“I can’t afford that medication, but I need something to help me.” A patient, “John,” had been recently seen for Irritable Bowel Syndrome with constipation in the emergency department, where he received a new prescription. When he went to his pharmacy, he was told that his insurance did not cover his new medication. It was several days before he came in to see his primary care physician. When investigating the situation, it was learned that he did not know the name of the medication nor did he have discharge instructions with him. The clinic had also not received his medical records from the hospital.

This fall, as second-year PharmD candidates at the California Northstate University College of Pharmacy (CNUCOP), we were chosen to be student leaders for a modified supplemental instruction (SI) program called CNUCOP SI (or CSI). We provided CSI for the first-year PharmD course Cell and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, and we have both personally benefitted from the experience.


SI is a student-led academic assistance program offered at many colleges and universities. Originally developed in the 1970s at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, it has expanded widely across U.S. institutions. Typically, SI is offered for high-stakes, large enrollment, science and math courses. SI is a form of pre-remediation academic assistance where SI leaders hold regularly scheduled sessions using problem sets they develop themselves. SI leaders actively engage students with the course material to promote durable learning.


Over the past several years, in recognition of American Pharmacists Month, student pharmacists at the Mercer University College of Pharmacy participated in a social media project to visually promote th...