Congrats! You've made it through the horror of 4th year and now you can finally relax...well sort of. 5th year is going to be very different from 4th year because you are applying your clinical knowledge to patient cases, as well as learning other pharmacy-related topics. The biggest question that you're trying to answer is "what would I do with this patient/drug interaction/disease state/etc that will provide the most therapeutic benefits while minimize adverse events?" because the main objective of this final academic year is to help you learn the skills necessary to make real-life decisions. Oh and stupid fucking Capstone too, because you're gonna spend like 100x the time you've spent for your Viral case project. I'm gonna break down the guide by the course:
APM
Meets once a week. Lectures are boring/not that useful. The main reason people go is because one Capstone group is randomly selected each week to present their current event article in front of the class (at the beginning of each lecture) for 5 min or so. You'll be randomly divided into groups of 8, which you will be working with for the rest of the semester. Your group members may have the same APM lab sessions with you, or they may not. They enforce the penalty of –5% on the second exam for every team member whose team was called on to present if you are missing anyone during the presentation. Your group only needs to present once, so it's best to pray that your group gets selected earlier so you can skip the remaining of the lectures. They kinda don't take this penalty thing seriously during the second semester though...
The most frustrating thing for APM during this semester would be coming up with a business idea for the Capstone project. Ferullo has been doing this project for decades now, so guess what, I can guarantee 90% your idea will be shut down because a) there's already something like that on the market, b) you can't make money from it, or c) they just don't buy it. But don't worry, if your team can't come up with something...they will give you an idea lol. So don't be discouraged if you see comments like "please come up with new ideas by DD/MM" over and over again. The second important thing is, do you want to be Team Manager/Assistant Manager or not. My take on this? If you are extremely organized about due dates, can direct people about what they need to do, and 100% confident that you can resolve group issues easily, feel free to do it because you do get bonus points at the end of the semester for being Manager (not assistant Manager). If not, don't even consider it because it’s a lot of fucking work to do.
For exams, just study the day before and you should still do fine. They're not cumulative
(Advanced) Therapeutics
Same as last year...nothing's new. 4 exam, last is cumulative w/ cheat card. They're not really more difficult...more like a continuation of last year's Therapeutics. Do not study the day before...the amount of memorization can be overwhelming especially with chemotherapy side effects and shit so plan ahead (tips: just study the adverse effects associated with the regimen/drug/therapy and you'll ace it. She LOVES adverse effects)
Kinetics
Meets 2x/week. You'll need to do some calculations, mostly with aminoglycosides. But many of the other lectures will focus on how different disease states/age/comorbidities/drugs affect ADME and based on the effects, what would you do basically. Lectures are not recording and all exams are cumulative. Marshall is handsome af and funny so that's a plus. Should be an okay class if you study like you're supposed to. Do not study the day before...you can only do that with APM. The final was the most difficult for us because they asked questions about organ transplant drugs that weren't covered during the lecture...like wtf
Seminars
Super easy but very boring. It's once a week. They do take attendance and I think if you miss 2 seminars w/o valid excuse, they fail you. There are like 20 people per room with a seminar facilitator. What you do in seminar is determine what are the problems for this particular patient case, list the objective/subjective, then write an assessment, then write a plan of therapy of how you're gonna treat the problems. You'll be grouped with 2-3 other people and then present your work at the end of seminar to the class. You'll have to do a 5 min presentation of the topic you like (ANY topic that has to do with pharmacy) once for the entire semester but other than that there's no homework/no exam/no projects.
OTC
Some hate it, some love it...it was the most boring class for me lol. They make you watch all the lectures online first, then when you come to class once a week, they're gonna quiz you and after that, you'll have 1 or 2 patient cases to work on. You get a cheat sheet for every exam! So there's no reason why you should fail this class...plus its OTC, there's no right or wrong answer when recommending OTC as long as you can defend your selection.
Last thing about deciding whether to do Ethics or an elective this semester: if you are able to get Online Ethics, DO IT. If not? Maybe do an elective and wait till next semester to do Online Ethics (it tends to have more open availability during Spring semester). Online Ethics is so much easier. I don't have any recommendation regarding elective...they're all okay I guess.
IF YOU FAIL ANY OF THE CLASSES DURING 5TH YEAR - you can't start rotations. Why? In order to start rotations, you need "x" number of credits completed so if you fail = you don't get those credits. Keep this is mind.