Perceived Preparedness of Health Care Students for Providing Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment and Management

Abstract

Early assessment and management of risk factors is known to have significant impact in preventing cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its associated burden. Cardiovascular disease risk assessment and management (CVDRAM) is best approached by teamwork across health care professionals. This study aimed at assessing health care students’ (HCSs) knowledge about the parameters needed for estimating CVD risk, their self-assessed preparedness/confidence and perceived barriers for the provision of CVDRAM services through a survey administered to third and fourth year pharmacy, medical, and nursing students in Qatar. Although all student cohorts achieved similar knowledge scores, less than half (n = 38, 47%) were able to identify all of the six main risk factors necessary to estimate absolute CVD risk, and a third (32%) were unable to identify total cholesterol as an independent risk factor necessary to estimate CVD risk. Training on the use of CVD risk assessment tools differed among the three student cohorts. All student cohorts also perceived similar levels of preparedness in CVDRAM. However, pharmacy students reported the highest preparedness/confidence with the use of the latest CVDRAM guidelines. The majority of statements listed under the barriers scale were perceived by the students as being moderate (median score = 3). Poor public acceptance or unawareness of importance of estimating CVD risk was the only barrier perceived as a major by nursing students. Future integration of interprofessional educational (IPE) activities in the CVDRAM curricula of HCSs may be a suitable strategy to minimize barriers and foster collaborative practice for the provision of CVDRAM services in Qatar.

Cardiovascular disease risk prevention services by pharmacists in Saudi Arabia: what do policymakers and opinion leaders think?

“…Although no such scholarly inquiry works in pharmacy education are reported from Saudi Arabia, in a neighbouring country, Qatar, an interprofessional education project focussing on assessment and screening for CVD was offered jointly to a range of health students from medicine, nursing and pharmacy colleges [ 57 ]. In this Qatari study, a needs analysis phase comprising student knowledge surveys was undertaken, where it was clear that curricular lacunae existed in terms of patient assessment skills in participating students [ 57 , 58 ]; this consequently led to an inter-disciplinary curriculum review. Qatari researchers also specifically demonstrated competency gaps in a sample of community pharmacists around CVD risk assessment and management using a simulated patient study [ 59 ], and developed a pedagogically sound targeted education program for pharmacists to enhance their competence in providing CVD risk assessment and management [ 60 ].…”

Qatar—Sustaining Interprofessional Collaboration in Collaborative Partnership with Other Universities

“…Since the establishment of IPE, research in this area has started to emerge. This varies from projects focused on the perspective of various key stakeholders to IPE (El-Awaisi, Diack, Joseph, & El Hajj, 2016;El-Awaisi, El Hajj, et al, 2018a, 2018bWilbur & Kelly, 2015;Zolezzi et al, 2017) to others focused on the actual experiences of IPE Wilby, Al-Abdi, El-Awaisi, & Diab, 2016;Wilby et al, 2015). There are also reviews (El-Awaisi, Joseph, El Hajj, & Diack, 2017;El-Awaisi, Wilby, et al, 2017;Johnson & Carragher, 2018) and a description of the steps to follow in introducing IPE into health care curricula .…”