The Residency Program

Established in 2000, the community pharmacy residency at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy is one of the oldest accredited residency program of its kind in the nation. It has a proven track record of giving new pharmacists the tools they need to be leaders and innovators in community-pharmacy practice.

As a resident pharmacist in the program, you will collaborate with experienced practitioners in a community pharmacy. With your preceptor as your partner, you will initiate new programs and expand and enhance existing services. You will learn first hand what works and what doesn’t in a community pharmacy. You will also design and conduct a research project which will be presented at a regional or national conference and be submitted for publication.

Our goal is to supply you with a toolkit of skills that will prepare you to begin your professional career as an independent clinician or entrepreneur, ambulatory care clinicians, or community-based or clinical faculty member. You will be able to

• Apply medication-therapy-management skills in direct patient care through wellness and disease-state-management programs and selected dispensing activities;
• Develop, market, and implement new patient-care and disease-state-management programs;
• Participate in and develop practice-management programs that improve effectiveness and efficiency of the drug-distribution system;
• Teach pharmacy students in the classroom and in practice settings; and
• Educate patients and health-care practitioners about appropriate drug therapy. 

The residency strives to develop creative and innovative pharmacy-practice leaders equipped to meet the challenges presented by the rapidly changing health-care system, the implementation of pharmaceutical care, the explosion of drug and therapeutics information, and the need of society for improving patient care and monitoring of therapeutic outcomes.

Each residency consists of a minimum of 2,000 hours of education and training experience conducted over a twelve-month period. Each residency site has a preceptor who oversees the training of the resident.

The type of patient-care environment can vary greatly, but the majority of sites are centered around a community chain or independent pharmacy that focuses on providing pharmaceutical care and disease state management. The practitioner resident is fully integrated as part of the team at a community site. The resident not only gains experience but also becomes a valuable learning resource for the site and its staff by providing fresh perspectives and insight.

The Community Pharmacy Residency Program was established by the American Pharmaceutical Association in 1986, and there are currently CPRPs in more than thirty states. The program, which is accredited by the American Pharmacists Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

ASHP Community Pharmacy Residency Outcomes, Goals, and Objectives Document