A national survey of antimicrobial stewardship content in Canadian entry-to-practice pharmacy programs.

Objective: To describe the current landscape of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) instruction in Canadian entry-to-practice pharmacy programs and the perceived barriers and facilitators to optimizing teaching and learning.

Design: Electronic survey.

Participants: Faculty representatives from the 10 Canadian entry-to-practice pharmacy programs, including content experts and faculty leadership.

Perceptions of pharmacy technician students of the CARD (Comfort Ask Relax Distract) e-module introduced as part of vaccine injection training.

Introduction: The scope of practice for pharmacy technicians is expanding to include vaccine administration in some provinces. Vaccine training courses and programs currently do not include education about mitigating immunization stress-related responses (ISRR) and improving the vaccination experience. We obtained feedback from pharmacy technician students about a new e-module that addresses this identified knowledge gap, whereby learners are educated about CARD (Comfort Ask Relax Distract), a vaccine delivery framework that reduces ISRR and improves the vaccination experience.

An evaluation of learner perception of competency and satisfaction with three models of an interdisciplinary surge capacity course.

Disaster preparation is a major public health issue, and hospitals play a front-line role in responding to emergencies and disasters. A key concern identified by clinicians is one of being overwhelmed by patients but also by their families and the general public in the event of a disaster. In response to this concern, an online, workplace-based, interprofessional course in surge capacity building was developed and delivered to 72 health and allied staff from five acute care and community health care organizations.

The impact of an online interprofessional course in disaster management competency and attitude towards interprofessional learning.

A recent national assessment of emergency planning in Canada suggests that health care professionals are not properly prepared for disasters. In response to this gap, an interprofessional course in disaster management was developed, implemented and evaluated in Toronto, Canada from 2007 to 2008. Undergraduate students from five educational institutions in nursing, medicine, paramedicine, police, media and health administration programs took an eight-week online course.