Description of the Effective Practice:
How this practice supports access:
Creighton University's web-based Doctor of Pharmacy Pathway provides a new, full-time educational method to obtain a Doctor of Pharmacy degree. All the program's didactic courses are taught using the Internet and CD-ROM. All students' interactions with faculty and mentors occur via Internet chat rooms, e-mails, fax, and telephone. Students are required to attend several campus-based laboratory courses, annual assessments and some clinical rotations; students may schedule clinical rotations at sites away from campus. On-campus summer laboratory sessions enable students to condense a semester worth of laboratory work into two weeks. The program also assigns students a mentor who functions as an online teaching assistant within program courses. The pathology course uses medical residents. Pharmaceutics uses graduate students. The medicinal chemistry use a faculty member at another school of the pharmacy.
The clinical component of the program requires eight five-week rotations. Five rotations are in required subject areas, while the remainder are in elective subject areas. These unpaid rotations provide experience in actual pharmacy practices. Rotation sites are in a variety of locations throughout the U.S., and some international sites. New sites are being constantly identified and developed. It may be necessary for students to travel to sites during at least a portion of the last year, depending on the availability of suitable rotations in their location.