Curriculum

Our unique three-year, year-round curriculum is based in scientific thinking. This means that you’ll constantly be thinking through potential answers to questions, solutions to problems, and making connections within your learning, week to week and year to year.

Coursework is integrated across subject areas, helping you connect one part to the next as you actively engage in your own learning—and students routinely learn in groups. It’s upon this foundation that you’ll build the core knowledge, pharmacy practice skills, and patient care experiences that you’ll need for a career in pharmacy as a caring, patient-centered expert in the safe and effective use of medicines.

As you move through the PharmD curriculum, you’ll:

• Build your core knowledge in science and therapeutics as well as in essential patient care skills
• Experience pharmacy practice as you learn and apply core knowledge in various clinical settings
• Explore new ideas and innovations in science and practice, while developing your own inquiry skills

Five main components

You’ll learn through five curriculum components:

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Foundations

Foundational knowledge needed for subsequent learning

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Integrated Themes

In-depth exploration of science and therapeutics, and inquiry, through the lens of eight organ systems and disease categories

UCSF

Patient Care Skills

Hands-on pharmacy practice and communications skills

Susan Merrell, UCSF

Practice Rotations

Clinical experiences that reflect the situations and challenges you’ll face as a practicing pharmacist

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Discovery Project

Student team-based research projects

Curriculum approach

The UCSF PharmD curriculum is designed for you to consistently apply scientific thinking across all coursework. Asking why, why not, how, what if, and questioning the status quo will become your new norm. You’ll dive into instructional materials and online discussions before class and come to class ready to actively collaborate, discuss, and problem solve with your classmates. You’ll have opportunities to learn with students in other health professions programs.

You’ll start the curriculum by building a shared base of science and professional knowledge that you’ll then apply through the lens of organ systems and diseases. At the same time, you’ll develop patient care skills, from how to interview a patient to how to give an injection.

You’ll experience pharmacy early on in real-world pharmacy practice. And you’ll explore what’s on the horizon in science and pharmacy practice through a unique, insiders’ look at pioneering work under way at UCSF by world-class faculty members. You’ll develop your own inquiry skills and apply them to a group research project.

How will you know you’re succeeding in the curriculum? You’ll be assessed on your competency—your ability to identify and solve problems relevant for pharmacy practice—in a pass/no pass system (see Progress and Feedback).

Throughout the curriculum, you’ll participate in sessions intended to support your success as a student and as a professional. Session topics include self-care, learning strategies, professionalism, career development, and leadership. And you’ll be set to consider additional training beyond the PharmD degree.

The UCSF PharmD curriculum will prepare you to thrive as a compassionate, team-oriented pharmacist with a keen scientific mindset, an unmatched professional skillset, and a limitless future—a pharmacist who easily adapts to continual changes in health science and patient care, and a pharmacist who leads those changes.