UCSF Pharmacy Students Receive Overdose Prevention Training with OPTF at Clovis Medical School

By Joshua Carter, second-year medical student

On November 8, 2023, the Overdose Prevention Task Force (OPTF) at the California Health Sciences University College of Osteopathic Medicine (CHSU-COM) hosted an interprofessional training event with pharmacy students from the School of Pharmacy at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) at the CHSU-COM campus. The pharmacy students were completing their one-year clinical clerkship in the Central Valley.

The purpose of this event was to establish lines of communication between pharmacy and medical students early on in each other’s careers. The event focused on an opioid overdose patient case which blended together the physician’s ability to diagnose and the pharmacist’s medication knowledge to appropriately treat the patient. The event further aimed to facilitate students’ understanding and appreciation of how each profession contributes to the care of patients.

OPTF members and the event organizer shared their insights on this unique collaboration.

“The interprofessional event hosted by the OPTF team was very fun and informative. It created space for dialogue between pharmacy and medical students by putting us in scenarios where we had to work as a team to provide patient care. Through the scenario, I saw how valuable they are to a care team and how we can utilize our different trainings to better manage care for complex patients. I’m thankful I had this experience early, before starting my third-year clerkships because I needed to learn more about the pharmacist scope of practice and how valuable of a resource they can be for a clueless medical student such as myself.”

Ranvir Johal, second-year medical student

“I enjoyed the opportunity to work with pharmacy students and especially appreciated learning about the large skillset pharmacists have to offer in helping physicians prescribe effective dosing regimens.”

Fatimah Yusuf, second-year medical student

“Interprofessional training is an important aspect of both medical and pharmacy students training. As a supplemental event, the hope was to help students understand how pharmacists and doctors can help one another, and the only way for this to happen is for each respective specialty to understand the training and knowledge that everyone brings to the table. As physicians, a lot of the burden lands on us as we are supposed to be the head coordinator and be in constant communication with everyone within the healthcare team. From this event I hope that our group sees that pharmacists can alleviate some of that burden through increasing our knowledge of pharmacology. We aim to continue and grow this event in the years to come.”

Joshua Carter, second-year medical student, Event Organizer

CHSU-COM thanks OPTF members for creating this key opportunity to build interprofessional training between medical students and the UCSF School of Pharmacy.