Business school or pharmacy school?

Part of the curriculum here at BJD involves courses that are not so heavy on the scientific or even healthcare aspect of pharmacy, but rather the business side of things. I personally have always had an aversion to business. I understand its importance but would rather leave that to someone else to worry about. I would prefer to focus my energy on the healthcare side of pharmacy. Now that I have stated my biases, at times I feel like many of the topics we cover are focused on business principles rather than pharmacy principles.

For example currently we have a class titled “Professional Practice Management”. I think its name could easily be changed to “Business Management”. Much of the lectures we have had in this class make me wonder at times if I have mistakenly enrolled in a business class. Case in point some titles of our lectures in that class are: “Business Plan—Location Analysis”, “Marketing”, and “Inventory Control” among others. In fact a major assignment for this class is a group project where we must come up with a detailed business plan for opening up an independent pharmacy. In this project we tie together the various elements we have been presented about the business side of pharmacy. Some parts of this project are more interesting to me e.g. designing a lay-out for our pharmacy, while others make me grateful that this is a group effort and not just me working on it. For anyone who is interested in owning and operating an independent pharmacy or even working in the business area of pharmacy for a large pharmacy corporation then these kinds of assignments and courses should be very welcoming. I on the other hand have to remind myself that while I highly doubt that I will be operating my own independent pharmacy in the future, who knows one day I may find this information very valuable.


Among other things like the P2 class, our P3 class has an exam every week from now until Thanksgiving Break. I personally greatly appreciate the spaced out exams (it creates much less stress). In fact we will be having our first ICARE Hematology/Oncology exam this week. Like our other ICARE courses, we had been expecting a bonus quiz to earn a few extra points for cushioning our midterm grades. However, by today many people had given up hope that we would get one. Yet we were surprised with one first thing in class. I wish I could say that the material on the pop bonus quiz was stuff I knew inside and out, however that was not the case. On a brighter note, the bit of studying I had done paid off a little. So between now and Friday I will have blood and cancer on my mind in anticipation of our exam.

Thankfully Phi Delta Chi will be hosting “Carnival for a Cause” right after the exam, where they will be raising money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. One of the things I am truly looking forward to is making my own caramel apple. But I think the highlight will be seeing a professor get a pie in his or her face. At one point or another I think all students after an exam fantasize about professors getting hit in the face with a pie.