The TNP Student Series goes global! Christy Cheung joins us from Vancouver, Canada to talk about the role technology will play in the future field of pharmacy.
Name: Christy Cheung
Position: P4 Pharmacy Student at University of British Columbia Vancouver
Interview Summary
Matt: [00:00:07] Welcome everyone. Matt Paterini here with The Nontraditional Pharmacist part of the Pharmacy Podcast Network. I am super fired up today for a new episode of The Nontraditional Pharmacist: Student Series. We have a fantastic, rock star student with us today, Christy Cheung, all the way from Vancouver, British Columbia, the University of British Columbia (UBC). Very active on social media, great supporter of The Nontraditional Pharmacist so we’re going to have fun today. Ask some questions about Christy’s experience and get her take on a couple of things in the field of pharmacy. So Christy, welcome to The Nontraditional Pharmacist thank you so much for taking the time.
Christy: [00:00:48] Thank you very much for having me and for accommodating my schedule over here with the time difference.
Matt: [00:00:54] Yes the time difference is three hours, it’s no big deal. We’re happy to do it. I will get right to the questions and with The Nontraditional Pharmacist: Student Series we really want to get perspectives from folks in pharmacy school now, going through different programs and obviously being from the part of the world you are from, it’s going to be a great perspective to share with our viewers. So let’s start with our first question which is why did you choose to go to pharmacy school in the first place?
Christy: [00:01:24] I actually did three years of my undergrad beforehand. Two years were done at McGill University in Montreal. I started off with chemistry and kind of maneuvered my way into pharmacology, wanting to do more applications of biochemistry and things like that. For my third year or I actually went on exchange to Singapore and I did a whole year exchange there. I really dove into the roots of pharmacology. I took courses at toxicology, things like that and I found it very interesting, but I wanted to do more with my pharmacology knowledge and it was very spontaneous. I hadn’t even thought about applying to a professional program, whether it be medicine, dentistry, or pharmacy but for us in Canada we’re quite behind. So the year after Singapore, that was the first year of the PharmD degree. Ours is the first class of PharmD’s so I was like oh you know the new curriculum sounds very interesting it’s a lot more clinical focused, you get a full year worth of rotations in fourth year plus more rotations scattered around first, second, and third year. So I was like you know what I’m just going to try, I think I really like pharmacology, pharmacy shouldn’t be too different and I’d be able to interact with patients, do more patient care type work. And so I just went for it. So it’s a very spontaneous decision, definitely not something that I’d been thinking about beforehand.
Matt: [00:02:54] Sometimes it’s not. I mean you don’t know what path you’re going to take as you start exploring certain things and things catch your interest, you know try different things here and there. And it leads you down a certain pathway. It’s interesting you said that Canada is behind, I guess compared to the United States maybe? Maybe expand a little bit on how it’s different in Canada compared to the United States in terms of pharmacy training because I think a lot of people probably don’t know the difference.
Christy: [00:03:26] So I’m very fortunate to have connected with a lot of the pharmacists over in the States. So from what I understand it’s a standard that everybody has a PharmD degree if they’re a pharmacist. For us for the most part, we’re still you know bachelors of science students graduating with a pharmacy degree. I believe there are a couple universities in Canada that were ahead of my university, but we were one of the first couple ready to adopt the PharmD degree. Ontario might have been a bit quicker to adopt it, but granted I would say we’re a decade or two behind. I’m not sure when the PharmD started in the States, but we are quite behind in that sense. With the bachelor’s degree, the first year of pharmacy is your basic science training. So you don’t really dive into the core pharmacy courses until second and third. In fourth year you do three month rotation and that’s pretty much it. So in terms of the clinical experience or the experiential education, it’s a lot less compared to the new PharmD degree. I’m not sure how similar it is to the PharmD degree in the States now with rotations. But our entire four year is rotations and we get rotations in first, second, and third year summer.
Matt: [00:04:41] Okay. And you said it was a spontaneous decision to do this in the first place. Has it met expectations or what’s the experience been like so far?
Christy: [00:04:50] Yeah, I think it was pretty exciting going in without any expectations because there aren’t any pharmacists in my family. I hadn’t spoken to any pharmacists, except for maybe when I picked up prescriptions when I was younger so I had no idea what to expect, but I knew that this was something that was interesting to me so I thought I’d give it a try. It’s been a really great four years, I’m now graduating in a couple months and I think I’ve discovered a lot about myself through my degree. I’ve definitely changed a lot. Pharmacy is not at all what I expected when I first went in. I think like many students were kind of taught that there’s you know your traditional hospital route and your traditional retail or community route and that was what I was just focusing on in first year. But at the beginning of second year I actually attended a Health Hackathon. And that just kind of opened my eyes and that was kind of the catalyst to discovering different areas within healthcare, not just within pharmacy, but within healthcare that I could explore. I believe that pharmacy is a very versatile profession and out of all the health care professions in fact, I think pharmacy is most versatile and that’s what I’ve found through talking to people and exposing myself to different opportunities. Now it’s like there’s way more than just community and hospital pharmacy practice. I think community and hospital are still a really great practice but there’s way more out there than the first year student, me, thought.
