Assessing student pharmacists' ability to recognize and categorize interventions during an introductory pharmacy...

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Education
• Clinical Skills Training
• Patient Care Interventions

Background:

• Introductory pharmacy practice experiences (IPPEs) are crucial for developing patient care skills.
• Limited assessment exists for pharmacy students' ability to recognize and categorize interventions during IPPEs and APPEs.
• Effective training methods are needed to improve intervention documentation skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of simulated patient encounters and video answer keys on pharmacy students' ability to recognize and categorize interventions during IPPEs.
• To assess the improvement in accuracy of intervention identification and categorization.
• To gauge perceived improvements in students' documentation capabilities.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal IPPEs involved first-, second-, and third-year students reviewing four simulated patient case scenarios.
• Students identified and categorized interventions, receiving video answer keys post-assignment.
• Statistical analyses compared pre- and post-intervention scores; questionnaires assessed perceived skill enhancement.

Main Results:

• Students demonstrated a statistically significant improvement (P < .05) in recognizing and categorizing interventions.
• Accuracy in correctly identifying interventions improved by 8% over the four case scenarios.
• The proportion of correctly selected interventions increased by 65%, while incorrectly selected options decreased by 49%.

Conclusions:

• Simulated patient case scenarios and video answer keys are effective tools for teaching intervention documentation.
• IPPEs incorporating these methods enhance students' preparedness for documenting interventions in APPEs.
• This training approach strengthens foundational skills for future pharmacy practice.