pharmaceutical industry. Through our MS Program in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs, which addresses the needs of industry professionals, we have developed a strong relationship with that industry and the FDA. This synergistic relationship allows us to provide numerous opportunities to our Pharm.D. students who are seeking to explore their career horizons.

“We have to make sure that our students are fully prepared when they leave school. Developments like the completion of the human genome project have the potential to radically change our entire field in every dimension,” he said.

Such recent developments in the pharmaceutical industry include advances in gene therapy, strides in therapeutic options for chronic diseases, new vaccines for chicken pox and Lyme Disease and new drug delivery systems. According to Doukas, the most dramatic advancement in the field is the mapping of the human genome, which will allow for the development of countless new drugs and will enable health care practitioners to individualize therapy based on a given patient’s own genetic make-up and disease state to a greater extent than currently possible.

Today’s students entering practice will need to bridge the gap between the state of pharmacy practice just a decade ago and the inevitable advances on the horizon. Technology, according to most experts, will largely guide the changes sure to come in the next five years.

The experience of current TUSP students provides a snapshot of the profession at large. Today’s curriculum requires: 330 classroom and laboratory contact hours in the science of dosage form design, development and application (pharmaceutics and pharmacokinetics); 285 classroom hours in anatomy/physiology, pathophysiology, infectious disease and immunology and biochemistry; approximately 700 hours studying a continuum of topics that range from the fundamentals of drug action up to and including their safe and efficacious use in the treatment of patients, including: pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, therapeutics, advanced clinical pharmacokinetics, biostatistics and literature evaluation; 185 hours of law, pharmacoeconomics, drug information and patient counseling; 180 hours of professional electives; and, 1,200 hours of patient-oriented clerkship rotations in a variety of settings. 

Students take a lot of classes that are based in hard science, but it’s also required that they take classes that will help them to interact with patients and other health care practitioners as the students enter the world as professionals.

Students have the opportunity to work with basic pharmaceutical science faculty in their research pursuits, including: controlled delivery systems developed by Dr. Cherng-Ju Kim; nutraceutical delivery systems developed by Dr. Reza Fassihi; the targeted delivery of large macromolecules for the treatment of certain cancers developed by Dr. Kadriye Ciftci; and unique approaches to analgesic combinations being developed by Dr. Robert Raffa.

The completion of 30 weeks of clerkship rotations during the last year of study permits students to develop their patient-care skills and gain real-life exposure to a series of different professional practice or career settings. Aware that the profession is changing to foster a closer working relationship between pharmacists and physicians, students are able to specialize within the field by working with clinical pharmacy faculty specialists in order to observer first hand their impoetant contributions to paitent care.

Dr. Steven Gelone, an infectious disease clinical pharmacy specialist, teams with Temple University Hospital medical staff to perform medication reviews and recommend treatments for inpa-tients; Dr. Joseph Boullata is a member of the clinical team that oversees the nutritional needs of critical-care patients; Dr. Rachel Clark-Vetri has established a pain clinic in the Ambulatory Cancer Care Center; Dr. Karissa Kim follows the anticoagulant therapy of more than 200 patients in Temple’s Health System.

“There is no question that pharmacy in all of its permutations is big business and that students need a broad back-ground in order to compete after they graduate,” comments Doukas. Students at Temple can leverage the resources of the Pharmacy School and the broader University to differentiate their degree by concentrating their elective choices in a number of areas including Pharmacy Practice, Clinical Trial Management, Drug Safety, Nuclear Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Business.

To assist students in finding internships and job opportunities, the School’s Aventis Pharmacy Career Development Center is set to open this spring. Students will have a direct line to all pharmaceutical companies via the Internet and will even be able to conduct interviews using a Webcam.

In addressing TUSP faculty and staff at the opening of the centennial year, Doukas recalled the many achievements of the past 100 years and said, “As you go about your daily activities keep in mind the opportunity we now have (once in a century) to add a luster and spirit to all that we are proud of, in the process lifting our School to the next level of achievement and strengthening our future. We have a lot to be proud of; let’s enjoy it.”