Design and Evaluation of Scholarship and Research Orientation Sessions in Academic Pharmacy Practice Experiences

Evaluate the efficacy of educating academic Advance Pharmacy Practice Experiential (APPE) students on scholarship and research (S&R). We hypothesized that academic APPE students gain more knowledge in scholarship and research in comparison to non-academic APPE students.

As a component of academic APPE rotation, all academic APPE students assigned by the office of experiential education per year (the intervention group) (n = 11) attended S&R sessions during the first week of their academic APPE rotation. Student volunteers from the same graduating class were recruited as the control group (n = 12). However, 1 student from the intervention group and 2 students from the control group were excluded from the analysis, leaving 10 students from each group. These sessions were taken in small groups of 1 to 3 once in their assigned rotation. S&R sessions included many topics that were based on a S&R manual. Upon completion of the sessions, a hard copy of a 10-question knowledge-based quiz was given to both groups at the same time. APPE students' knowledge about S&R were assessed via grading the quiz. The anonymity of the quiz was maintained by requesting students only to mention whether they are from intervention group or controlled group.

While control group averaged 49% ± 4.58 on the quiz, the intervention group averaged 71.5% ± 5.77. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software. Based on independent sample t-test, students who took the S&R session show significant increase in their quiz score.

Compared to the control group, S&R sessions helped academic APPE students to gain knowledge on S&R. The students also perceived that S&R sessions increased their interest in S&R.