Moving AACP Curriculum Quality Survey Results from Good to Great.

Although the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Curriculum Quality Surveys (CQS) are required for programs to distribute and utilize as part of accreditation standards, programs face challenges in survey administration and timing, interpreting data and results, and following up on action plans. Because the CQS surveys are standardized, they can allow for greater comparison among institutions, yet interpretation of the items can vary considerably. Programs have flexibility in determining samples for administration and timing of administration (ie, number of years), but some participants (such as preceptors) can suffer from survey overload if multiple institutions administer in the same year. Determining thresholds for action and providing feedback to stakeholders on improvements made based on data triangulations can be daunting. These are a few of the elements that programs must consider when determining their own approach to the AACP CQS. Thus, the purpose of this Commentary is to describe good practices for using the AACP CQS, discuss challenges associated with the surveys, and recommend how to move the utilization of the surveys from good to great.

Development of an Entrustment-Supervision Assessment Tool for Pharmacy Experiential Education Using Stakeholder Focus Groups.

Objective To devise a pharmacy-specific, expanded entrustable professional activities (EPA) entrustment-supervision scale that would frame preceptor ratings in a prospective and retrospective manner for use in experiential learning settings.Methods A series of focus group sessions were conducted to solicit expert opinion on how to develop and refine two entrustment-supervision scales. Purposive sampling was used to identify experts from different professional groups (physicians, pharmacy experiential administrators, and pharmacy practice faculty) who had extensive knowledge regarding EPAs and at least one publication related to EPAs. Panelists were invited to participate via email. Three focus sessions were conducted via videoconferencing between June and September 2019. The primary outcome was development of a pharmacy-specific EPA entrustment-supervision assessment tool. Secondary outcomes were individual entrustment-supervision statements across five levels of the entrustment-supervision scale.Results The focus group consisted of four pharmacy practice faculty, two experiential administrators, and one academic physician. Four concepts emerged from the focus group discussion: need for more granularity in entrustment-supervision scales; limitations due to differences in licensure requirements across the United States; present and ongoing use of expanded scales by schools and colleges of pharmacy; and uncertainty regarding how to rate entrustment-supervision when a student exhibits unprofessional behavior.Conclusion A pharmacy-specific, expanded EPA entrustment-supervision scale will be useful to support longitudinal assessment of learners in experiential settings where an EPA framework is utilized. Determining when to use a prospective versus retrospective perspective requires further evaluation.

Determination of Interrater Reliability of a Universal Evaluator Rubric to Assess Student Pharmacist Communication Skills.

Objective. To evaluate the interrater reliability of a universal evaluator rubric used to assess student pharmacist communication skills during patient education sessions.Methods. Six US schools and colleges of pharmacy each submitted 10 student videos of a simulated community pharmacy patient education session and recruited two raters in each of the five rater groups (faculty, standardized patients, postgraduate year one residents, student pharmacists, and pharmacy preceptors). Raters used a rubric containing 20 items and a global assessment to evaluate student communication of 12 videos. Agreement was computed for individual items and overall rubric score within each rater group, and for each item across all rater groups. Average overall rubric agreement scores were compared between rater groups. Agreement coefficient scores were categorized as no to minimal, weak, moderate, strong, or almost perfect agreement.Results. Fifty-five raters representing five rater groups and six pharmacy schools evaluated student communication. Item agreement analysis for all raters revealed five items with no to minimal or weak agreement, 10 items with moderate agreement, one item with strong agreement, and five items with almost perfect agreement. Overall average agreement across all rater groups was 0.73 (95% CI, 0.66-0.81). The preceptor rater group exhibited the lowest agreement score of 0.68 (95% CI, 0.58-0.78), which significantly deviated from the overall average.Conclusion. While strong or almost perfect agreement scores were not observed for all rubric items, overall average interrater reliability results support the use of this rubric in a variety of raters to assess student pharmacist communication skills during patient education sessions.

Expert Consensus to Finalize a Universal Evaluator Rubric to Assess Pharmacy Students' Patient Communication Skills.

Objective. To use an expert consensus-building process to develop a rubric used by multiple evaluator types to assess Doctor of Pharmacy students' patient communication skills.Methods. Faculty and staff members from six schools and colleges of pharmacy collaborated on a multi-step expert consensus-building process to create the final version of a communication rubric. First, faculty and patient content experts evaluated each item in the rubric for its relevance, criticality, and global comprehensiveness using a five-point Likert scale (0=not at all, 4=to a high extent). Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the resulting data. Faculty members evaluated the results and came to a consensus on the second version of the rubric. A corresponding codebook was developed and refined through a two-phase process.Results. The initial communication rubric was evaluated by 13 expert reviewers. Mean global comprehensiveness on the rubric was 3.83 for faculty experts and 3.5 for patient experts. After evaluating results from the expert consensus-building process, 14 items on the rubric did not change, five items were revised, three items were removed, and two items were added. The second version of the instrument included 20 items in six topic areas. A codebook was finalized to increase scoring consistency for the 20 communication items.Conclusion. Overall, content experts concluded that the rubric had high global comprehensiveness. Collaboration involving faculty members from multiple schools of pharmacy resulted in a 20-item communication rubric and codebook that can be used to increase consistency in scoring student pharmacists' patient communication skills.

Entrustable Professional Activities as a Novel Framework for Pharmacy Education.

Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) are units of measure for a particular profession that describe the professional's unique abilities and work. EPAs can be used in two ways: as a link between individual competencies for mastery and overall professional responsibilities in practice; and as a mechanism for faculty to assess the student's progression using levels of decreasing supervision. Currently used in medical education, implementation and utilization of EPAs within pharmacy education has potential benefits and challenges. This article will describe, highlight benefits of, and share mitigation strategies for implementing EPAs within pharmacy education.

Training future health providers to care for the underserved: a pilot interprofessional experience.

INTRODUCTION: Interprofessional teamwork is essential for effective delivery of health care to all patients, particularly the vulnerable and underserved. This brief communication describes a pilot interprofessional learning experience designed to introduce medicine and pharmacy students to critical health issues affecting at-risk, vulnerable patients and helping students learn the value of functioning effectively in interprofessional teams. METHODS: With reflective practice as an overarching principle, readings, writing assignments, a community-based immersion experience, discussion seminars, and presentations were organized to cultivate students' insights into key issues impacting the health and well-being of vulnerable patients. A written program evaluation form was used to gather students' feedback about this learning experience. RESULTS: Participating students evaluated this learning experience positively. Both quantitative and qualitative input indicated the usefulness of this learning experience in stimulating learners' thinking and helping them learn to work collaboratively with peers from another discipline to understand and address health issues for at-risk, vulnerable patients within their community. DISCUSSION: This pilot educational activity helped medicine and pharmacy students learn the value of functioning effectively in interprofessional teams. Given the importance of interprofessional teamwork and the increasing need to respond to the health needs of underserved populations, integrating interprofessional learning experiences in health professions training is highly relevant, feasible, and critically needed.