Examining the Alignment of Pharmacists' Daily Tasks, Employer-advertised Skills, and the Entrustable Professional Activities.

Objective: To understand alignment of pharmacist jobs' daily tasks, employer-advertised skills, and pharmacy education of entrustable professional activities (EPAs).

Methods: The study team compiled the top 20 tasks pharmacists reported performing at least daily from the Occupational Information Network survey (2022), the top 50 employer-advertised skills from 89,819 pharmacist job postings in 2022 from Lightcast and the 13 EPAs from accreditation standards that define a practice-ready pharmacist. Two experienced faculty and licensed pharmacists mapped employer-advertised skills, each task performed at least daily, and the EPAs.

Assessing the Alignment Between Pharmacists' Reported Tasks and Employer-Advertised Skills.

Objective: This study examined the alignment between and changes within the tasks performed by pharmacists and skills sought by pharmacist employers from 2012 to 2022.

Methods: The United States Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network (O*NET) surveys a random sample of employees in targeted occupations every 5 years and provides a publicly available database allowing exploration of the frequency with which essential tasks are performed and perceived relevance and importance. Lightcast (formerly Burning Glass) provides labor market analytics of job advertisements; cross-sectional and longitudinal data can be filtered according to occupation, industry, location, and area of specialty.

Prescription for Curricular Revision: Application of Design Thinking Principles.

Continuous quality improvement of the professional curriculum can present as a series of complex problems to solve. Schools and colleges of pharmacy would benefit from a structured framework to approach complex problem-solving while engaging faculty and students throughout the process. Design thinking is a framework that promotes creative problem-solving while using techniques that make ambiguity and failure more comfortable during the iterative process.

Determining Ideal Practices for Student Course Evaluations Using a Modified Delphi Approach.

Objective: While approaches for utilizing student course evaluations (SCEs) have been discussed in the literature, there remain opportunities to identify ideal practices for SCEs. Thus, the objective of this project was to generate consensus on best practices in creating, administering, and using SCEs.

Methods: A modified Delphi approach was utilized to generate a set of items based on the literature and prior work.

Exploring Tools to Manage Curricular Content and Overload Within the Professional PharmD Program.

Objective: Given recent discussions in the literature and across the Academy about curricular overload and calls for tools that aid in reducing content, it is important to determine what tools and resources programs are using to evaluate curricular content and how these resources are used to inform curricular change. Thus, the objective of this research project is to describe tools and resources pharmacy programs use for curricular content and change.

Methods: A 17-item instrument was created, pilot-tested, and then distributed electronically to assessment leads at accredited pharmacy programs with multiple reminders to improve response rates.