Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Ann Philbrick
April 14, 2021
Q: What projects are you working on around COVID-19 education?
A: First, I am working on an inter-professional (IPE) course to teach students in the OACA a little bit more about COVID-19 infection, the vaccines, and how to administer vaccines. This is a collaborative course with nursing, dentistry, and medicine. I am the co leader of this effort. Currently the course is almost finished and has nearly 250 students. These students represent all professional programs in OACA. We hope to have a live session in a couple weeks where students will actually learn to give vaccines, as well as repeat the course at the end of the semester. We also hope to turn this into a continuing education program that staff and faculty are able to take.
I am also working on immunization delivery continuing education. The first is a course for pharmacists (Immunization Delivery for Pharmacists). This is a course that I have taught for approximately 11 years, however I have redesigned it to be more “COVID-friendly“. This course is an ACPE accredited course that allows pharmacists to administer vaccines. The other course that I am working on for continuing education is a new course called Immunization Delivery for Pharmacy Technicians. This is a new course created in response to the Department of Homeland Securities "PREP Act" which allows pharmacy technicians to administer vaccines.
My goal for all of these courses is to teach health profession students a little bit more about COVID-19 and the vaccines, as well as provide adequate training for the pharmacist and technicians to actually give the vaccine.