Dr. Janice Yeung and her team had a vision to give pharmacy students at the University of British Columbia (UBC) an opportunity to get unique experiences within selected rural and remote communities in need of pharmacy services.
With financial support from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy’s Wellspring Award, she and her team realized their vision by developing the school’s first regional practicum model in which entry-to-practice PharmD students can get substantial work experience within remote/rural communities and regions in B.C. “We are piloting our first iteration of this model in May 2024, starting in the interior region of B.C., and will be doing a formal evaluation at its completion,” says Yeung, who is director of the Office of Experiential Education at UBC’s Faculty of Pharmacy. She says this evaluation is aimed at informing ongoing development and eventual expansion of the model to other underserved areas of the province.
In developing this innovative practicum model, Yeung and her colleague Dr. Neelam Dhaliwal hosted in-person symposiums to solicit feedback from key stakeholders from outpatient and inpatient pharmacy practice. Formal engagements with students and experiential partners not only indicated interest in the concept, but provided key recommendations in developing and designing the new model. “Our graduate academic students helped us to analyze all the data we collected from the symposia…and from this we were able to identify the sorts of things we needed in developing this model,” she says, noting that this included everything from logistical considerations to partnerships and collaborations needed. Yeung says the ultimate goal in launching this new practicum—in addition to giving students unique pharmacy practice and patient care experience—is to encourage them to develop deeper connections within the rural/remote communities within BC. The hope is that this may also increase their interest in future job opportunities in these regions post-graduation.
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