Matt: [00:06:29] No I couldn’t agree more. The pharmacy profession is so versatile and honestly it’s not all that well-defined, meaning I think the opportunities are endless in the field of “pharmacy.” That was so cool, the Health Hackathon, I remember we talked before about this. But maybe give a little bit of detail about exactly what that was and how that’s kind of molded your interest in pharmacy.
Christy: [00:06:54] Yeah for sure. So the Health Hackathon, it’s called Hatching Health and it’s hosted by UBC. They invite students or professionals from healthcare, from design, business, people with an entrepreneurial background, and engineers. So they accept about a hundred participants each year. I just saw a posting or an ad on social media, thought that it was quite interesting you know integrating health care with engineers. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect there either. But essentially it’s 24 to 48 hour type Hackathon. It starts off Friday night with a networking type event, and then Saturday morning people go up on stage and pitch their ideas about problems in healthcare that they’ve seen, and then you form teams and you have to have a minimum of one member from each discipline so to speak. And you start hacking away and then Sunday comes around and then you do presentations. You present your prototype or the solution that your team came up with and then it goes on to finals and whatnot. So that was a really rewarding experience. I’ve actually done it for three years consecutively now, just because it’s really opened my eyes to how to think about healthcare from different perspectives, to think a little bit outside the box, and maybe because I’ve always come from a science background, like going to chemistry, pharmacology, even in high school my interests were always in science. I had never taken any electives in business or any other fields so I was very sheltered within the health care and science world and just seeing the different perspectives in what other people had ideas about for healthcare was just very enlightening.
Matt: [00:08:47] How did you come across the Hackathon? You said it was a posting. Was it facilitated through the school or was that something you kind of found yourself?
Christy: [00:08:58] It was facilitated through the school, I think the organizers were just marketing it through social media. It was their second year organizing it and so now they’re onto their fourth year. It was quite unusual for me just because I have friends in engineering and I had heard about Hackathons before but for the most part those are Hackathons involving coding for a whole weekend, creating apps and platforms that are all more technical based. This is the first time that I’ve seen something that was primarily healthcare-based. I was like “how do you hack healthcare?” But when you bring all minds together, it’s really fascinating what people come up with and just 24 to 48 hours.
Matt: [00:09:39] That’s so cool. You’ve gone through the program now at UBC, what do you think is missing from traditional pharmacy education and training that might help students better prepare for the future after graduation?
Christy: [00:09:56] So we talked about how pharmacy is a very versatile profession and I know it’s really difficult fitting in all these courses in your three year curriculum, since you’re gone all of fourth year. But I kind of wish that there were more, maybe electives or more training in technology. We know that technology’s going to be disrupting our pharmacy practice, especially in retail and probably in other settings as well. And to get an understanding of technology is really important for students/ Whether we like it or not, technology’s coming. And I think the only way that we’re going to be able to improve and in advnace our profession is to learn more of this technology and how it can help our profession. So maybe a course or two in technology. I know informatics is a big thing up and coming field, especially in the S.tates I haven’t really encountered anybody in Canada that does pharmacy informatics, but maybe an elective of some sort or to integrate some idea of informatics, big data, analytics into a course. I would say maybe some more business perspectives would be very helpful. We did have a business course in our third year, it’s just one term but I feel like it was you know, we were just touching on concepts. We didn’t even have the time to really apply those concepts into our practice. And again I know that we have very limited time. But for students who do want to explore that perhaps they could take future electives. There is a lot out there. I hear about pharmacists creating virtual education rotations, just the flexibility for students to create electives for themselves or directed studies, rotation experiences that kind of cross discipline. I think that would be very valuable.
Matt: [00:11:49] With so much out there what is next for Christy Cheung? I mean there’s all kinds of different options you’re interested a lot of different things. How are you approaching your career planning and path after graduation?
Christy: [00:12:02] Right. So I guess since the Hackathon I’ve become really interested in health technology, digital health and innovation so to speak. I wasn’t really sure whether I could pursue a career in this path. Even though the Hackathon had opened my eyes to the possibility of integrating my pharmacy skills with other professions I was like but what if I can’t really create a career out of this? Maybe I can practice in hospital or community and then pursue this on the side. But I couldn’t really envision a career rooted in digital health. So I kept exploring, I kept my mind open, and I started talking to more people. Being on the west coast, we don’t get a lot of exposure in terms of industry. You know a lot of the pharmaceutical companies are on the East Coast. Their headquarters are there, but I came across the industrial residency program through hearing it from some friends, some alumni, and some other people so I thought that that might be the most appropriate route for me to go. I didn’t really see myself in community or hospital, I wanted to learn more about maybe the business side, a bit of the technical side. And I’ve always wanted to be at the forefront of healthcare, you know. So I applied for the industrial residency program and I was very fortunate to have gotten in. So I’ll be moving to Toronto.
