Adapting pharmacy experiential education during COVID-19: Innovating remote preceptor resources, tools, and patient care delivery beyond virtual meetings

Abstract

Purpose To describe the innovative teaching practices, tools, and resources for remote learning developed by a school of pharmacy with a decentralized experiential program to empower and support preceptors in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Summary As the pandemic has continued, there have been significant shifts in pharmacy workflow, staffing, and patient care delivery. Pharmacy students are slowly being reintegrated into these learning environments. Although preceptors are willing and eager to teach, many lack the resources, tools, and support to create remote learning experiences at their facilities. The University of the Pacific Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy has a decentralized experiential education model in which faculty regional coordinators with clinical practices and diverse expertise are disseminated throughout California. This model allowed us to collaborate and understand preceptor needs from a local level. We created a preceptor COVID-19 guidance document, introduced innovative virtual playbooks to pivot up to 100% remote rotations, and promoted the layered learning model to integrate pharmacy residents into the remote teaching space. Communication and flexibility are key to ensure student and preceptor safety while maintaining high-quality advanced pharmacy practice experiences and preserving patient-student relationships in telehealth. Conclusion Overall, we successfully created innovative solutions and leveraged our decentralized experiential model to meet the teaching and learning demands during an unanticipated crisis. We continue to adapt and plan to assess the effectiveness of the tools by administering surveys of preceptors and pharmacy students.

Pharmacy students' knowledge and confidence of COVID‐19 following an interactive didactic class

“…Overall mean confidence agreement with COVID‐19 prevention and management statements using a 5‐point 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 Likert scale significantly improved from pre‐ to postintervention (2.66 ± 0.75 vs 4.03 ± 0.53, P < .001). Table 2 shows the mean improvement in confidence agreement scores for COVID‐19 prevention and management following the IDC.…”

“…Overall mean confidence agreement with COVID-19 prevention and management statements using a 5-point [1][2][3][4][5] Likert scale significantly improved from pre-to postintervention (2.66 ± 0.75 vs 4.03 ± 0.53, P < .001). positive overall.…”

“…Pharmacy education has been disrupted considerably with rapid changes in the approach, delivery, and assessment in both didactic and experiential education. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 Despite this, the role of pharmacists has increasingly expanded to further leverage the knowledge and skills of the pharmacy workforce during the COVID‐19 pandemic. 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 Pharmacists are on the front lines of the COVID‐19 pandemic in both the prevention and management of COVID‐19 in outpatient and inpatient settings.…”

Assessing Preceptor and Student Perceptions of Remote Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…During the height of the pandemic, we developed virtual APPE playbooks to provide resources for our students and preceptors in case of partial or full displacement from rotation sites [ 1 ]. These playbooks for core rotations sharedseveral learning activities described by other programs, and allowed on-time graduation for our students.…”

“…During the summer months of 2020, a COVID-19 experiential education task force was created to develop resources for preceptors and students. Remote learning playbooks focusing on four core APPE rotations (ambulatory care, community practice, hospital practice, and internal medicine) were created to provide students and preceptors access to remote APPE activities, sample calendars, and other innovative resources that could be utilized during a full six-week rotation if a student or preceptor were not able to report to the practice site [ 1 ]. As the pandemic continued, many students were transitioned to partial or fully remote experience for core or elective APPE rotations.…”