Assessing the student pharmacist's comfort level with harm reduction strategies via clinical exposure

Complications surrounding illicit and prescription drug abuse continue to be a public health epidemic. Needle exchange programs have a documented history of directly reducing overdose deaths and infectious complications while increasing referrals to drug-abuse treatment and mental health counseling. Due to the limited number of programs and a lack of standardized assessments in pharmacy curricula, many pharmacy learners are not offered opportunities to assess their comfort level in serving these underserved patients.

This prospective field study investigates the perceptions of pharmacy students towards harm reduction strategies via an experiential experience at a local day center that offers harm reduction services. This study seeks to capture pharmacy learner beliefs/attitudes before and after to quantify their outlook and comfort level on providing health care to vulnerable patient populations. Learners rotated through direct patient care stations (wound clinic, needle exchange clinic, Pharmacy Loteria, and social services).

Twenty-four pharmacy learners completed the experience and 79 % of the learners reported no previous harm reduction exposure. Comfort level improved across six skills involving counseling on core harm reduction practices. Students report that pharmacists could play a major role in harm reduction programs and want opportunities working with marginalized patients.

Pharmacy learner exposure to harm reduction strategies was limited prior to the experience. Pharmacy learner comfort level in counseling those that utilize harm reduction strategies improved. This study highlights the continued need to expand services for pharmacy involvement in harm reduction strategies and investigate harm reduction's place within the pharmacy curriculum.