Design and evaluation of a self-care educational activity as a student learning experience

To design an educational activity and evaluate its effectiveness on increasing third-year pharmacy students' knowledge and confidence to recommend self-care products to patients.

Faculty members created a self-care activity, the Amazing Self-Care Race, for educational use in a pharmaceutical care laboratory course. Student teams worked competitively to complete 15 stations focused on self-care. A complex, real-world case was presented at each station. Student recommendations were presented to a facilitator. Prior to and following the activity, students were invited to complete an online anonymous survey instrument.

Eighty-six students completed presurvey and postsurvey instruments to assess their knowledge and perceived confidence to recommend a self-care product to a patient prior to and following participation in the Amazing Self-Care Race. Students demonstrated a significant increase in their ability and confidence to recommend self-care products following the activity (p<0.001).

The Amazing Self-Care Race is an effective educational activity that increases student knowledge and confidence in self-care therapeutics. The activity helped students to develop self-care skills, enabled them to learn through doing, encouraged them to synthesize information while making self-care recommendations, and helped them to develop confidence by thinking on their feet.