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COLUMBIA, Md. — FLAVORx has donated its 100th pediatric medication flavoring system to a U.S. pharmacy school.
The medication flavoring service said Wednesday that its product is now part of the curriculum in a majority of pharmacy schools in the United States. The company aims to provide a flavoring system to every pharmacy school in the nation by the end of this year.
FLAVORx began donating its children’s medicine flavoring systems to pharmacy schools in August 2010. The company explained that before then, the first exposure that a new retail pharmacist had to pediatric medication flavoring usually came on the job. So the company reached out to a few colleges to assess their interest, recognizing there was an opportunity to provide pharmaciststo-be with better training in the controlled environment of their pharmacy school.
"Today’s pharmacy students are tomorrow’s healthcare leaders" commented Ursula Chizhik, director of pharmacy programs at FLAVORx. "Through these donations, we are thrilled to know our country’s future pharmacists will possess a better understanding of the value of medication flavoring to improve compliance and the important role they play in the process."
According to FLAVORx, pharmacy schools that now have a flavoring lab as part of their curriculum include the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Harding University College of Pharmacy, Creighton University School of Pharmacy and Health Professions, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine School of Pharmacy and the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy, among others.
"We have students break into small groups and discuss mock scenarios where they might have to flavor, discuss flavor choices and discuss ideal flavor decision-making," stated Bob Shrewsbury, associate professor in the Division of Pharmacy Practice and Experiential Education at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in Chapel Hill, N.C. "Many students also work in pharmacies that use FLAVORx and are able to share their experiences with the group. I believe it is a nice introduction from the education standpoint, to familiarize our students with medication flavoring and prepare them for real-world scenarios."
Besides curriculum on the physiology of taste and taste masking, the schools get a carbon copy of the medication flavoring system now found in over 40,000 retail pharmacies, FLAVORx said. That includes access to the company’s proprietary flavoring formulary, which provides custom flavoring instructions for hundreds of liquid medications.
