Pharmacy students' initial career choices versus subsequent career paths: a cross-sectional study.

Background: The pharmacy profession offers diverse career paths. Yet, pharmacy students may not be familiar with these various paths and may struggle to choose one that is best suited to their interests, goals, and values. Limited literature has reported on pharmacy students' career interests.

Implementation and evaluation of an interprofessional prescription writing workshop with a simulated electronic prescribing activity for preclerkship medical students.

Background: Prescription writing skills are essential for physician practice. This study describes the development and implementation of a curricular intervention focused on improving the knowledge and confidence of preclerkship medical students' prescription writing practices utilizing an interprofessional education model, with a focus on electronic prescribing.

Methods: Medicine and Pharmacy Faculty from a large, urban university collaborated to develop the content of the workshop and a simulation platform was used for the e-prescribing activity.

An elective course on career opportunities for pharmacy students.

Background And Purpose: There is limited literature describing the outcomes of formal career guidance in pharmacy programs. This study assessed the course outcomes including students' satisfaction, achievement of the learning objectives and scoring on assignments.

Educational Activity And Setting: A 1-credit elective course aims at providing second- and third-year professional pharmacy students (P2 and P3) to career guidance.

A Qualitative Analysis of Community Participants' Experiences with a Virtual Interprofessional Team Visit (vIPTV) with Healthcare Students.

Healthcare students must develop essential interprofessional skills to provide efficient, safe, and effective patient-centered care. To ensure students receive the proper training to develop these skills, an interprofessional team visit (IPTV) program was established at a large urban university in 2011. The program involved teams of students from nine disciplines conducting home visits with community participants to provide patient-centered care and educational resources.

A Qualitative Analysis of Older Adults' Views of Healthcare Provider Attributes and Communication Skills.

Understanding factors that improve patients' healthcare experiences are essential for healthcare providers (HCPs) caring for older adults (OAs). Previous data supports that effective patient-centered care leads to a better understanding of patients' experiences, values, and preferences. The aim of this study was to evaluate OAs views of HCPs attributes and communication skills to better understand patient's views about their HCP interactions.

Provision of Lifestyle Recommendations to Cancer Patients: Results of a Nationally Representative Survey of Hematologists/Oncologists.

Adopting a healthy lifestyle during cancer treatment enhances patients' outcomes. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the current practices and attitudes adopted by hematologists/oncologists on providing lifestyle recommendations to cancer patients. The secondary objective includes a correlation between the hematologists/oncologists' sociodemographic with their provision of lifestyle recommendations to their patients.

Patient Perception of Acute Pain Management: Data from Three Tertiary Care Hospitals.

. The primary objectives of this study were to assess patients' description of their acute pain intensity; patients' attitude towards their pain management during hospitalization; and their overall satisfaction with pain treatment. .

Physicians' Attitudes to Clinical Pain Management and Education: Survey from a Middle Eastern Country.

Despite promising initiatives to advance the practice of pain management in Middle Eastern countries, their pain care lags behind developed countries. The objectives of this study are to evaluate physicians' assessment of their own competency in pain management, to assess physicians' practice related to pain management, and to identify physician-related barriers to effective pain control. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 3 teaching medical centers in Lebanon targeting the above-mentioned outcomes and assessing the impact of physicians' years in practice on the studied end-points.

Prescription Errors with Chemotherapy: Quality Improvement through Standardized Order Templates.

Background: Despite the existence of established guidelines advocating the use and value of chemotherapy order templates, chemotherapy orders are still handwritten in many hospitals in Lebanon. This manuscript describes the implementation of standardized chemotherapy order templates (COT) in a Lebanese tertiary teaching hospital through multiple steps.

Initial Assessment: An initial assessment was conducted through a retrospective appraisal of completeness of handwritten chemotherapy orders for 100 adult patients to serve as a baseline for the project and identify parameters that might afford improvement.

Effects of Radiotherapy on the Risk of Developing Secondary Malignant Neoplasms in Hodgkin's Lymphoma Survivors.

Extended follow-up of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) survivors indicates that these patients are at high risk of secondary malignant neoplasms (SMNs) contributing to increased morbidity and mortality. This study examined the characteristics of HL survivors who developed SMNs with the aim to report any correlation with radiotherapy (RT) dose. In this retrospective multi-center cohort study of HL patients treated between 1990 and 2011 at three major teaching hospitals in Lebanon, classification was into two groups including those treated with combined modality (RT and chemotherapy-CHT) and those treated with CHT alone.

Mapping of the biomedical literature evaluation competencies based on pharmacy students' feedback.

Background: This study aims to map the learned curriculum based on students' feedback regarding the biomedical literature evaluation competencies in a pharmacy curriculum, to evaluate teaching methods and to report students' longitudinal self-assessment of their achievement of related learning outcomes as they progress from didactic to experiential courses.

Methods: The biomedical literature evaluation competencies were mapped in three courses delivered during different pharmacy professional years (PPY): Drug Information and Literature Evaluation (PHA421) offered in the second PPY, Pharmacoeconomics (PHA557) and Professional Pharmacy Practice Experience-Hospital/Drug Information Services (PHA570) offered in the third PPY. A unified survey was developed to collect information from students at the beginning and completion of these courses.

Amoxicillin/Clavulanic Acid-induced thrombocytopenia.

Introduction And Objective: Drug-induced thrombocytopenia is a common adverse effect reported in the literature. Typically patients present with a low platelet count with signs and symptoms ranging from bruising to bleeding, and major organ damage. Penicillin-induced thrombocytopenia previously reported in the literature is explained primarily through the hapten-dependent antibody process.

Association of hypertension with coronary artery disease onset in the Lebanese population.

The onset of coronary artery disease (CAD) is influenced by cardiovascular risk factors that often occur in clusters and may build on one another. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between hypertension and CAD age of onset in the Lebanese population. This retrospective analysis was performed on data extracted from Lebanese patients (n = 3,753).

Pharmacist recognition of and adherence to medication-use policies and safety practices.

Purpose: Pharmacist recognition of and adherence to medication-use policies and safety practices were assessed.

Methods: Simulation testing was used to assess the performance of pharmacists in hypothetical scenarios simulating real-life situations. Fifty test case medication orders were developed, some requiring specific intervention and some requiring no special action.

Factors influencing the magnitude and clinical significance of drug interactions between azole antifungals and select immunosuppressants.

The magnitude of drug interactions between azole antifungals and immunosuppressants is drug and patient specific and depends on the potency of the azole inhibitor involved, the resulting plasma concentrations of each drug, the drug formulation, and interpatient variability. Many factors contribute to variability in the magnitude and clinical significance of drug interactions between an immunosuppressant such as cyclosporine, tacrolimus, or sirolimus and an antifungal agent such as ketoconazole, fluconazole, itraconazole, voriconazole, or posaconazole. By bringing similarities and differences among these agents and their potential interactions to clinicians' attention, they can appreciate and apply these findings in a individualized patient approach rather than follow only the one-size-fits-all dosing recommendations suggested in many tertiary references.