Building confidence: Three-year evaluation of systematic progression of prescription verification on students'...

To determine how a progression in community pharmacy prescription verification activities (PVAs) in a skills-based laboratory series impacts student confidence during community-based introductory pharmacy practice experiences (IPPEs).

Motivated by the 2016 Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Practice Education Standards, a progression of PVAs was implemented. As students progressed through three semesters of laboratory courses, the scope and verification error types expanded. A web-based survey was administered after students completed their IPPE. The survey was conducted over three years to collect data from students who completed one, two, or three semesters of PVAs. Two-way Analysis of Variance and Tukey-Kramer tests were used to analyze data.

Over the three-year period, 395 students completed the survey. Students with two or three semesters of PVAs were significantly more confident than those with one semester of PVAs in verifying prescriptions on IPPEs, identifying legal concerns with prescriptions, and identifying and correcting prescription labels and expiration/discard dates. Students without professional pharmacy experience strongly agreed that PVAs prepared them for IPPEs compared to those with experience.

This is the first study evaluating the impact of PVAs in the didactic curriculum on student confidence during IPPEs. Systematic progression of multiple semesters of PVAs may have helped students prepare for IPPEs and may have influenced student confidence in several aspects of prescription verification. This study lays the foundation for further investigation into the impact of building confidence and examining if confidence leads to improved accuracy in patient care.