By Sarah A. Reid
The Winchester Star
WINCHESTER — On Monday, Alan B. McKay was talking with a delegation from Husson College in Maine — the third set of school representatives to come through his doors in the past month.
“Maine is one of the states that doesn’t have a pharmacy school,” said McKay, the dean of Shenandoah University’s Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy.
 Alan B. McKay, the dean of the Shenandoah University Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy, said, “We are not going to have enough pharmacists — period.” (Photo by Jeff Taylor) |
As more and more colleges around the country explore the idea of adding pharmacy courses, SU has become a destination for some educators learning how to set up their program.
“It is happening all around us,” McKay said.
It’s happening so close, in fact, that Radford University, a public college in the New River Valley, is considering the establishment of a pharmacy school.
“We are in the very early stages of concept development and analysis,” said Rob Tucker, the director of university relations at Radford. “It’s just an idea we have had. We are exploring it.”
College President Penelope W. Kyle and Randal J. Kirk, the rector of the university’s Board of Visitors, visited Shenandoah’s pharmacy school this month.
Officials with the Winchester-based private school aren’t worried about competition, it seems.
“It is very difficult to start a pharmacy school today,” SU President James A. Davis said, adding that the university could become a partner with Radford. “There are several, perhaps a dozen or more, under consideration.”
When Shenandoah established its pharmacy school in 1995, it was one of 75, McKay said. Now, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy is projecting 100 new pharmacy programs will be started by Jan. 1, adding to the 92 in existence.
“So you can see how fast they are ramping up,” McKay said, noting about 32 applications in various states are pending.
But those new schools — which normally take two years to set up — won’t produce enough graduates to stem the growing shortage of pharmacists.
According to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, 41 percent of male pharmacists and 10 percent of female pharmacists are 55 or older and nearing retirement.
“We are not going to have enough pharmacists — period,” McKay said. “It doesn’t matter if we have these schools online. It takes eight years for us to make an impact.”
SU gets about 14 applications for every seat it has open in its 75-student pharmacy program, McKay said.
Two years ago, the school expanded by becoming a partner with George Washington University to create a satellite campus in Ashburn, near the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Twenty students are studying pharmacogenomics — or how people respond to specific drugs based on their genetic makeup. The program is set to expand to a 35-student course.
With the “garden variety Wal-Mart pharmacist” starting at $113,000, plus a $13,000 signing bonus straight out of a six-year doctoral program, and with pharmacogenomics majors making 20 to 25 percent more than that, McKay said he’s not worried about other Virginia pharmacy programs taking his students.
“We aren’t concerned about what happens in Virginia,” he said of new pharmacy schools setting up.
What he does watch are schools established in other states or in Canada — the sources of 75 percent of Shenandoah’s pharmacy students.
SU is working with area high schools to try to set up a dual enrollment program where its faculty members could go into public school classrooms — helping systems that have trouble recruiting science teachers and creating more pharmacists faster.
“There are a lot of things on the drawing board we haven’t had time to pursue,” McKay said.
Like Shenandoah’s president, the dean of the pharmacy school also knows that it’s difficult for a new program to get set up.
Faculty members can often make more money working in the private sector, and new programs can sometimes offer more money.
Educators also expect the Accreditation Council of Pharmacy Education to strengthen the regulation of clinical sites, which will make it harder for students from out of state to obtain clinical experience outside Virginia.
“If we can’t guarantee they are quality sites — we can’t use them ...,” McKay said. “Which means we are going to have to start drawing our students closer to us.”
And if new schools are opened, that could mean more competition for hospitals, pharmacies, and ambulatory care facilities that will allow students to get hands-on experience.
— Contact Sarah A. Reid at
sreid@winchesterstar.com
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