Design, implementation, and evaluation of educational workshop on management of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease patients for third-year pharmacy students.

Background And Purpose: Increasing aging populations in the United States means an increasing number of persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) requiring competent pharmaceutical care. The workshop was designed and implemented to integrate pharmacology and therapeutics in management of PD and AD, and evaluate efficacy of students' high-cognitive thinking, and self-rated knowledge improvement, confidence, and interest in the subject.

Education Activity And Setting: Third-year pharmacy students participated in a three-hour workshop comprised of a foundational knowledge quiz from pathophysiology, pharmacology and therapeutics, performance on high-cognitive thinking in clinical scenarios, and hands-on activities in pharmacology and therapeutics related to PD and AD care. Pre- and post-education, Likert-style questions assessed students' self-rated confidence, interest and knowledge improvement. Descriptive statistics, paired t-test, and chi-square analyses were performed using Stata 10.1 statistical software (College Station, TX: Stata Corp LP).

Findings: Eighty-four of 93 students (90.3%) completed all workshop activities. Students' ability to apply knowledge in complex case mediation problems was not associated with performance on baseline quiz questions (Pearson r: 0.03-0.17). Completion of structured, hands-on active learning integrating clinical pharmacology and therapeutics had measurable immediate benefit solving high-cognitive order problems in clinical scenarios (p < 0.05). Hands-on activity also increased mean self-rated confidence (p < 0.01). Students (85.6%) reported knowledge improved "somewhat" or "very much" after the activity. Mean scores before and after hands-on activity were not associated with interest in the topic.

Summary: Structured, hands-on workshops can aid comprehension of taught/lectured material and its application to PD and AD, and is a way for instructors to close gaps between didactic lecture and clinical practice.