Academia's Support of Community Pharmacy in This Time of Transformation.

Community pharmacy is currently experiencing significant changes that will likely transform practice in unpredictable ways. With student interest in pursuing community pharmacy practice postgraduation on the decline, the Academy needs to ensure that a sufficient number of students passionate in community practice enter the workforce to guide this transformation in a positive manner for the profession and patients. This commentary reviews the ways that pharmacy faculty may promote community pharmacy during the students' academic experiences.

Design and evaluation of an application-based pharmaceutical calculations review module.

Background And Purpose: To describe the design of an application-based calculations review module, determine retention of skills learned in a calculations course, determine student ability to identify information necessary to solve calculations, and evaluate student perceptions.

Educational Activity And Setting: Three student cohorts completed the calculations application-based review module. All students passed a required pharmaceutical calculations course previously (17 months prior for Cohort 1 and nine months prior for Cohorts 2 and 3).

Continuous quality improvement regulations for community pharmacy practice in the United States.

Objectives: In the United States, medication errors are considered to be the cause of 7000 deaths annually. Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is a management process that focuses on continually and systematically evaluating the organization's work process. In community pharmacy, CQI leads to enhanced patient safety through a reduction in medication errors and quality-related events (QREs).

Challenges and Facilitators of Implementing a Physician-approved Naloxone Protocol: A Mixed-methods Study.

Objectives: In 2015, the State of Ohio passed legislation to allow pharmacists to dispense naloxone under a physician-approved protocol. The legislation allows all individuals authorized under a physician-approved protocol to personally furnish naloxone without requiring clients to be seen by a licensed prescriber, thus expanding the capacity of Ohio's community distribution programs. We aimed to evaluate the implementation of legislation allowing for a physician-approved protocol in pharmacies and other naloxone distribution sites in Ohio, and to compare barriers and facilitators of implementing the law changes among sites that implemented a physician-approved protocol versus sites that did not.

Motivational interviewing education: Creation and assessment of a learning module implemented among advanced pharmacy practice students.

Background And Purpose: The purpose of this prospective nonrandomized study (quasi-experimental), pre-/post-intervention design was to implement and assess a formal orientation training program for Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) students focusing on skills related to motivational interviewing (MI).

Educational Activity And Setting: Students were assessed on their knowledge, perceived ability, and perceived need to incorporate MI in practice using a pre-/posttest. Ability was assessed via student-conducted patient interviews, and performance was compared to published standards.

Point-of-care coagulation monitoring: first clinical experience using a paper-based lateral flow diagnostic device.

Vitamin K antagonists such as warfarin are the most widely used class of oral anticoagulants. Due to a narrow therapeutic window, patients on warfarin require regular monitoring. Self-testing using point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices is available, but cost makes this monitoring method beyond reach for many.

Impact of a required pharmaceutical calculations course on mathematics ability and knowledge retention.

Objective: To assess doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students' mathematics ability by content area before and after completing a required pharmaceutical calculations course and to analyze changes in scores.

Methods: A mathematics skills assessment was administered to 2 cohorts of pharmacy students (class of 2013 and 2014) before and after completing a pharmaceutical calculations course. The posttest was administered to the second cohort 6 months after completing the course to assess knowledge retention.