Addressing the issue of unintended pregnancy is a national priority. One proposed strategy to reduce unintended pregnancy is to improve access to oral contraceptives by changing them to over-the-counter (OTC) status. Existing data indicate that oral contraceptives meet safety criteria required of OTC products. Available literature demonstrates that women can self-screen for contraindications to oral contraceptives and can do this as well as clinicians, and experience with OTC emergency contraception suggests that OTC oral contraceptives would not increase sexual risk-taking behavior. Women support OTC access to oral contraceptives, but express an interest in accessing pharmacist counseling. On the basis of these data, the Women's Health Practice and Research Network of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy supports changing oral contraceptives to OTC status under two conditions: that they are sold where a pharmacist is on duty and that there are mechanisms in place to cover OTC contraceptives through Medicaid. Future research should address the issues of out-of-pocket costs to individuals, label-comprehension studies, and models for pharmacist reimbursement for time spent counseling on contraception.

No abstract

Objective. To measure the impact of an interprofessional education intervention in which pharmacy students provided education to medical students. Methods. In a required workshop, fourth-year pharmacy students taught second-year medical students the basics of prescription writing. In a subsequent selective education session, the pharmacy students led a case-based discussion on nonprescription drug use for third-year medical students on their family medicine rotation. The pharmacy students were surveyed in regards to confidence in teaching abilities before and after the prescription writing workshop and the medical students were surveyed in regards to confidence with activity and teaching effectivess prior to and after the completion of the workshop or selective. Results. At the end of the workshop, second-year medical students were more confident in their abilities to write prescriptions and fourth-year pharmacy students were more confident in their ability to teach prescription writing. Based on survey responses, the second-year medical students and fourthyear pharmacy students were confident in the learning environment effectiveness throughout the activity. After participating in the selective education session, third-year medical students were more confident in their ability to access resources on nonprescription drugs and in making recommendations to and counseling patients regarding nonprescription drug use. Conclusion. The perception is that pharmacy students can be effective interprofessional educators for medical students on key aspects of the medical curriculum.

No abstract

Objective. To develop a rubric using an expert consensus building process for multiple evaluators to assess student performance of patient communication. Methods. Faculty and staff from six colleges/schools of pharmacy collaborated on a multi-step expert consensus building process to create a 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 5-point Likert scale (0=not at all, 4=to a high extent). Data was analyzed through descriptive statistics. Faculty members evaluated the results and came to 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, 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 of the 20-communication items. Conclusion.Overall, content experts reported high global comprehensiveness of the rubric. Faculty collaborations from multiple schools of pharmacy resulted in a 20-item communication rubric and codebook that can be used to increase student scoring consistency.