P3: My Third Year of Pharmacy School
08/31/2021
The summer before the third year of pharmacy school
After 2 summers of working 40 hours per week at Kaiser Permanente, I decided it was time for a change! This summer, I took advantage of my vacation hours at work, and took a couple weeks off to travel. I booked a flight to Canada with my family to soak up some summer sun at Niagara Falls and de-stress with a couple wine tours.
Looking back, the money you make if you work full time during the summer is pretty nice, but I’m not so sure it’s worth missing out on travel. The summer before the third year of pharmacy school is one of the last opportunities you’ll have to travel (aside from your 2 off-blocks during fourth year rotations). After graduating and landing a job it’ll be very difficult (if you get into a residency, forget vacation).
My advice is to travel for at least 1 week each summer in pharmacy school. Vacations are memories that last a lifetime, and one missed paycheck from work won’t hurt much.
Enough fun stuff, let’s get into third-year classes.
What classes do you take as a third-year pharmacy student and how difficult are they?
Again, please keep in mind, this curriculum is from USC’s School of Pharmacy in 2018. Classes and curriculums will vary between schools!
The third year curriculum consists mainly of therapeutics classes. The main difference between therapeutics courses taken during P2 year and courses taken during P3 year is that P3 year’s courses are much more difficult. They’re harder because the content is extremely detailed and there’s a lot more memorization involved.
Here is the complete course list that we took and brief descriptions of each course:
Fall Semester 2017:
Therapeutics: Cardiovascular System - You’ll learn everything related to the heart and kidneys here. Examples of topics include hypertension, dyslipidemia (cholesterol), heart disease, arrhythmias, and heart failure. Cardio was actually one of my favorite therapeutics classes, because I had a natural interest in these topics. The topics here are also widely applicable in pharmacy practice and if you understand Cardio, you’ll do well during your advanced pharmacy rotations fourth year.
Therapeutics: Infectious Diseases - Personally, I absolutely hated this course even though it’s an absolute necessity to know during advanced rotations and inpatient/hospital settings. It’s straight memorization - knowing which antibiotics/antivirals/antifungal/etc. are effective against which “bug” (bacteria/virus/fungi/etc.). Unlike with Cardio where if you know the physiology, you can make sense of the answer, infectious diseases is either you know it or you don’t. Hands down, one of the most difficult courses for me in pharmacy school.
Scholarly Project 1 - This isn’t really a full on class, but more of a seminar on what exactly a scholarly project is. Basically, you form your own group and pick a topic you’d like to present on. You’re paired with a faculty mentor to help guide you through the research process of your project, and at the end of the year you present your findings to fellow students and faculty. This can be something as simple as a population or epidemiologic study or something as complex as determining the efficacy and safety of new antibiotic therapies on cancer patients.
Pharmacy Practice and Professionalism 5 - Do we really need to go through this class every time…
Case Conference 4 - If I remember correctly, this case conference was a bit different than the previous years. This is when we had our OSCE’s (Objective Structured Clinical Examination). Basically its a live exam where we’re given a variety of topics to study about a week prior. On the day of the exam, you rotate through 3 exam stations that are 10 minutes each. A faculty member at each station will pretend to be a patient, and assess your skills. Our topics were hormonal contraception, counseling a patient on their medication (I got Zofran), and travel medication recommendations.
Spring Semester 2019:
Therapeutics: Oncology - The MOST DIFFICULT THERAPEUTICS CLASS!! Thankfully, the way this class is taught it’s almost impossible to understand and learn the material and therefore, the curve is enormous. I’m pretty sure our class curve was something like if you got a 60% that was a B. Not many preceptors on advanced rotations expect you to know any oncology anyways, so don’t worry if you come out of this class knowing nothing.
Therapeutics: Special Populations - Probably the second most difficult therapeutics class. The course was so fast paced, it felt similar to oncology. Topics focused on special populations such as pediatrics, geriatrics, and pregnancies.
Pharmacy Management and Economics - I truly wanted this class to be interesting, but with the study workload coming from oncology and special populations, everyone puts this economics course on the back burner. I don’t think I even downloaded the lecture slides or listened to any podcasts for this class. No one in the class studied for the exams in this course and so everyone essentially passes.
Scholarly Project 2 - A continuation of scholarly project 1. This is when you present your findings to faculty and your classmates. Don’t worry - this project isn’t as scary as it seems and it also doesn’t take up too much of your time.
Pharmacy Practice and Professionalism 6 - …
Case Conference 5 - Unfortunately, I don’t even have anything in my pharmacy folder for this case conference… It must’ve not been important.
APPE Gateway - This course is a summary of the most important topics USC thinks you need to know (heart failure, diabetes, psychiatry, infectious diseases, general cardiology) before going off on advanced rotations. Don’t take this course lightly, as there is an exam at the end. If you don’t pass the exam, you CANNOT go on APPE’s and your whole rotations schedule is delayed. TAKE THIS CLASS SERIOUSLY!!
APPE #1 - Advanced rotations started in March (Spring semester of P3 year) for us. From here on out, it’s 1 year of rotations and then we’re done with pharmacy school!
Did you do any extracurriculars during your third year of pharmacy school?
The short answer is no, I did not. Most P3 students do not do many extracurriculars. This is solely because everyone is trying to concentrate on learning the therapeutics material. Of course, if you still want to participate in extracurriculars you can. If there’s one thing you should take away here, it’s pharmacy school can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. If you want to work 30 hours a week, study for the hardest therapeutics courses, and enroll in extracurricular clinical skills competitions, go right ahead.
I had my hands full with work and studying, and that’s why I didn’t participate in any extracurriculars my third year. Most students will enroll in leadership positions and extracurriculars their first two years in pharmacy school, then drop off lots of extracurriculars their third year.
Concluding my third year as a pharmacy school student
P3 year doesn’t really have a nice summer ending to it, like the P1 and P2 years do. This is because advanced rotations (APPE’s) start in March of your P3 year and don’t end until pretty much near graduation (spring of your P4 year). P3 therapeutics were definitely the most difficult, but P4 advanced rotations were by far the most tiring. This is the first time you’re required to show up at an APPE site for 6 weeks at a time, 40 hours a week, 8 hours a day. Think of it as the work grind, but without the pay. It’s terrible.
If you’ve made it this far into the article, thank you, and I hope you’ve learned a bit about what life is like for a P3!
If you have any specific questions, please don’t hesitate to message/email me here!
Click the arrow on the bottom right of this page to check out my life as a P4 on rotations! 😁