Monday, November 8, 2010

Pharmacy Residencies and Fellowships

So what does all this verbage about residencies, fellowships, PhD work, that you may hear pharmacy students talking really mean?

The purpose of the residency (general or specialized) is to further develop you expertise as a clinician. The PGY1 is a more broader focus and the PGY2 has evolved into specialty practice to further develop skills to specialize in a particular field (i.e. psych, neuro, critical care, cardiovascular, etc).

A fellowship is meant to develop the skills of the individual as a researcher. Typically they market the capacity of developing you into a skill set necessary to be a principal investigator. Fellowships provide specialized training and experience within the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries while enhancing the role of pharmacists within industry.

Otherwise the PhD route gives you time to develop that skill set over the 1st 2 yrs and you have the remaining 2-3yrs to continue development and apply your work.

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