New York State Approves UB's Pharm.D. Program

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy has announced that its six-year, entry-level doctor of pharmacy (Pharm.D.) program has been approved by the New York State Department of Education.

The new program, which is now in place, follows a directive from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy approving the six-year Pharm.D., or doctorate of pharmacy, as the field's only professional degree.

The American Council on Pharmaceutical Education, the accrediting body for schools of pharmacy, says that the last bachelor's degree in pharmacy class it will accredit is the Class of 2004.

Any third-year student in the school's baccalaureate program can track into the doctoral program; the first two years of the baccalaureate and doctoral programs are identical.

The switch from the baccalaureate to the doctoral degree is driving one of the most dramatic shifts in emphasis the profession has seen, according to Wayne K. Anderson, Ph.D., dean of the school, because it will produce graduates who spend far more time on patient-care management than they will on dispensing drugs.

Students in UB's doctoral program must select, and be accepted into, one of four "tracks" that will allow them to specialize in a particular area: ambulatory, which is community pharmacy practice; clinical, which is primarily hospital practice; industrial, which involves working with clinical trials in the pharmaceutical industry, and research, which involves drug discovery and analysis, quality control and research in both industrial and academic settings.

At UB, the Pharm.D. program features:

o An increased clinical emphasis, including 40 weeks of full-time, clinical clerkships, up from 18 weeks in the bachelor's program.

o New courses, such as ambulatory and in-patient disease-state management and clinical pathways courses, in which students learn algorithms, or decision points; how to manage drug therapy for different diseases, and pharmacoeconomics, which involves determining the economic impact of drug therapies on patients.

o A modular, rather than a departmental, approach, in which one subject, cardiology, for example, is team-taught by faculty from several disciplines.

Students who complete the doctoral program will have had more than 1,600 hours of clinical clerkship, more than satisfying the eligibility requirement for taking the New York State board exam.

Prospective students interested in applying to the doctoral program should contact Cindy Konovitz in the school's Office of Admissions at 716-645-2825 or by e-mail at .

The UB School of Pharmacy is the only public school of pharmacy in New York State.