Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Background/Objectives. In addition to practicing skills, experiential coursework should provide students the opportunity to make connections between didactic learning and practice. Since pharmacists are often asked to develop educational materials for a specific patient or group of patients, the purpose of this project was twofold: 1) to help students recognize the role that pharmacists can have in promoting health and 2) to apply and reinforce recently acquired didactic drug information and written communication skills. Methods. As part of the introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE) sequence, all second year students experience pharmacy practice in four settings. One rotation is a primary care experience at the Downtown Clinic (DTC), a local free clinic. Following the rotation, students work in small groups to create a patient education handout for the DTC applicable to their patient population. Student teams present their handouts and process for creating them to the class and DTC pharmacist. To help develop peer evaluation skills, each handout and presentation is evaluated by two peer teams. Assessment of student perceptions and extent that didactic training was reinforced is ongoing. Results. Analysis of project impact and perception data is pending. Preliminary results indicate students value time at the site, but may undervalue the associated project. Peer evaluations provided good feedback and generally agree with the instructor’s evaluation. Implications. Explicitly linking experiential activities with didactic coursework maximizes student learning. Experiential projects can also be utilized as a way to give back to community partners and rotation sites involved with student training.