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Adapting to Unprecedented Circumstances In the midst of a national pandemic, pharmacy schools face extraordinary challenges as they work to make alternate arrangements for rotations, determine how students will graduate on time and ensure that learning continues. By Jane E. Rooney
The COVID-19 pandemic turned lives upside down for citizens around the globe. For pharmacy schools, as with most education institutions throughout the United States, this meant a drastic adjustment as administrators, faculty and students shifted to virtual learning arrangements for the foreseeable future. Although many institutions have experience with emergency planning for events such as natural disasters or short-term closures, a viral outbreak on this scale is unprecedented. “We never thought of a pandemic of this proportion,” said Dr. Wanda Maldonado, professor and dean, University of Puerto Rico School of Pharmacy, who is part of a COVID-19 Task Force appointed by the governor to provide guidance to the Department of Health. “This has taken a lot of effort from the task force. There were no protocols in place for guidance, as the spread of this disease is a fairly recent phenomenon.” When it became clear in mid-March 2020 how quickly the virus was spreading, AACP joined several pharmacy advocacy groups in urging government agencies to adopt policy recommendations to empower pharmacists to support the nation’s response and assist patients. The four recommended measures were: authorizing test-treat-immunize; easing operational barriers to address workforce and workflow issues; addressing shortages and continuity of care; and reimbursing for services and removing barriers.
signed on by over a dozen national organizations in less than a week simply has no precedent. We have already seen the outcomes in terms of state pharmacy board waivers to address the needs we identified in that document. That is one of the most striking results of this collaboration.” Maine added that AACP is striving to provide resources to individuals and institutions to help them through this crisis. “The pandemic has stimulated the most remarkable amount of cooperation, resource sharing and mutual support that I have ever witnessed,” she said. “From our co-hosting the initial series of webinars with ACPE for deans or their designates in midMarch to various sections and special interest groups using AACP Connect for problem solving and resource sharing, it is a testament to what wonderful people we have in the Academy.” Here are the stories from several pharmacy schools around the country about how they made decisions and handled the restrictions brought on by COVID-19 in the early days of the outbreak in March. (This information was up to date as of press time in late April 2020.)
Unknown Scenarios
Puerto Rico was one of the first U.S. jurisdictions to impose strict measures to try to contain the coronavirus, enforcing a strict lockdown that began on March 15. At that point, all didactic courses at the University of Puerto Rico School of “A collaborative spirit is at work at the state and national level within pharmacy and also in our interprofessional community,” Pharmacy transitioned to online platforms, said Maldonado. “For experiential education, we made some adjustments. We noted AACP CEO and Executive Vice President Dr. Lucinda went through a process of reassessing when these experiences Maine. “To have a substantive policy analysis produced and
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Academic Pharmacy NOW 2020 Issue 3
