University College Cork

UCC Pharmacy Degree

From September 2015, students who enter the UCC Pharmacy program will graduate with a Level 9 Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) degree. This program will educate students to provide the highest level of pharmaceutical care as part of a health care team and will cultivate an ideal environment and necessary infrastructure conducive to interdisciplinary approaches to addressing research challenges relating to the translation of genomics, protomics and metabolomics into effective therapies.

The degree adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on existing expertise in key disciplines across UCC including Pharmacology, Chemistry, Physiology, Microbiology, Anatomy and Biochemistry, all of which have expertise in the education of students in the health professions at undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional levels.

The pharmacy degree is designed to integrate both the subjects you will study and the placements you will undertake so that you can really understand and apply your knowledge of science and healthcare to drug treatments for patients. Placements will be an integral part of the program. There will be a one day placement in first year, two weeks in second year, two months at the end of third year (summer period), four months in fourth year and eight months in the final year. Placements can be carried out in community, hospital or industry as well as within regulatory organisations but the final eight month placement in your fifth year must be carried out in a patient facing setting.

Course Details

The teaching of subjects in the School of Pharmacy is modularized.  Each year is worth 60 credits of modules.  Each module is given a certain weighting of credits, depending on the course content.  Listed below are some of the modules which will be taken by the pharmacy students throughout their five years of study.

Course Modules

Program Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this program, students should be able to:

• Register with the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland on the Register of Pharmacists
• Evaluate interventions to improve prescribing in practice and within the health care team
• Practice Pharmacy competently in the primary care/secondary setting with due regard to the competencies set out in the Core Competency Framework for Pharmacists Document
• Communicate effectively with patients and healthcare professionals for the purpose of counselling and advising on medicines and their safe usage and supply
• Interpret and evaluate prescriptions and supply medicines in accordance with current legislation and professional codes of practice
• Apply the physiochemical properties of drugs underpinning the design, development and manufacturing of emerging medicines
• Outline the physiological, biochemical, molecular and genetic basis of disease, drug therapy and drug delivery
• Recognize common disease states and respond appropriately to presented symptoms
• Conduct a literature review, design a research protocol, collect and interpret data and write a dissertation

See the College Calendar for more detailed information on the program and the Book of Modules for a more detailed description of program modules.