Quick Overview of 4-Year Curriculum
-1.png)
Philosophy
The Doctor of Pharmacy Curriculum at the UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is designed to prepare graduates for a challenging career in Pharmacy over an anticipated professional career spanning 30 to 40 years.
The curriculum prepares students to be leaders in the profession of pharmacy and provides the tools to effectively practice in a variety of existing and potential roles in academia, hospitals and clinics, long-term facilities, home care, government, health policy, the pharmaceutical industry and innovative community practice settings. The emerging fields of personalized medicine and data science will have profound influences on the future practice of pharmacy and graduates will be in an excellent position to bring these advances to the patient care setting. Essential to lifelong learning, as the profession undergoes tremendous change in the future, is a strong understanding of the basic biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences. The curriculum is designed with the philosophy that all health science students, including medical and pharmacy, require a common knowledge base in the biomedical sciences. To this end, pharmacy students take courses in the basic biomedical sciences with the medical students in the second year of the curriculum. In addition, pharmacy students will be enrolled with these same medical students during advanced practice clinical experiences in the fourth year. The common required and elective coursework taken by pharmacy and medical students, interprofessional learning activities, and introductory and advanced practice clinical experiences where medical and pharmacy students work closely together have been created to foster the development of teamwork and collegiality between the professions. It also allows for an appreciation for the unique roles that each professional provides in a patient care setting.
The curriculum is currently dynamic, under constant review and is being updated by interdisciplinary faculty committees with student input.