Pittsford, N.Y. — The Wegmans School of Pharmacy at St. John Fisher University trains future pharmacists to enter a changing field, informing them about different opportunities within the industry and challenges they could face with prescription reimbursement levels.
A rash of local retail pharmacies closures could put a strain on the number of sites where students get important hands-on experience."Ensuring that there are good pharmacies in the area with preceptors that are able to train our students in those settings is essential for us," Birnie said. "About a third of our curriculum is experiential in nature, which means that a third of that of our curriculum is out in the community.
“It was a lot," he said. "It was a lot of learning, a lot of accommodating to that. As I'm learning about who I'm going to be for that for the rest of my life, I'm also learning like what challenges I'm going to have to overcome and how I’m going to have a role in that." “I do have friends that are in the retail sector, and their experiences are just very, very different from mine," he said. "Longer hours, they're the only ones who are in the pharmacy, compared to here."As changes in the industry happen, the pharmacy school is seeing changes in how people attend. Roughly half of new students at the Wegmans School of Pharmacy enrolled online from other regions and states.