Study and analysis of pharmacy education for a patient-centered practice /

Abstract

Pharmacists are healthcare professionals, and their education and training must be patient-centered. In this sense, our objective was to assess whether universities are preparing pharmacy students for a patient-centered practice and whether the pharmacy curricula are adapted to this need of the profession. Firstly we compare information available on the websites of the universities with undergraduate pharmacy degree programs across the globe from the perspective of international students. We concluded that there are still a high proportion of colleges of pharmacy without website, and the quality of pharmacy colleges’ websites is unevenly distributed across the world. To fulfill the information needs of the international students an English version of the website should exist and include, at least, a complete syllabus of full disciplines, financial aspects (costs and grants), complete faculty directory, and all the administrative requirements. When we analyzed and compared course contents of United States (USA) and European Higher Education Area (EHEA) undergraduate pharmacy curricula, we found that institutions in EHEA countries maintain a greater focus on basic sciences and a lower load of clinical sciences compared to the United States. These differences may not be in accordance with international recommendations to educate future pharmacists focused on patient care. Pharmacy education should be based on the acquisition of competencies, supported by a competency framework, that assists in the development of pharmacy curricula. In Spain, the competencies that qualify pharmacists for the practice of the profession are legally enforced since 2008 by the CIN/2137/2008 Ministerial order. The results of our study show that colleges of pharmacy in Spain do not appropriately use the official Spanish competency framework. Competencies are frequently mismatched, with no real alignment between them and the courses’ educational content. Competence mismatching in Spain is most evident in the patient-focused competencies. Through a qualitative analysis of the educational contents included in the syllabus of the pharmacy practice area courses from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA pharmacy curricula, and using the benchmarking method, we have created a catalog of educational contents for a patient-centered undergraduate pharmacy curriculum. This catalog can assist in the creation of a pharmacy curriculum that prepares students for a patient-centered practice. And can also be used as an instrument to check the completeness of patient-centered educational contents in any university’s undergraduate pharmacy curriculum. Key-words: patient-centered practice; pharmacy education; curriculum; educational contents; competencies.