Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience
Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs) are completed during the sixth year (or 4th professional year) of Northeastern’s Doctor of Pharmacy program. Read more about curriculum requirements here. Pharmacy students are required to complete six, 6-week pharmacy experiences, often referred to as rotations.
APPEs provide ‘real world’ experience gained in a variety of professional settings. The primary goal of APPEs is to enable students to apply knowledge, skills, and behaviors to the practice of contemporary clinical pharmacy within the American health care system.
Enabling goals include:
- to identify population-based drug therapy and monitoring requirements;
- to communicate effectively to patients, preceptors, and members of the health care team;
- to recommend patient-specific therapeutic plans based on the unique clinical, psychosocial, cultural, and educational needs of each patient;
- and to develop organizational and time-management skills.
Students choose desired APPEs from among several hundred practice sites in the greater Boston area and beyond. Students must fulfill four required APPE rotations and can select two electives. The School of Pharmacy is affiliated with many institutions in Massachusetts, in the northeast region and as well as nationally. The Office of Experiential Education (OEE) works with preceptors in an increasing number of practice settings to offer the student body a wide variety of practice experiences. The OEE encourages the development of new and innovative practice experiences. The four required APPE rotations are: Community Pharmacy, Internal Medicine, Ambulatory Care, and Health-system. Examples of Health-system rotations include Cardiology, Infectious Disease and Intensive Care. Some examples of elective rotations may include Drug Information, Pharmaceutical Industry, and Teaching.
Sites offering APPEs are in, around, and outside of the greater Boston area. For example, students may fulfill their Internal Medicine APPE rotation at a major teaching hospital in the city of Boston or travel to the Cape and fulfill it at a hospital there.
Contact an OEE faculty and staff representative for additional information about APPEs.