The Ambulatory Care Pharmacy Concentration includes six (6) credit hours in didactic elective coursework in ambulatory care topics designed to give PCOM School of Pharmacy PharmD program students in-depth preparation for a career in ambulatory care pharmacy.
Graduates will be encouraged to apply for PGY 1 and 2 residencies in ambulatory care pharmacy and related specialty training. As space is limited, students will be selected based on availability.
REQUEST PROGRAM INFORMATIONAn ambulatory care pharmacist can manage patients in collaboration with physicians and other prescribers in an outpatient care setting and often are crucial in managing chronic disease states like diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia and many others. Collaborative practice agreements set up with physicians and other prescribers allow pharmacists to perform patient assessments, manage diseases through monitoring and adjusting medication use, coordinate care with other providers and provide patient education and counseling services. Through these types of partnerships, ambulatory care pharmacists can have a major impact on wellness, prevention and optimum outcomes for their patient populations.
Ambulatory care pharmacists work in community and chain pharmacies, outpatient clinics, physician offices and hospitals.
The Ambulatory Care Pharmacy Concentration requires the completion of six (6) credit hours of elective coursework. Students will complete two, one-credit ambulatory care courses per term in the third year (six courses for a total of six credits). Current course offerings are listed below and are subject to change. Consult the course catalog for additional information.
This course will identify the effectiveness and potential harms of pharmacist-led chronic disease management and the referral of patients to other healthcare providers. Special emphasis is placed on specific problem solving skills involved in initiating, adjusting and discontinuing drug therapy in complex integrated cases seen in chronic disease management such as COPD, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, anticoagulation, hypertension and safe medication use in older adults.
This course is designed to expose students to topics related to the ambulatory care pharmacist’s’ scope of practice and to expand student knowledge base in ambulatory care pharmacy. These include the following: transitions of care models, satisfying Medicare Part D enhanced medication therapy management requirements in Medicare Part D, comprehensive medication management, collaborative drug therapy management, annual wellness visits, medication reconciliation, and polypharmacy interventions. Special emphasis is placed on the intent of practice models in patient safety and the pharmacist's impact on outcome quality measures using these practice models to assess outcomes.
This course will advance the student’s knowledge regarding clinical application of public health policy from the pharmacist’s perspective. Discussions will focus on understanding and applying principles of health and wellness when providing individual and population-based patient care, including pharmacy-based immunization delivery and disease prevention. Additionally, this course will also discuss the pharmacist’s role in emergency preparedness in mass vaccination campaigns for vaccine-preventable diseases, highlighting the pharmacist’s impact in advancing public health and wellness.
This course will provide students a multidisciplinary foundation in the principles of diabetes management with additional education in the management and care of patients with diabetes. The course’s primary objective is to expand students’ aptitude and confidence in the provision of diabetes management while reinforcing the knowledge of drug therapy in the core pharmacy curriculum.
This course is designed to build upon entrepreneurial skills in the core curriculum by teaching students how to write a business plan to build an independent ambulatory care practice. The course will cover topics involved with ambulatory pharmacist billing and reimbursements, and the elements of developing a practice to support outpatient and primary care physicians. Students will be prepared to lead and build an ambulatory care pharmacy practice to ensure that pharmacy practitioners have the tools to continuously innovate and advance pharmacy practice in today’s challenging and changing healthcare environment.
This course will develop entry-level competencies needed for community and ambulatory care pharmacy practice dealing by advanced exploration in the psychology of behavior change. The student will use the Pharmacist Patient Care Process to identify, understand and resolve social and behavioral barriers to improve pharmacotherapeutic outcomes. By resolving patient-specific barriers to medication adherence regarding chronic disease, reduction of disease burden will occur. Knowledge, skill development along with attitude insight will occur using virtual simulations, case vignettes and real-world scenarios that hinder the creation of health equity.
This elective* covers preparation of intravenous chemotherapy and oral chemotherapy by an oncologic pharmacist. It also covers survivorship including nutrition and wellness for the cancer patient. The student will have an opportunity to learn about various cancers that were not previously covered along with oncology nutrition. The student will also have an opportunity to verify chemotherapy orders and apply it to a patient case as well as a chance to complete an oncology volunteer activity.
*May also satisfy Acute Care Concentration
The purpose of this course is to expose students to the key concepts in consultant pharmacy practice pertaining to geriatric pharmacotherapy and assessment. The course is designed to focus on important clinical topics in geriatrics. There will be an emphasis on the physiology of aging, appropriate pharmacotherapy, complexity of regimens, changes in cognition, and the challenges of providing safe medication management of the elderly. The course will include, but is not limited to, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, Parkinson’s disease, depression, anxiety, behavioral disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, changes in hepatic metabolism, renal clearance and volumes of distribution and other topics.
*May also satisfy Acute Care Concentration
This course* will introduce new topics not covered in the core curriculum related to psychiatric illnesses including concepts of behavioral medicine, and traumatic disorders. Additional attention will also be given to management of affective disorders, anxiety, schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorders. Students will apply the knowledge learned via the lecture through group cases conducted at the end of each lecture as well as movie/topic discussions pertaining to the lecture material.
*May also satisfy Acute Care Concentration
This course* is designed to provide the student with the necessary information to become a community pharmacy owner either through the establishment of a new pharmacy or the purchase of an existing pharmacy. The student will learn layout and design, location analysis, evaluation of third-party plans, and promotional offerings, as well as the financial aspects of the development, implementation and performance of value-added clinical services in the community setting.
*May also satisfy Managed Care Concentration.
This course* provides the student with knowledge and skills for managing population health outcomes in healthcare systems. The focus is on understanding the role of costs in healthcare delivery and the balance between optimizing healthcare costs and achieving outcomes. Special emphasis will be given to the application of health services research data to the quality of care from the perspective of a population-health manager.
*May also satisfy Acute or Managed Care Concentration.
© 2023 Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine