Education
Sonya Collins
The arrival of AI is no longer just somewhere out on the horizon. Generative AI—technology that creates new text, images, or code in response to human prompts—has become a lab tool, reshaping how student pharmacists study, learn to counsel, and prepare for clinical practice.
Many pharmacy educators are already putting these ideas into practice, learning to wield the technology alongside their students and training future pharmacists to use AI as a support, not a substitute, for human judgment.
“Student pharmacists need to know how to use these products, but they also need to develop the necessary critical thinking skills,” said Laura Knockel, PharmD, clinical associate professor at the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy. “Educators have to balance preparing students to use the technology with helping them develop the thought processes to verify whether what the technology is telling them is correct.”
As this shift takes place, educators must rethink what and how they teach and which tasks to cede to machines.
AI should enhance learning, not take its place
An NEJM review offers a framework for using AI in health science education while warning of its pitfalls. In the review, published August 20, 2025, Abdulnour and colleagues emphasize that generative AI models, such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude, should enhance learning. The authors highlight the technology’s strengths in this area. Generative AI, for example, can aid in simulation, recall, and feedback.
Over-reliance on generative AI tools, however, can lead to what Abdulnour calls “de-skilling,” loss of previously held clinical reasoning skills; “never-skilling,” failure to develop key competencies; and “mis-skilling,” adopting incorrect practices or beliefs based on biased or inaccurate AI outputs.
To avoid these outcomes, it’s up to educators to determine exactly how and when to introduce AI, said Timothy Aungst, PharmD, professor of pharmacy practice at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. “We as educators must ask ourselves, ‘When is it an appropriate time to use these tools?’ You wouldn’t just hand a kindergartner a calculator on day one of school before teaching him how to add.”
Lean into generative AI’s strengths, know its weaknesses
Generative AI is prone to “hallucinations”—producing plausible-sounding but inaccurate information.
“They’re really good at pretending to be human,” said Rachel Stafford, PharmD, associate professor and vice chair of pharmacy practice at the University of Arkansas. “My students need practice interacting with patients, especially at the beginning.”
While AI shouldn’t play clinician, it’s surprisingly good at playing patient.
Stafford partnered with colleagues at four other pharmacy schools, including the University of Iowa’s Knockel, to use generative AI for patient simulations. Where first-year students once role-played pharmacist and patient together, Knockel now uses custom GPTs to simulate patient encounters for OTC counseling.
“It was questions like, ‘My daughter has a fever. What can she take?’” Knockel said. “The student and the GPT could ask questions back and forth, and it was a little less predictable than working with a lab partner.”
Since some current pharmacy school faculty may be less experienced with AI than their students, however, they will need to be comfortable with learning to harness AI tools in the classroom with their students.
The first time Knockel used ChatGPT to simulate OTC counseling, she was transparent about her level of experience with the technology. “I said, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work, but we’re going to try it.’”
Model critical thinking
Bad outputs from AI provide teaching moments in the pharmacy classroom. Educators should question AI outputs when warranted and encourage students to do the same.
“Hallucinations will always be present,” Aungst said. “For that reason, you always have to have an eye on the content and to question things.”
This is not only an important skill in the classroom, but also a critical skill for the next generation of pharmacists to have in the clinic.
“We teach our student pharmacists this is an occupational hazard,” Aungst said. “You have to know that you’re the smart one.” ■