Foundation for the Creation of a Laboratory Skills Toolkit: A Case Study

To create and implement a toolkit to help guide teaching and skill development in the school's pharmacy skills laboratory (lab) course sequence.

After the first year of the school's newly implemented Practice and Team Ready curriculum, faculty completed a survey designed to attribute levels of entrustability and frequency to each skill taught in the lab course sequence. Each skill was then categorized into a respective tier: Tier 1 (3+ times and indirect supervision); Tier 2 (3+ times and direct supervision); Tier 3 (various combinations of less than 3+ times and less than direct supervision); "Nontiered" (any skill with the highest percentage answer being the lowest entrustability or lowest frequency level).

A total of 33 faculty categorized 73 skills into tiers, comprising 16 Tier 1 skills (22%), 14 Tier 2 skills (19%), 38 Tier 3 skills (52%), and 5 "nontiered" skills (7%).

The toolkit is a unique effort that may inspire and guide what skills should be taught and developed in a lab course sequence. The toolkit serves as a case study and requires additional revision and continuous quality improvement to improve its validity and generalizability.