A student-designed, service-oriented internship for rising UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy PY3 students through the Student Health Action Coalition (SHAC) is starting its second summer.
SHAC is a collaboration between UNC students focused on health sciences and aims to provide free health services to uninsured and underinsured patients in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Durham.
The SHAC Ambulatory Care in Underserved Populations Summer Internship, developed by a group of UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy PY3 and PY4 students, selected four individuals to participate in this summer’s internship program: Dani Youmans, Jessica Newman, Kandace Elder and Lauren Burton.
“Due to the limited number of internships available to students, we aimed to expand the number of opportunities available and provide students with a unique, dynamic and flexible learning experience,” said Frank Tillman, one of the School’s Pharm.D. students who developed the program.
The interns volunteer for eight weeks at the Carrboro Community Health Center. The internship’s service-learning component allows students to build upon a traditional internship experience by both providing direct patient care and learning how to work with other healthcare providers. Interns also volunteer at the SHAC Outreach walk-in clinic, where they monitor blood pressure and glucose levels for patients.
Lori Armistead, MA, Pharm.D., of the School’s Center for Medication Optimization through Practice and Policy, said in addition to improving their communications skills, interns can directly apply what they have learned about population health through their pharmacy curriculum.
The internship includes site visits to local nonprofits such as Senior PharmAssist, which helps senior citizens in Durham County who may need assistance getting their necessary medications. Students also participate in journal club workshops, which allow for further discussion on issues surrounding healthcare in underserved populations. This summer, interns will attend workshops on rural health, interprofessional collaboration and mental health.
Armistead and the student leaders wrote a paper about the internship’s development, which was published April 2019 in the publication INNOVATIONS in Pharmacy. The paper, titled “Implementation of a Student-Developed, Service-Based Internship for Pharmacy Students,” explained the successes of the program’s inaugural summer – the interns completed more than 60 hours of direct patient care and worked with pharmacists from a variety of backgrounds.
The Pharm.D. candidates who authored the paper were Carolyn Rath, Frank Tillman, Jessica Stickel and Madison Jones. Rath said the publication process was a way for the student team to share the story of the SHAC internship with others, and to hopefully help different programs develop similar service-learning experiences for students.
“It was a really fulfilling experience because we know that some people have read about what we have done, and maybe we have been able to develop something that would inspire them,” she said.