Status of Pharmacy Ethics Education in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

Objective. To explore models of teaching in, resources available to, and delivery of a standardized course in pharmacy ethics. Methods. An email invitation was sent to the educator responsible for teaching pharmacy ethics at each of 19 institutions in Australia and New Zealand. Over a six-to eight-week period, semi-structured interviews were conducted in person, by email, or by phone, and were audio-recorded where possible, transcribed verbatim, and entered into data analysis software. Using an inductive analysis approach, themes related to the topics and issues discussed in the interview process were identified. Results. Of the educators invited to participate, 17 completed an interview and were included in this study. Participants reported a paucity of resources available for teaching pharmacy ethics at schools in Australia and New Zealand. Compounding this issue was the lack of expertise and ad-hoc process educators used to create their courses. Assessment methods varied between institutions. Participants felt schools needed to move toward a more standardized pharmacy ethics course with clear and defined guidelines. Conclusion. This study identified many areas in pharmacy ethics that need improvement and revealed the need to develop resources and course structure that adhere to the highest level of Miller's pyramid, while using known frameworks to evaluate ethical competency.

Effectivity of Hands-on Near-peer teaching in Scientific Writing for Indian Medical Students

“…Similar results have been obtained in past studies. [51][52][53] The increase in test scores was also signi cantly correlated (p = 0.047) with an increase in manuscript self-evaluation scores indicating holistic all-around improvement.…”

Ethics and Business in Community Pharmacies – A Framework for an Ethical Dialogue

“…In fact, the extent to which pharmaceutical companies will assume their social and environmental responsibilities will also reflect the success of the ethical dialogue between the stakeholders [20]. The agreement of common training programs and the commitment to implement common actions have also been recommended by other authors, who emphasized the necessity of continuous efforts for ethical professional development of pharmacists, namely the creation of a framework of persuasion and resilience in the context of financial pressures, both in developing countries [4,8,9,11,22,24] and in more advanced countries, especially where pharmacists' roles in community pharmacies are expanding [1,5,18,19,26]. In the process of establishing the content of common training, providing them in an experiential context, and assessing their results based on the skills and abilities acquired, collaboration with academic institutions could be useful [1,5,8,16,26], which would constitute a long-term beneficial partnership for everyone involved, as well as for the future of pharmaceutical education.…”

“…The agreement of common training programs and the commitment to implement common actions have also been recommended by other authors, who emphasized the necessity of continuous efforts for ethical professional development of pharmacists, namely the creation of a framework of persuasion and resilience in the context of financial pressures, both in developing countries [4,8,9,11,22,24] and in more advanced countries, especially where pharmacists' roles in community pharmacies are expanding [1,5,18,19,26]. In the process of establishing the content of common training, providing them in an experiential context, and assessing their results based on the skills and abilities acquired, collaboration with academic institutions could be useful [1,5,8,16,26], which would constitute a long-term beneficial partnership for everyone involved, as well as for the future of pharmaceutical education. Implementation of ethical training and common action programs will require monitoring and effectiveness assessment according to a commonly agreed protocol, which should also include the patients' perspective [15], to obtain a complete picture of their impact and allow for necessary adjustments regularly.…”

“…Ethical competencies acquired by pharmacists during their education are heavily challenged by the business environment in which they work, even in the community pharmacy, "particularly where there are corporate values and reward systems in operation" [26]. Moreover, sometimes insufficient training for ethical decision-making in practice [1] makes them even more vulnerable to financial pressure, some of them being pushed into "moral distress" [8,11] or suffering a "crisis of professional identity" [9]. Indeed, a very competitive environment, such as that of community pharmacies, may exacerbate the pressure and conflicts between professional pharmaceutical ethics and employers' business interests [9,10,16,18,24,26].…”