Developing virtual immersive simulations to promote practice readiness for pharmacy and pharmacy technician students

Although registered pharmacists (RPhs) and registered pharmacy technicians (RPhTs) are expected to work collaboratively, as students they have limited opportunities to learn together. The objective of this project was to provide a way to mitigate a gap in students' understanding of intraprofessional collaboration between RPhs and RPhTs in pharmacy practice settings.

Three virtual pharmacy simulations were developed in collaboration with RPhs, RPhTs, and the research team using Twine® software and have been made available for use or adaptation by other educators. The simulations were administered to pharmacy and pharmacy technician students as part of course work. Simulation topics focused on patient inquiries related to selecting cold medication, vaccines, and filling a prescription.

Pharmacy students completed pre- (n = 187) and post-simulation (n = 185) surveys. Students reported an increase in comprehension of RPh and RPhT roles and increased confidence in ability to collaborate. Post-simulation, 88.8 % of respondents agreed or strongly agreed they were confident about applying scopes of practice in an intraprofessional setting, and 96.9 % of respondents agreed or strongly agreed they felt more confident collaborating with RPhTs. Themes emerging from the open-ended survey question were Simulation Strengths, Areas for Improvement, Scope of Practice, Inter- and Intra-Professional Collaboration, and Knowledge Application.

Through this project we learned that the development of virtual immersive simulations can be time and resource intensive. For future projects, we aim to understand how virtual simulations can most effectively be developed and used to support pharmacy student learning.