Here at the University of Rhode Island student chapter of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP), we have been extremely proactive at creating brand-new events to have an exciting and productive semester after a year of dormancy because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our efforts this year have included introducing a new Board of Pharmacy Specialties (BPS) presentation series, which has been extremely successful. In this initiative, we have created and presented information to student pharmacists from all professional years on the 14 BPS specialties that currently exist, highlighting what each field entails, what requirements are necessary to get certified, what a normal day-to-day life looks like, and institutions that have PGY2 residency programs available in the specialty.

We kicked off our semester with student chapter meetings in which our executive board presented on ambulatory care, cardiology, and compounded sterile preparations. In addition, we recently finished our last meetings of the semester, where we covered critical care, emergency medicine, geriatrics, and infectious disease. During the next semester, we plan to cover the last seven clinical pharmacy specialties. These presentations have been paramount to advocating for the profession of pharmacy beyond the current stereotypical domains that our careers fall victim to. It is incredibly important to educate current students on the different career paths available to them in the field of clinical pharmacy, and this brand-new initiative has proven that the future of pharmacy is ripe with opportunity. At our presentations, we have been able to garner many new student members who are interested in different clinical specialties and are eager to learn more. As an executive board, we are extremely excited to continue our BPS presentation series and cannot wait to continue advocating for the profession of clinical pharmacy to students at the entire college.

Together with these in-person presentations, we have also piloted a new virtual initiative this semester. We have created a student newsletter called “The Clinical Pearl,” which is sent out to our entire college of pharmacy on a biweekly basis. Each edition of the newsletter covers a board specialty that was the topic of the last in-person presentation. In addition, the newsletter contains three clinical practice pearls related to the covered field, a list of resources to find more information, and a highlighted residency program spotlight section. Having a means of virtual communication to reach students is a great way to engage students who may have been unable to attend our in-person meetings and presentations. Overall, we are proud of the many students we have been able to reach with The Clinical Pearl.

Finally, another item that we wanted to improve on during this semester was having guest speakers from a variety of clinical backgrounds come speak to our student members. For October, we held a Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) movement in honor of October 12, which is Women Pharmacist Day. Because the WHI movement is an area of pharmacy that not many practitioners get experience in, we wanted to have an opportunity to highlight this extremely important topic, in which clinical pharmacists do indeed play a crucial role. For this month, we were privileged enough to have Sierra Richard, Pharm.D., come speak to our students virtually about the importance of women’s health. Otherwise known as @HappyPharmLife on various social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube, Richard is a pharmacist influencer who uses her platform to advocate the importance of women’s health issues such as health care disparities that women face, as well as topics like hormonal contraception and medications in pregnancy and lactation. We as a student chapter of ACCP were incredibly grateful to have such an amazing advocate for women’s health be our guest speaker for the month, and we are proud of our successful WHI movement.

Overall, this year has been filled with a resurgence of ideas, advocacy, and innovation for our student chapter of ACCP here at the University of Rhode Island. We are incredibly proud of all the new programs we have established and the growth we have achieved. We look forward to continuing our great work in the months to come and cannot wait to see what lies ahead for our organization.