Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.)

Your holistic growth begins with a quality pharmaceutical education. Along with clinical training and electives, we integrate Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses, which build your confidence, credibility, and expertise in all areas of pharmacy practice. This includes advocacy, career exploration, interview skills, licensure exam preparation and study strategies.

You can also earn certificates in specialized areas, including diabetes care, medication therapy management, substance use disorders, point-of-care testing and health care leadership. Additional certifications can boost your marketability and establish you as a leading expert in your field.

You’ll graduate with 1,784 hours of clinical experience and ample real-world practice. When completing your pharmacy practicums, you work in various practice settings to diversify your knowledge and help you become a versatile health care worker who can thrive wherever you decide to go.

During your clinical practicums, you can work at renowned organizations, such as the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center (UPMC) Health System, Allegheny Health Network, Cleveland Clinic, Eli Lilly & Co., Indian Health Services, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. We’ll partner with you to schedule available rotations so you can explore different career paths that align with your professional aspirations.

You can also participate in transformative global health rotations and learn at the University of Perugia, University of Bologna, Daiichi University or Kobe Gakuin University.

The pharmaceutical field is ever-evolving and expanding. At Duquesne, we strive to empower pharmacists with the cutting-edge expertise needed to match the industry’s dynamic pace. You can choose from six faculty-approved concentrations that provide a deep dive into unique pharmaceutical sectors and improve your ability to provide patient-centered care.

Each concentration incorporates at least six contact hours of coursework and other required activities to strengthen your skills. Additionally, you will receive a certificate of completion upon graduation. Our Pharm.D. concentration tracks include:

• Acute Care
• Ambulatory Care
• Community Practice
• Entrepreneurial Pharmacy
• Geriatric Pharmacotherapy
• Health Science and Research Outcomes

Working as a pharmacist requires extensive science and health-related expertise, robust communication, and a strong sense of integrity and ethics, which can help you confidently navigate the pharmaceutical industry. We designed the pre-professional phase of our pharmacy degree program to cover a broad spectrum of topics and spur skill acquisition. 

To provide a solid science foundation, you take a series of courses and labs in essential disciplines like anatomy and physiology, organic chemistry, biology, and microbiology. These are essential to prepare you to tackle more advanced pharmaceutical and biomedical concepts.

Along with your science-focused education, you also explore how to grow as a communicator and an ethical professional. As you study writing and literature and cultural fluency and creative expression, you hone your abilities to translate complex ideas into written communication and connect with diverse individuals across all backgrounds. You also enroll in courses in ethical reasoning, philosophy, and social and historical reasoning to help you understand how to carry out your professional responsibilities with sound judgment.

As you enter the first year of your professional phase, you begin to tackle more advanced math and science coursework, which includes pharmaceutical calculations, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, and drug delivery systems. From exploring sterile and non-sterile compounding to deepening your knowledge of protein synthesis and nucleic acids, our curriculum ensures that you continually expand your pharmacy-related knowledge.

Beyond pharmacy-specific classes, you gain a deeper understanding of the United States’ health care systems and laws to help you contextualize how your role as a pharmacist fits into a larger national context. You also study public health and epidemiology, empowering you to advance individual and community health and well-being. 

Continuing your career-focused learning, you also progress through professional development courses to improve your patient-care skills.

Year Two’s curriculum pivots and places a heavy emphasis on biomedical sciences and the role of therapeutics—treatments for fighting disease and alleviating pain and other negative symptoms—in the pharmaceutical field. You enroll in courses dedicated to specific disciplines, such as cardiology, infectious diseases, psychiatry, neurology, pain management, and endocrine disorders. Along with this well-rounded training, you learn to evaluate drug literature and gain familiarity with pharmacokinetics to understand how the body interacts and metabolizes a substance.

In your second professional year, you also earn two certificates in tobacco treatment and immunization, which sharpen your competitive edge and equip you to carry out essential job responsibilities.

In Year Three of your Pharm.D. program, you explore specialized patient-centered topics, such as how to perform physical and clinical assessments and deliver care to special populations and those who are critically ill. Your advanced coursework also continues to investigate therapeutics related to hematology, oncology, transplantation, pharmacogenomics, and gastroenterology.

On an industry-wide scale, you study the overarching pharmaceutical model and its development, management, and opportunities for innovation. But to prepare you to oversee a smaller pharmaceutical practice, you learn how to manage a pharmacy effectively in theory and through applied practice, developing your own leadership instincts.

Finally, your third year requires you to participate in community health promotion activities that use a problem-based learning approach to provoke critical thinking and sharpen your ability to craft innovative solutions to widespread problems.

The fourth and final year of the Pharm.D. program focuses primarily on developing your applied skills and expertise through 40 credits of hands-on clinical rotations. As you progress through your practicums, you become more confident in serving a diverse patient population and overseeing your job responsibilities as a working pharmacist. Additionally, your last round of Continuous Professional Development courses further polish your interpersonal communication abilities and prepare you for career planning.

Along with these real-world experiences, you can customize your education by earning specialized certificates of your choice. Available certifications include diabetes care, medication therapy management, substance use disorders, or health care leadership.