PURDUE PHARMACY STUDENTS GRADUATE EARLY TO HELP FIGHT CORONAVIRUS

Purdue University will be allowing 144 College of Pharmacy students to graduate early to help with a potential shortage of pharmacists due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Coronavirus pandemic, purdue university is allowing pharmacy students to graduate early.

News 18's meredith hackler joins us live from purdue university to tell us how the early graduation can help the industry.

Jeff, on april 17th 144 college of pharmacy students will gradute from purdue university.

Many of them are already working as interns.

But without graduation status, they are limited on the tasks they can and can't perform as a pharmacist.

The covid-19 pandemic has been taking a toll on the health care industry..

And pharmacies haven't been spared.

"employers are concerned they are trying to look proactively by running the what is scenarios if by chance there becomes a work force issue they wanted to be sure that the graduate pharmacists would be able to provide support in those cases."-eric barker emily vahary (vuh- hairy) is one of 144 purdue pharmacy students graduating early.

"i've worked in retail pharmacy for years so i can kind of see firsthand how this how covid-19 situation has impacted that."- emily vahary vahary currently works at a cvs pharmacy..

And while her work place hasn't been severely impacted, she says other pharmacies have.

"being in a pharmacy and having a huge influx of prescriptions makes it very difficult to just have one pharmacist working at a time."-emily vahary while the higher number of prescriptions is one problem..

Smaller pharmacies are feeling the impact differently.

"smaller pharmacies particularly in the state are having to close because their workforce and staff has been ill.

So we are beginning to be concerned that as this pandemic continues to move forward there may be some workforce issues."-eric barker allowing pharmacy student to graduate early... gives them the qualifications to help pharmacies in a larger capacity... especially since pharmacies will soon be able to perform covid-19 testing.

"pharmacies will be able to offer testing services and so that will be a very important service that pharmacies will be able to offer and that our graduate pharmacists will be able to offer."-eric barker dean barker added that once a vaccine for covid-19 is made availablepharmacies will likely be administering those to patients.

That will also require a larger number of working pharmacists.

Live on purdue's campus meredith hackler news 18.

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