Knowledge and comfort change with an active learning activity on medication adherence calculations

Medication adherence is perhaps the most prominent quality measure applied to pharmacies. Teaching students about nonadherence usually takes the form of lectures and simulated pill taking exercises. While these approaches have value, activities are needed in other aspects of medication adherence.

This activity was used within a didactic course on endocrine therapeutics for second-year student pharmacists at a public pharmacy college. A 50-min didactic session was followed by an active learning session on medication adherence metrics, focused on the community pharmacy setting. The active learning session had students manually calculate the proportion of days covered and medication possession ratios for two refill histories and examine the output of one simulated adherence dashboard. Students completed an online survey via the course management website before and after the activity that assessed student knowledge of concepts that comprise the proportion of days covered (PDC) metric and three items on self-reported knowledge, comfort, and confidence. The pre and post survey were compared using chi-square and paired t-tests.

A total of 90 pre-surveys and 77 post-surveys were completed, with 70 having both pre- and post- data for comparison of the scaled responses. There was a statistically significant improvement in student knowledge, comfort, and confidence scores as assessed by the surveys.

A hands-on approach using a calendar and a custom database workbook appeared to help most students improve their understanding of applied medication adherence calculations.

A 50-min didactic background session on medication adherence metrics followed by a 50-min adherence metric calculation activity was effective in increasing student knowledge and confidence related to calculating adherence metrics.