The veteran-centered care conferences: interprofessional education and community involvement facilitated by the health sciences librarian.

Background: Veterans have a variety of unique healthcare needs and receive care from both the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and private healthcare systems. Because healthcare students will likely treat veterans at some time during their career, it is important they gain exposure to working with veterans during their professional degree programs.

Case Presentation: This case report presents the development of an annual Veteran-Centered Care Conference (VCCC) at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Comparison of a Prototype for Indications-Based Prescribing With 2 Commercial Prescribing Systems.

Importance: The indication (reason for use) for a medication is rarely included on prescriptions despite repeated recommendations to do so. One barrier has been the way existing electronic prescribing systems have been designed.

Objective: To evaluate, in comparison with the prescribing modules of 2 leading electronic health record prescribing systems, the efficiency, error rate, and satisfaction with a new computerized provider order entry prototype for the outpatient setting that allows clinicians to initiate prescribing using the indication.

Combined use of online tutorials and hands-on group exercises in bibliographic instruction for pharmacy students.

This study describes the new blended learning methodology implemented in a Drug Literature Evaluation course for pharmacy students that involves combined use of online tutorials and in-class group exercises. Assignment grades earned by 909 students enrolled in the course before and after the new methods were implemented (2008-2010) were studied to measure student performance. Course evaluations were analyzed in order to ascertain students' perceptions.