BS Pre-Pharmacy

The Pre-Pharmacy Program is designed to prepare qualified students to enter LIU Pharmacy (the Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at LIU Brooklyn). The program consists of a six year curriculum leading to a Doctorate of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree and is separated into two phases:

Dramatic changes taking place in the health-care system are creating many new and exciting roles for pharmacists. Fundamental to the changing role of the pharmacist is the evolving concept of pharmaceutical care, which has been defined as "the responsible provision of drug therapy for the purpose of achieving definite positive outcomes that improve a patient's life." The pharmacist is now not only responsible for the safe and effective distribution of prescription and nonprescription medication, but is also assuming the role of pharmaceutical therapy advisor and manager, having increasingly more patient-care responsibilities. Under the paradigm of pharmaceutical care, the entry-level pharmacist is expected to participate fully in the management of the patient, including the rendering of independent clinical judgments. The pharmacist must be proficient in the search for and retrieval of information from the scientific literature, utilization of complex pharmacokinetic models to determine appropriate doses, development of individualized pharmaceutical care plans, communication with patients and health professionals, documentation of pharmaceutical interventions taking into account patients' knowledge, beliefs, and behavior, pharmacoeconomic analysis of alternative pharmaceutical interventions, and justification of services billed to managed health-care organizations and other payers.