As the healthcare profession has changed through the years, so has the role and opportunity for pharmacists to influence healthcare. Once known for dispensing prescriptions and warning doctors of potentially dangerous drug interactions, today’s pharmacists now have the ability in certain situations to prescribe medicines and order labs.
Welcome to the new reality of 21st-century American medicine. And the Cedarville University School of Pharmacy is training future pharmacists by example.
Dr. Andrew Straw, Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice, has long been a friend of the Rocking Horse Community Health Center in Springfield, Ohio. Now, he’s paving the way for graduates of Cedarville’s Doctor of Pharmacy program to serve there as well.
Rocking Horse, a federally qualified healthcare center that provides care to underserved populations, is Straw’s clinic site. Rocking Horse acts as a homebase for a new pharmacy residency program location. Straw spends part of each week practicing pharmacy at the center and oversees the new residency program as its director.
Serving the Underserved, Training Students
For Straw, developing a pharmacy residency program at the site was a natural step forward in providing better service at Rocking Horse and more opportunities for students, from Cedarville or any other school of pharmacy, to learn from the work being done at the center.
“I was looking for a way to expand the services at Rocking Horse and also provide opportunities for postgraduate training, so a residency really made the most sense,” said Straw. “Given all the services available, the population and the variety of disease states and medications that are available, it makes a great place for a student to receive that intense additional training.”
Tags: Collaboration
Posted in: Collaboration, Disrupting Healthcare