Matt: [00:13:27] Yay. Nice. Congratulations! You heard it here first on The Nontraditional Pharmacist!
Christy: [00:13:35] Yes I’ll be moving in the fall to Toronto and I will be with Sanofi Genzyme. So it’s a one year residency. I know in the States it’s a two year industrial residency, more of a fellowship type thing, but I think it will be a very good first step for me to start exploring more of the future of medicine to integrate my pharmacy skills with other aspects that maybe you wouldn’t get exposed to a community and hospital. I think within industry, within each company there are so many different teams like marketing, sales, information, education, strategy, I’m really looking to complement my pharmacy skills a bit more with skills from other disciplines, so I thought that that was more suitable for me.
Matt: [00:14:21] How is this path going to fit in with your personal life? Because it sounds like you have a good idea of how it’s going to address your professional goals, but how is this residency in this new kind of nontraditional path fitting in with everything else? You have to move, so that’s going to be a change. What about the other aspects of your personal life?
Christy: [00:14:42] I have actually moved around quite a bit throughout my life, so I’m quite comfortable with moving. I’m very excited to start a job I guess. I have been in school for so many years now. I was in McGill’s of Montreal for two years at the earlier part of my undergrad. So I’ve been on the East Coast and to be honest the West Coast is beautiful and I never thought I would go back to the East Coast, but I would say that right now at this point in my life I’m quite career oriented so willing to move for a more idealistic career. Now I think Toronto is a bigger metropolitan area compared to Vancouver. It will be exciting living in a slightly bigger city and they have quite a big tech and innovation hub there, especially within healthcare or even other disciplines, and I am very excited to be in the middle of that all. While I am exploring the industry side of pharmacy, I think I’ll spend a lot of my time on the weekends or even after work exploring the other areas that Toronto has to offer or the tech hubs because that’s still something that I’m interested in. Whether it be a future side hussle, or a personal project or adventure, I’m still seeking to learn more about technology because I think there’s a lot of potential in technology in terms of healthcare and we can really leverage what’s out there now to improve health care and improve the practice of pharmacy, improve even industry you know.
Matt: [00:16:11] Yeah. So happy for you Christy. That’s really really exciting, you’re going to have a blast in Toronto and it’s going to be really, really great. I’m wondering what advice you would give to either students considering pharmacy school or pharmacy students already in the program just as they go through career exploration?
Christy: [00:16:34] I would say I still think first year students right now, the way the PharmD curriculum is built is to push future pharmacists to be more clinical, even if they practice in retail I think they want students to advance a profession more clinically. But I think that people should recognize that there’s so much more out there. So definitely encourage students to get involved. There is your you know your usual clubs that are always there but I think to look for extracurriculars and networking opportunities beyond pharmacy. Don’t just close yourself off to pharmacy. Yes you’re now in a professional program and that’s really great, and most people they probably want to stick with that path in that career, right? They probably know that they want to be a pharmacist if they’re going to go to a pharmacy school, but realize that pharmacy profession is not just black and white. You can really integrate it with so many different disciplines and there’s a lot out there that is waiting to be explored. And it’s not just different career paths. But I think you can really create your own career path and that’s something that really scared me at first and even though now I’m not really creating my own career, I think it’s possible in the future. When I was talking earlier about digital health and not really being sure about whether I could pursue a career in digital health. Now I’ve spoken to a pharmacist in the States who work for startups you know who give their perspectives to different tech-type products, but with the pharmacy perspective. I think there definitely is a potential for you to create your own career. So definitely get out there and don’t just look for opportunities within pharmacy. Learn from other professionals and be open to learning from other professionals outside of healthcare, because there’s a lot you can learn from people who view healthcare without the healthcare mind. If that makes sense.
Matt: [00:18:35] It does make sense. Very very very well said and I think I know where this next one is going to go or where you’re going to take this next question, but where do you see the profession of pharmacy moving in the future?
Christy: [00:18:46] Yeah I see it integrating with a lot more other disciplines. And like I mentioned earlier you know now I’ve spoken to pharmacists who are in informatics and I just I don’t even know it was a field. And I feel like pharmacy can definitely pair with so many other fields and I feel like that’s where it’s headed. You know it’s not going to be community and hospital anymore. You know those branches are just going to keep growing and I think people are going to find more and more opportunities in pharmacy.
Matt: [00:19:21] Thank you. Thank you for that insight Christy and thanks for your take today on The Nontraditional Pharmacist. We wish you the best in your future endeavors as you move past graduation, excited to have you on the show. Christy, you’re a great example of a student that is approaching the pharmacy profession in what we feel is the correct way, in that there’s many different opportunities out there and allow yourself to explore those, to really find what professional path works for you, not only to meet your professional goals but also your personal goals. So thank you again for your time. We look forward to seeing everyone next time on The Nontraditional Pharmacist. Take care and have a great week.
Christy: [00:20:01] Thank you very much for having me appreciate it. Happy to have met everybody.
Matt: [00:20:05] Thanks Christy.