Pharmacy curriculum design

Welcome to the last session of Optimal Outcome Precepting - Putting Everything Together. My name is Eliz Chang, assistant professor at the College of Pharmacy, Taipei Medical University. Today I will be summarizing what you have learned previously, and apply it to local experiences at Taipei Medical University. A little bit background about myself, I received my Pharm.D. degree from the Ohio State University, as well as my PhD training at the University of Iowa. Prior to my assistant professorship at Taipei Medical University, I have also worked as a relief pharmacist at NuCare pharmacy, a community pharmacy in Iowa. I have served several different roles, and experience short programs. Currently, I am the co-coordinator for community pharmacy practicum for undergraduate students.

I have also served as the co-coordinator for clinical practicum in clinical hospital pharmacy for graduate students. I’m also a member of our college experiential program committee. Previously, you have learned with Dr. Brown several sessions. In the first session, Dr. Brown introduce the experiential learning concept and how it can be put in analogy with basketball coaching. In the second session, you have also learned about assessment feedback and grading as well as how learning outcomes is important and putting all these together. In the third session, Dr. Brown has shared with us how to design a structure well-organized learning experience by having all the policies and procedures put together. In the fourth session, Dr.

Brown shared with us strategy for bringing out the best in every student especially how to motivate students as well as correct mistakes behaviours. In the last session, Dr. Brown share with us DNA traits of great preceptors and qualities of great rotations. Therefore, today we will be applying these concepts into our Taipei Medical University experience. To give you a little bit background about our experiential curriculum. In our School of Pharmacy in Taipei Medical University, we have several different tracks for learning. We have four-year undergraduate programs where students enter as a high school graduate. We also have six-year pharmy programs where students also enter as a high school graduate.

We also provide graduate training programs for those who have completed four-year or six-year undergraduate programs. For undergraduate programs, we have several practicum curriculum. The most important piece is the hospital pharmacy practical, where students spend around 640 hours in different areas and hospital pharmacy. We also have several different practicums which each consists of roughly 160 hours. For example, our community pharmacy practicum has recently became a required course in our undergraduate curriculum. We also have pharmacy administration practicum, pharmacy industry practicum, for our four-year students as well as six-year students.

For our 6-year students we have an additional piece of introductory pharmacy practice experience, where the pharmacy students begin to receive early exposure in their pharmacy curriculum about different career paths for a pharmacist. As far as the advanced curriculum in the graduate program as well as in the six-year program, we also have two different major practicum experiences. One is also in the hospital pharmacy, where pharmacy students would spend time in different specialty areas. Where they go with a medical service and provide patient care to the patients at bedside. We also have communities pharmaceutical care practicum, where students either receive ambulatory care experience, or may receive advanced training in community pharmacies.

To give you a little bit more background on the experiences where I have had more experience. I would like to first share with you our introductory pharmacy practice experience, the IPPE curriculum. This curriculum has just recently started in around 2015. We have set up several learning objectives for our students. They are supposed to complete 150 hours over two different semesters. They are required to submit weekly reflection papers as well as participate in college discussions. The learning objectives we have set up for our students include several folds. First, students should be able to describe and explain pharmacist responsibilities and various settings, especially patient care. We also would like our students to have more hands-on experience.

Therefore, students should be able to elicit patient medication history as well as compile personal medication records in their IPPE experience. Current practice setting is that we collaborate with include the majority time spent in hospital pharmacy. We also have sites in community pharmacy. The food and drug administration where they might spend time to have an orientation. We also have industry practice settings as well as nursing home or professional conferences or individual studies. The hope is for students to have a well-rounded experience before more advanced curriculum. In this way, students can be more motivated to know why they need to learn the curriculum in the college, and be more motivated to become a better pharmacist in the future.

I would also like to share with you our experience with community pharmacy internship. This internship has been in place for roughly nine years at Taipei Medical University. Students are expected to complete 160 hours of internship over four to five weeks and also submit weekly reflection papers and participate in college discussions. So that students can have exchange experience with different students. The learning objectives we have set up for our students include several folds. During the summer or winter break, students are expected to be able to describe and explain the roles and functions of community pharmacists. We know that community pharmacists play an important role in public health.

Therefore, by exposing students in this setting, they can not only learn about dispensing, but also know about public health goals of community pharmacists. We would like our pharmacy students to observe the practice areas and settings, and be able to compare them with different hospital settings that they have encountered. We would like students to be able to describe and observe how pharmacists interact with other healthcare organizations, whether that be physicians and clinics or community organizers and in the different community settings, or potentially how they interact with hospital pharmacists. In particular, we would like our student pharmacists to be able to participate and dispensing activities as well as communicate with different professionals and patients.

This is especially important for the community pharmacy internship, because this is usually the first internship that students are exposed to before the hospital internship. And therefore, this is the first time students enter the real world community. Therefore, we specifically emphasize the participation in these activities.