The rocky road to educational change: adopting the entry-level PharmD at Maryland, 1989-93.

摘要

Today, everyone in the pharmacy community knows the doctor of pharmacy degree (PharmD) is required for graduation. Most pharmacists know something about the 40-year debate over curriculum length and content that culminated in today's professional doctorate. But relatively few know about the intensity and even acri-. mony that prevailed during the years immediately leading up to the profession's decision to go "all PharmD." Indeed, Just about all current student pharmacists, residents, and new practitioners were not out of elementary school in the early 1990s. But a seemingly straightforward initiative to lengthen an academic curriculum and change the title of a degree aroused powerful and consequential disputes that played out not only in the national arena but also within individual pharmacy schools and universities.