CASE STUDY
Pharmacist Career Awareness at
Bishop Hendricken High School
For my high school senior field experience, I completed an internship
with RXinsider. My training included watching career path videos in the
University of Rhode Island PharmD Exploration Center. I was exposed
to careers in pharmacy that I never knew about. As a capstone project
for my internship, I wanted to promote “Pharmacy as a Career” at my
high school.
Introduction
Identifying the Challenge: A Lack of Pharmacy Awareness
When the average high school student thinks of a career in pharmacy,
they think of standing behind a counter at a pharmacy like Walgreens.
The goal of this initiative was to expose my fellow students to different
pharmacist career options and to potentially inspire students to apply
to pharmacy schools. The goals and results are as follows:
Michael Carreiro
Bishop Hendricken
High School
Class of ‘25
“...the average high
school student
thinks pharmacists
only work at retail
pharmacies like
Walgreens…”
Goal
Actual
600
~600
75
~90
25
~34
30
18
TBD
TBD
1. Pilly Viewings/Awareness
2. Pilly Pictures
3. Pilly Instagram Postings
5. QR Code Scans
6. College Applicants
7. Student Matriculations
2,500
~3,400
4. Pilly Instagram Network Viewings
To the University of Rhode Island PharmD Exploration Center
To any College of Pharmacy
To any College of Pharmacy
I
Event Strategy: Inspiring the Next Generation at Bishop Hendricken
I strategically scheduled the event during the lunch period to ensure maximum
visibility and engagement. We brought in RXinsider’s mascot, Pilly, to grab
students' attention. We passed out eye-catching flyers with quick facts regarding
pharmacy career awareness, and a QR code leading to the URI PharmD
Exploration Center to expose students to different pharmacist careers.
I created a social media contest for students to participate in. In order to be
entered, students had to take a picture with Pilly, post the picture to their
Instagram story, and use #PoseWithPilly..
College of Pharmacy
Applications
Matriculation
Senior
Junior
Sophomore
Freshman
8th Grade
Senior
Junior
Sophomore
Freshman
8th Grade
10
12
Student's Grade
Number of Participants
Event Results: Engagement and Awareness Achieved
Pilly captured the students’ attention from the start of the first lunch period.
When the flyers were passed out to students, they simply took it and did nothing
with it until I explained why everything on it could be relevant to them. Then
some students gained interest and scanned the QR code to learn about the
careers they could pursue. One student who will be attending the University of
Rhode Island College of Pharmacy took time out of his lunch to have a
meaningful conversation about the pathways and careers in pharmacy with an
RXinsider representative who attended the event.
Of the roughly 600 students at Bishop Hendricken, there were around 85-95
pictures taken with Pilly. A day after the event, a few students came up to me
and told me how they went home, scanned the QR code, and watched some of
the videos in the University of Rhode Island PharmD Exploration Center.
The number of students who scanned the QR code was dependent on how many
students were sitting at a table. Tables of eight to ten students had the highest
chance of everyone scanning the QR code. Tables with fewer students either had
everyone or no one scan the QR code.
Closing Reflections on Impact and Opportunity
The event went better than I expected. I had a concern that students would see
themselves as “too cool” to take a picture with Pilly and post it to their Instagram,
but that was not the case. The only immediate impact I saw was in the days
following the event, some students were still talking about Pilly and continued to
post the pictures they took with him. In the coming years, a clearer picture will
emerge of whether there was a true impact. We will see the impact based on
whether more students apply to and choose to enroll in pharmacy schools.
With the results of the entries, the most interest came from seniors and freshmen.
For seniors, they are a few months from graduating and they are thinking about
their future. For freshmen, the interest could be because they have not started
their college process yet, so they are more open to different pathways and have
not chosen their future major yet.
34 students entered our #PoseWithPilly contest. The grade that entered the most
were the seniors, who accounted for 32.4% entries, followed by freshmen at 26.5%
of entries, sophomores with 23.5% of entries, and juniors and eighth graders with
8.8% each. The rules to enter were to post a picture with Pilly on their Instagram
story and use #PoseWithPilly in their post. From observing the students, the ones
who took a picture with Pilly tended to have a higher chance of scanning the QR
code.
Bishop Hendricken High School is an all-boys Catholic
high school of approximately 600 students in Warwick,
Rhode Island. For the last forty-plus years, every senior
at Bishop Hendricken has participated in a ten-week,
once-a-week
internship
called
the
Senior
Field
Experience.
For information regarding this case study,
please contact RXinsider directly at
RXinsider.com.
The University of Rhode Island was not
involved with this event.
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