AdvoCaring: A Cocurricular Program to Provide Advocacy and Caring to Underserved Populations in Baltimore

Abstract

Objective. To incorporate direct patient care and service components throughout a 4-year pharmacy program to enable students to apply knowledge learned in the classroom and develop the human and caring dimensions of Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning. Design. Groups of 10-12 students and a faculty advisor partnered with a local agency serving an underserved population of the greater Baltimore area to provide seven hours of service per student each semester. Activities were determined based on students' skills and agency needs. Assessment. Over 10 000 hours of care were provided from fall 2009 through spring 2014 for clients at 12 partner agencies. Student feedback was favorable. Conclusion. Cocurricular learning enables students to use their skills to benefit local communities. Through an ongoing partnership, students are able to build on experiences and sustain meaningful care initiatives.

Using Continuing Professional Development to Create Meaningful Co-Curricular Learning Opportunities for all Student Pharmacists

“…10 Most recently, Fritch and colleagues described a co-curricular, service learning, longitudinal course that paired student teams with agencies providing services to underserved populations. 6 The authors reported student involvement in various services (eg, health screenings, advocacy letter writing, educational topics). 6 Students who participated in this experience reported a high level of agreement when asked if the experience positively affected how they will care for patients.…”

“…2 The literature's diverse examples of co-curricular activities include orientation sessions, educational workshops, seminars, simulated experiences, group site visits for hands-on experiences, and service learning. [3][4][5][6] Despite divergent interpretations of co-curricular activities, it is generally accepted that co-curricular activities enhance classroom learning and promote the growth of well-rounded learners.…”

The Impact of Co-curricular Activities Supported by Generic Skills on Students' Performance at University Level

“…Generally, co-curricular activities enhance classroom learning and encourage the growth of well-rounded learners. In 21 st Century, Information and communication technology (ICT) has a great role to communicate, share information and different resources adapt and innovate in response to create new knowledge [8]. According to this, skills like rote memorization have been reduced and new criteria for what students should be able to do must be changed by gaining additional skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, social collaboration and communication skills [9].…”

The Impact of Co-curricular Activities Supported by Generic Skills on Students' Performance at University Level

“…[5]. Co-curricular activities include orientation sessions, educational workshops, seminars, simulated experiences, group site visits for hands-on experiences, and service-learning [6,7].…”