Abstract
Despite numerous challenges in relation to being a recently established school, the University of California, Irvine (UCI) School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SPPS), similar to many schools of pharmacy in the United States, was highly committed to supporting the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. UCI SPPS and our affiliated UCI Medical Center (UCIMC) Pharmacy Department partnered to spearhead the pharmacy element of a large-scale COVID-19 vaccination clinic on campus for both employees and the community. Three key initiatives were established in order to overcome the obstacles we faced in the large-scale roll out of COVID-19 vaccines: (1) forging new collaborations within the pharmacy team, (2) leveraging interprofessional education and practice, and (3) raising awareness of the pharmacists’ role. Our response to the COVID-19 vaccines at UCI was a tangible, visible model that demonstrated that, while we continue to embrace our role in team-based, patient-centered care, it is also important for us to step up and lead the profession. Additionally, this vaccine rollout experience is a teachable moment for our communities and our health professional partners as we continue to march forward as one voice to serve the American public.
Highlights
Since late December 2020, our nation has been racing against time to roll out coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines to the community
As a recently established school, we had a limited number of faculty, and as important, the urgency of the rollout of vaccines necessitated that we began before we enrolled our first cohort of pharmacy students, who have proven to be pivotal to the success of COVID-19 vaccination clinics at other schools of pharmacy [1,2]
Marshalling our peers from many practice settings to collaborate was essential to creating a sustainable yet short term team to prepare and administer vaccines. Both School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SPPS) and UCI Medical Center (UCIMC) Pharmacy Department staff, almost all previously unknown to each other, worked closely together to emulate the successful vaccine preparation and administration services previously established at the UCIMC for the campus-based vaccine clinic
Summary
Since late December 2020, our nation has been racing against time to roll out coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines to the community. Our newly founded school lacked any appreciable precedent for collaborating with our affiliated UCI Medical Center (UCIMC) and the surrounding community Despite these challenges, the SPPS and UCIMC Pharmacy Department partnered to spearhead the pharmacy element of a COVID-19 vaccination clinic on campus for the community and employees. Marshalling our peers (pharmacists and pharmacy technicians) from many practice settings to collaborate was essential to creating a sustainable yet short term team to prepare and administer vaccines. To start, both SPPS and UCIMC Pharmacy Department staff, almost all previously unknown to each other, worked closely together to emulate the successful vaccine preparation and administration services previously established at the UCIMC for the campus-based vaccine clinic. Since SPPS had not yet enrolled pharmacy students, we worked with the experiential education offices at the other two University of California schools of pharmacy (San Diego and San Francisco) to include over 30 student pharmacists administering vaccines under SPPS faculty and UCIMC pharmacist/pharmacy residents’ supervision
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