Upstate Pharmacy School

[Spartan]

I heard this first in The Gamecock of all places. I cut out alot of the crap in this one. You can read some more from the link at the bottom. The thing I'm not sure about is will it acutally be at GHS sort of like MUSC or will it be at USC Upstate?

Officials confirm Upstate pharmacy school

New campus plans include announcement

Tuesday's announcement of a third venue for the South Carolina College of Pharmacy has USC officials looking forward to the prospects of creating a new pharmacy program, but has rekindled skepticism and outrage among some pharmacy students.

Speaking in the State House foyer, USC President Andrew Sorensen announced that a $5 million investment from the Greenville Hospital System Endowment will provide the necessary funding for a third pharmacy program in that hospital system, which also relies on USC and MUSC schools of pharmacy.

"This will meet the needs of young people in the upstate," said Harris Pastides, vice president for Research and Health Sciences. "But it also means they can spend part of the time in Columbia and Charleston as well."

The USC Board of Trustees approved the merger of the USC School of Pharmacy with MUSC's Pharmacy School in October and approved the naming of Executive Dean Joseph DiPiro in December. DiPiro will ... take the job in May.

"This is really important - absolutely necessary to serve the whole state," he said.

Since discussion began about merging the two schools in spring 2004, concern arose among pharmacy students, who felt the USC School of Pharmacy would become decentralized after the merger.

To keep up with those changes, Sorensen said the addition of the Greenville system will create a true statewide program.

Although the merger and creation of a new program in Greenville is official, the process of actually merging the two schools is still in progress, with the first semester of the S.C. School of Pharmacy to begin in fall 2006.

Sorensen said statistics have shown people tend to stay in the area where they practice medicine, so the creation of the first Upstate program will help serve a new area of the state.

"It is important in clinical settings for training when there are underserved areas in the state. That is where they are more likely to stay," DiPiro said.

http://www.dailygamecock.com/news/833070.html?mkey=851831

[The_sandlapper]

I saw it in The State last week. I'm not sure it sounded like it was going to be an actual pharmacy school but then the more I read it sounded like it was going to be an extension of rotation time spent in GHS.

[Spartan]

Well that story made it seem like it would be the real deal. They didn't specify whether it would be more like USC or MUSC though. I guess we will see.

[btoy]

Isn't one of the campus for the school going to be the Greenville Tech Greer Campus on HWY 290?

[Spartan]

Isn't one of the campus for the school going to be the Greenville Tech Greer Campus on HWY 290?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm not sure. It just occured to me that I'm starting to get frustrated with the extreme lack of centrality of all of these schools around the Upstate.

[goodbye]

Actually, I had read about a new research partnership a couple of months ago, which included a large new facilty on the GHS campus. Not sure whether this is the same thing or not, though.

[goodbye]

Here's an article from the Charleston Post and Courier on the 13th of Jan.

This article says that the site has not yet been determined.

Pharmacy School to Add Site in Greenville, S.C.

The Post and Courier

Jan 13, 09:09 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jan. 13--The soon-to-be-merged Medical University of South Carolina and University of South Carolina pharmacy college will not have two locations. It will have three.

The universities on Wednesday said that their South Carolina College of Pharmacy will add a Greenville location, thanks largely to an agreement by Greenville Hospital System to spend $5 million over the next decade to pay for faculty.

That will enable the hospital system to become the third major site where pharmacy students get their clinical training.

The purpose is to boost the number of pharmacists who work in the Upstate. As prescription drug use surges, with an expected 3 billion prescriptions expected to be written this year nationwide, there aren't enough pharmacists to go around, and the Upstate is particularly short.

"We could use 12 to 18 tomorrow morning," said Frank Pinckney, chief executive of the Greenville Hospital System.

One in five hospital-based pharmacist jobs nationwide, and one in six pharmacy jobs, go unfilled, the schools said in a statement. Officials said that pharmacists and other health professionals are more likely to work in the area where they do their clinical training.

"From the beginning of the merger discussions, the fear was that we would decrease the number of pharmacists," said Dr. Ray Greenberg, MUSC's president. "But our desire has been to increase the number of pharmacists."

MUSC and USC are in the process of merging their pharmacy schools, and recently named Joseph DiPiro as the merged college's new dean. Its first joint class, which DiPiro expects to be around 190 students, will enter in the fall of 2006.

The first three years of pharmacy education are largely based in the classroom, DiPiro said, with the fourth taking place in pharmacies in various settings such as hospitals or clinics.

Currently, that last year is based at hospitals in either Columbia or Charleston, though students take turns spending time at other sites around the state, including Greenville.

When the merged first class reaches its fourth year, 20 or 30 students will have their clinical year based at the Greenville Hospital System. In the meantime, the colleges will increase the number of students who do elective rotations there, Greenberg said.

The schools will hire faculty who will work at the Greenville Hospital System to oversee those students.

Greenberg said the number of faculty who will be hired will be left up to DiPiro. Pinckney said the pharmacy school will be located in a new research and education building being built on the hospital campus.

"We think of the pharmacy program as a statewide program," said DiPiro. "This is a critical piece."

[Spartan]

Ah, so its primarily a clinical thing. I guess it makes sense.