When you say we rank our top choices, does that mean the school has a set of locations for all students to choose from? Is it like "matching" w/ the sites and w/ the students again? Or is it by random assignment? Does the program ensure that you get to do IPPEs in all the different types (hospital, amcare, community), or is it possible to end up doing all community, or all hospital etc?
Yes, the school has a set of locations. You're not allowed to go out and find your "own" rotation site, since there must be UCSF faculty present in order for liability insurance to cover you. The process is very much like matching, although the preceptors don't rank you, obviously. You just tell the school your top choices and hopefully (although not always), you get something that you're interested in. The school does try to ensure that you do all types of settings (I've now done 1 amcare and 1 community). As you can imagine, community is everyone's least favorite since a number of us work already, but everyone will eventually be assigned to it. They also take into consideration your past work experience, so if you have, for example, already done in-patient, then they will try to place you elsewhere.
I'm very interested to see how the whole thing pans out for next year. Everything I've said above could very well change. I know our class has suggested that the incoming classes be assigned to community first, since you guys will probably have less experience than us and that frees up the hospital ones for us (which will be more applicable since we're closer to rotations and have a year of knowledge under our belts). But we'll see, I guess.
Can you please give a few examples of the community services projects? You mentioned health fairs, what other types of community services do UCSF pharm students get to do?
I believe one of the things that sets UCSF apart from other schools is the level of involvement of the students. Everyone here is involved in multiple different organizations on campus, both in the SOP and school-wide. We have 6 main groups: APhA, CSHP, SNPhA, AMCP, LAPS, and ASSP. There are also 2 fraternities, Kappa Psi and Phi Delta Chi. APhA is probably the largest, I think almost every student in my class is a member. Here is our school chapter website:
http://www.ucsf.edu/aphaasp/index.html
You can click "community service projects" and see the major ones we are involved in. Each of the organizations listed above also has it's own community projects. You can find more information again on the current students website.
We do many other types of service work besides health fairs, although they are the main type. We do immunizations, science fairs at elementary schools, outreach to underserved high schools re: health professions, nutrition counseling, etc. There is also a joint med-pharmacy student-run homeless clinic that is open one night a week at a local shelter, where the residents can be seen by the med students and counseled by the pharm students. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of projects - you'll just have to come here to find out
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