Issue link: https://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1545861
GETTING HANDS-ON WITH EQUIPMENT, CONSULTATIONS AND BEST PRACTICES IS THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND KU SCHOOL OF PHARMACY-WICHITA'S MODEL PHARMACY, BECAUSE FEW TYPES OF LEARNING ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN DOING INSTEAD OF MERELY READING OR WATCHING. "The model pharmacy is a training space for students to do and learn their daily tasks. That can be counseling with a patient or sitting down with a provider or talking to a nurse and explaining how a medication needs to be administered to the patient. We've also designed it to be a space for students to train in immunizations," says Brad Newell, Pharm.D., associate dean, KU School of Pharmacy-Wichita, noting the space can flip between traditional community pharmacy — like most of us walk into — and an inpatient pharmacy like those in hospitals or other healthcare facilities. Located in the school's current home alongside the medical school, the model pharmacy is housed in a windowless room but will have more room to breathe and carry out its mission at the Wichita Biomedical Campus downtown. With 60 students across four years, the Wichita pharmacy program is close to capacity for its accreditation and facilities, and the biomedical campus will provide larger classrooms and the potential for growth. Like KU School of Medicine-Wichita, the pharmacy program seeks to reach out into western and rural Kansas in ways that, because of distance, can be challenging from the pharmacy school's main campus in Lawrence, Newell says. Outreach is a focus and training opportunity, too, as students help organize and participate in events such as Operation Immunization, which provides flu vaccines, and Operation Diabetes, which performs blood pressure, A1c and cholesterol checks. Interprofessional training and collaboration, as it is for medical students, is an emphasis. Students and faculty alike volunteer at the JayDoc Community Clinic, and faculty are embedded in family practice clinics in Wichita. With medical and pharmacy programs in the downtown campus alongside those from WSU Tech and Wichita State University, collaboration will be easier. "The new campus will be a more friendly environment to work together," Newell says. "We want to increase the visibility of what the students are doing. Currently, you can't see into the lab without actually going into the room. The new building has been designed so that people standing in the hall can look in and see what the pharmacy students are doing." The ultimate goal is to improve patient outcomes, built on the recognition that no one profession in a care team can master all the expertise medicine entails. Part of that goal can be achieved by current and future physicians and pharmacists working and training together, with doctors, for example, seeing the depth of knowledge about drug interactions, delivery methods and more. With the new campus and facilities like the model pharmacy, "we're looking forward to continuing to break down those barriers between the professions," Newell says. collaboration KU Wichita pharmacy students work together in the model pharmacy. 21