Next Meeting -- Life as a Pharmacy Student!

Hey Everyone!

I just wanted to get the word out about our next meeting -- it will be Wednesday, November 2nd at 8:00 p.m. in Room 270 of the Tanner Building. We will be hearing from Chris Mecklenberg and his student association at Roseman University (formally USN), and they will tell us what it's like to be in pharmacy school! I am really looking forward to this meeting and hope to see you all there!

Auburn University

Dr. Woosley came and visited us today from Auburn University (Alabama) and shared with us information about the Harrison School of Pharmacy! Here are some notes from the meeting:

• Unique characteristics of this school:
• Only two classrooms,
• Golf tournament with employers to raise money for scholarships
• Vaccinations for university
• Health fair and lots of service
• Field games day! Competition between the classes
• Legislative Day
• Rotation Experience
• Graduation -- family affair
• 30% students go into post-doc opportunities
• 24th Highest Ranked Pharmacy School
• Average GPA of 3.4 
• Not a grade-forgiving school
• Always find out school's GPA calculation policy!
• PCAT score is less important than GPA
• Biology and Chemistry sub-section scores are most important
• Shadowing is recommended
• Number of hours isn't important, just important that you know pharmacy is the profession you want to go into 
• Personal essay
• Want it in your own words, PharmCas has software that checks for plagiarism
• Interview -- extremely important
• 16 students invited at a time, interviewed for a day getting to know you and letting you know about the school
• Look for 7 domains of character
• Communication
• Leadership
• Problem Solving
• Professional
• Ethics
• Responsibility
• Analytical Skills
• Service Oriented
• Don't know your PCAT or GPA scores before 
• Will let you know within 24 hours if you've been accepted or not
• Rolling Admissions
• Take-away message: APPLY EARLY!
• Remember PharmCas is Eastern Standard Time
• 2nd Week of School -- you are assigned a patient 
• You interview them, find out disease states, find out drug therapy
• You will keep this patient for the remainder of the year
• The P2 on your team will be your mentor throughout the year
• Class size of only 15 -- 2 professors
• Pass/Fail -- intent is to learn how to talk to patients and how to solve problems on your own relating to pharmacy
• One 2-hour lab
• Teach on a disease-based concept
• Two years 
• Third Year -- Class size goes from 125 to 8
• Focus on problem based learning, disease centered, you will be given a patient-centered case with multiple problems 
• You will teach the class about your specific disease case
• Fourth Year -- Clinical rotations, 8 five-week rotations, one five-week off
• 6 are in an independent, chain, hospital, multiple clinical settings
• 2 electives: opportunities in Kenya, Arizona, cross-cultural, CDC in Atlanta, research

Check out pharmacy.auburn.edu for more information! 

Next Meeting Info -- USN School Rep!

Hey everyone! Here is the information about our upcoming meeting on NEXT WEDNESDAY, at 8:00 p.m. We will have a presentation from Dr. Michael DeYoung, the Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Affairs at USN-South Jordan! We will be meeting in Room 164 of the Tanner Building. Hope to see you there! 

Pharmacist Presentation!

Thanks so much to Jim Avarett for coming to speak to us today for our Pre-Pharmacy Club Meeting!

Here are some notes from the presentation that we were able to enjoy in case you weren't able to make it:

• Pharmacy School
• Learned how to make lotions and shampoos, a little old school!
• Early 1900s, most drugs came from plants and were compounded 
• Powder papers:
• get powders, mix them up according to a formula, fold them up and give them to a patient to take in a drink or something (another old way to deliver medication)
• Old philosophy -- administer a type of poison and hope that it kills the bad stuff and doesn't kill you!
• Interning in a hospital
• A fun part about working in a hospital: Pneumatic tube delivery system to transport medicine throughout the hospital
• Unit Dose Machine - helped to cut down on waste in hospital
• Manual unit dose system: has a pre-print label and you can give people individual doses that can be re-administered to another patient if unused.
• Working in a clinic
• Decentralized pharmacy -- allowed pharmacists to be on the floor and saved lots of time because pharmacist was able to be on the floor and could communicate directly with the doctor if there were any issues.
• The nurses had lots of questions and could speak directly to the pharmacist
• Order input
• Technicians are able to stock a 24-hour supply of medication
• Order input is a big part of your time when working in a hospital pharmacy
• Need to analyze prescription when it comes in to the pharmacy -- any drug interactions, if it is the right dose, get to see the lab tests to see if the patient is improving or if there needed to be any changes.
• Working at BYU
• Change environment to retail -- a large part of working in retail is patient counseling
• Required by law now, give them information on why they are taking the drug, answer any questions
• Be aware of drug seekers! May try to forge a prescription, need to consult with a doctor
• Need to be aware of confidentiality -- very important in retail
• Knowledge of drugs in pregnancy
• Polypharmacy counseling -- maintain a drug profile record of all your patients, there are many chances for harmful interactions
• Need to be especially aware of interactions between natural products because they aren't regulated

Next Club Meeting!

Hey Everyone! We just got the info for the next club meeting! So....here it is!

We will meet NEXT WEDNESDAY at 8:00 p.m. in W118 of the Tanner Building. I know it is kind of a different building, but I picked it because it has the most parking nearby, so I thought it would be more convenient! We will be having a guest speaker, Jim Avarett, who is a pharmacist from the BYU Health Center! Come with lots of questions about the career of pharmacy! 

How to Get on the Club Roster!

BYUSA Roster “How to Guide”

1. Go to BYUSA home page: http://clubs.byu.edu/home
2. Click on the “Log In” button under “Welcome”
   1. Route Y pops up, fill in Net ID and password
3. Edit Personal Profile
   1. Need a current email and address to continue
   2. Click “Save and continue”
   3. Confirm email
      1. They will send you an email with instructions on how to do this. But if I remember correctly, all you have to do is follow a link from the email they send you.
4. Click on the “Add New Organization” button on your BYUSA home page
   1. Type “Pre-Pharmacy” in the box.
   2. Click the “Find Organization” button
5. BYU Pre-Pharmacy Club should pop up, click on the link.
   1. Choose to be a Member
   2. Click “Submit Request”
6. Wait for the approval! You should be added fairly quickly, so look for that confirmation! Welcome to BYU Pre-Pharmacy; it is the place to be!

Smart Prep PCAT

I saw this flyer today while walking around in the MARB and thought you guys might be interested! I am not sure how good it is, but for $15, I would say it might be worth trying it out! Most PCAT test prep courses are pretty expensive, so you may want to give it a try. Sorry about the blurry picture, I took it real quickly so I wouldn't forget to share it with you all! At the bottom, it says you can email smartpreppcat@gmail.com for more information and other questions.