faculty
Third-year pharmacy students Amanda Geffert and Amyn Madhani look over the chart of a patient at the DeMatel House at the Village at Incarnate Word.
GRACE added to curriculum
New program gives pharmacy students real-world experience By Ashley Festa
O
n staff for slightly more than a year and a half, Cynthia Villarreal, Pharm.D., is already making big changes for students at the Feik School of Pharmacy (FSOP). As coordinator of Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience (IPPE) at the FSOP, Villarreal researches and implements new programs to add to the school’s already challenging curriculum. Only six months after her arrival, third-year pharmacy students began a new round of experience outside the classroom in what Villarreal has dubbed the GRACE program. GRACE stands for Growing Respect and Care for the Elderly and provides an opportunity for students to get real-world understanding of how pharmacists assist aging patients. San Antonio retirement communities Morningside Ministries and the DeMatel House at the Village at Incarnate Word both allowed students to work with residents. Other universities have similar programs for pharmacy students, but Villarreal says the UIW program is unusual because
20 T H E W O R D | S P R I N G 2 0 1 1
FSOP students review patient charts and make recommendations based on their interactions with elderly patients. Students are paired with a classmate and assigned a patient that they’ll be assisting for six weeks, the length of the yearly spring program. Each week, the students review records and ask how their patient is doing. Our bodies change as they age, Villarreal said, and elderly patients may require different dosage or may have different reactions to medicines. So students stay on the lookout for problematic drug interactions or improper dosage, and they discuss any concerns they find with the on-site pharmacist. The benefits of the GRACE program extend beyond simply finding issues on patient charts. Residents enjoy interacting with the students, and students gain valuable experience in dealing with real situations instead of simply studying cases from a book. The students act as “another set of eyes and ears for pharma-