Addressing Unmet Patient Care Needs Through Curricular Development of Student Pharmacist Leadership and Entrepreneurial Skills

Abstract

Objective. To develop, deliver, and evaluate an innovative curriculum, designed to increase student pharmacists' skills and confidence in addressing unmet patient care needs and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Triple Aim goals in the community pharmacy setting. Methods. Course modules developed collaboratively between the University of Washington andWashington State University focused on student pharmacist exposure to and direct application of leadership theory in addressing real world challenges. Both programs delivered the curriculum to all second-year student pharmacists during the fall 2015 and 2016. Student teams were asked to identify a new or enhanced service for a community pharmacy based on a needs assessment and the IHI's Triple Aim goals. Pre-course and post-course assessments of student confidence, comfort level in leadership Results. Pre and Post assessments of individual student progress in leadership, innovation, selfawareness, and professionalism were completed. For all confidence questions, a statistically significant relationship was found between the mean of PRE and POST scores along with a decrease in the THEN score from the PRE score indicating students felt more confident in their ability to lead. At the conclusion of the course, the students reported improved confidence in their ability to Communicate Decisions (73%), Create a Vision (64%), and Form a Guiding Coalition (55%). Conclusion.A five-module curriculum with corresponding project proposal successfully increased the confidence and comfort level of student pharmacists' in their leadership skillset.

The research of international and national educational standards on leadership development for pharmacy students

“…It allowed to highlight the main leadership development competencies (Junk et al 2013(Junk et al , 2016 [1,6], as well as to study their importance for students on the basis of Delphi method, a survey of students and a systematic review of the related literature (Feller et al, 2016and Tucci et al, 2017, Reed et al, 2019 [7,8,9]. The description of leadership development opportunities in the USA, as a rule, of courses and projects, the research of students' preferences regarding their content (Panther et al, 2017, Feller et al, 2016, Sucher et al, 2013, Patterson et al, 2013) might lead to the formation of key priorities on leadership issues for pharmacy students [7,10,11,12].…”

“…According to the survey results, more than 90% of students who passed through this elective course, 'strongly agree' that "this course helped me learn more about aspects of my character that are essential for leaders". Leadership development opportunities at The University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, (Patterson et al, 2013) [12], at University of Washington и Washington State University College of Pharmacy (Panther et al, 2017) also confirmed their effectiveness in "developing leadership skills in students and inspiring student pharmacists to be agents of change" [10].…”

Healthcare entrepreneurship: current trends and future directions

“…"innovation", "medical education", "leadership", "qualitative research", "healthcare innovation", "design thinking" and "technology transfer"that reflect healthcare entrepreneurship research pertaining to innovation and leadership. Studies in cluster emphasize the importance of developing entrepreneurial skills and innovation (Panther et al, 2019;Sharma et al, 2022a), which could be done through design thinking (Niccum et al, 2017). They also highlight the returns of entrepreneurial leadership in fostering innovation behavior among medical personnel such as nurses (Bagheri and Akbari, 2018), as well as the that relating to innovation spin-offs such as technology transfer (Helm et al, 2010).…”