Activities to enhance introductory pharmacy practice experiences.

Introduction: The goal of this initiative was to provide a meaningful introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE) to third-year students when opportunities for direct patient interaction are limited.

Methods: A single, pretest/posttest quasi-experiment was used to evaluate the impact of a structured pharmacy-based education series (intervention 1) and an interprofessional simulation (intervention 2) during combined internal medicine (IM) and infectious diseases (ID) IPPEs. Intervention 1 consisted of five, three-part pharmacy-based educational sessions, while intervention 2 consisted of an interprofessional simulated rounding experience. Pre- and post-rotation examinations were given to evaluate the impact of the interventions on student knowledge. Confidence was measured in 11 or 12-question pre- and post-surveys using a four-point Likert scale: strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree.

Results: Thirty-six students (30 in intervention 1 and six in intervention 2) were included. In intervention 1, there was a 19% improvement in IM knowledge (45% vs. 64%) and 10% improvement in ID knowledge (40% vs. 50%). In intervention 2, there was a significant improvement in both IM (30% vs. 40%) and ID (50% vs. 65%) and knowledge questions (10% and 15% improvements, respectively). In both interventions, most students reported increased confidence.

Conclusions: Knowledge and confidence improved in both intervention groups, demonstrating that there are ways to enhance IPPEs without direct patient interaction.