Why Should You Get Your PharmD at Pacific University?

Pacific University’s PharmD program is the only accelerated program in Oregon and in the Pacific Northwest. In addition, the state of Oregon recognizes pharmacists as health care providers. By getting your PharmD at Pacific University in Oregon you will be prepared to practice at the top of your pharmacy licensure. From newly redesigned curriculum to robust clinical experiences and post-graduate opportunities, the PharmD program at Pacific University will prepare you for a successful career in pharmacy. In addition to the accelerated PharmD, you can also choose to complete dual degrees — such as a PharmD and MBA, or a PharmD and MS in Pharmaceutical Sciences — in just four years.

Continuously Refining Skills for Patient Care

The School of Pharmacy provides innovative, contemporary, progressive and student-centered training and curriculum that will prepare you not to just be practice- but also career-ready. The integrated, semester-based PharmD curriculum combines clinical and scientific concepts with clinical reasoning for optimized direct patient care. This is emphasized within individual courses, across semesters, and throughout the entire PharmD program. Our new course “Practical Connections” is specifically designed to help you connect learned information across each semester, and from year to year, with advancing complexity and more challenging problem-solving as you progress through two years of didactic and laboratory courses.

Small class sizes provide focused attention and an ability to get to know your faculty and student colleagues on a deeper level. We value connection and provide many opportunities for our students to interact and build close relationships with our faculty, staff, community partners, and peers. This is achieved through an extensive personal and professional development program that is embedded within the PharmD curriculum. Highly qualified, experienced, and diverse faculty and staff are focused on helping you to succeed.  Our dedicated faculty and staff work hard to guide every student down an individualized path to meet each student's professional goals.

We offer student-oriented research opportunities offered across a broad array of clinical and scientific topics. These opportunities include research rotations as well as collaborating with faculty on a variety of research projects including pharmaceutical science, clinical and patient care, and scholarship of teaching and learning. Participation in our PharmD Research & Scholarship Track will even earn you a specialization on your academic transcripts.
 

Interprofessional Approach and Flexibility to Make the PharmD Program Work for You

Pacific’s PharmD program begins with two years of face-to-face expert instruction delivered on our campus in Hillsboro, Oregon. The Hillsboro campus is the home of Pacific University's College of Health Professions. This means you will interact and work with students and faculty from other health professions, including through formal interprofessional education and practice activities.

Flexibility has been built into the PharmD program by providing students with the opportunity to complete clinical rotations in the state of their choosing during the summer clinical experiences in years one and two, and also during advanced pharmacy practice experiences completed in the third year.

Enabling You to Make a Difference in the Community

National APhA immunization certification and training is completed during the first semester of study. This will enable you to become a certified immunizer early so that you can participate in outreach that makes a difference in the community.

Laboratory and skills training include advanced pharmacy training through patient assessment, sterile and non-sterile compounding, counseling skills on medication and medical devices, point of care testing (e.g., blood glucose), prescribing of birth control, tobacco cessation medications, COVID-19 antibody prescribing and administration, prescribing continuation of therapy, and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) prescribing, initiation and interpretation.

We utilize innovative ways of delivery and clinical assessment including EHR Go to simulate patient charts and health care simulation, objective structured clinical examinations (OSCES), and the use of standardized patients for diverse, realistic simulations so you can build your competencies for real-world practice and patient care.

Robust interprofessional education opportunities, which are integrated within the curriculum and begin as early as the spring semester of your first year.