Student Self-Ratings of Skill Acquisition from a Clinical Controversy Debate in a Third Year Pharmaceutical Care Lab

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate student perspectives of a clinical controversy debate activity designed to improve their skills to effectively approach and communicate complex therapeutic dilemmas.
 Design: A clinical controversy debate activity was implemented in the fall semester of the third year pharmaceutical care laboratory curriculum. Topics were chosen based on controversies encountered in practice. Students were assigned to groups of 5-6 and subdivided to the pro or con of the topic. Each debate lasted 25 minutes. Students completed a self-assessment asking them to rate eight skills (e.g. selecting appropriate references, analysis of literature, defending and predicting arguments, composing and delivering the presentation, and persuading the audience) before and after the debate as: novice, developing, skilled, facilitating/leading, or educating. Results were analyzed descriptively and the pre-post ratings were compared using a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test.
 Results: 140 (84.8%) students responded to the self-assessment survey. The skill that students rated most highly prior to the debate was selecting appropriate resources and primary literature, with only 7.1% rating themselves as novice. After completing the debate, the skill rated with the greatest improvement was predicting opposing arguments with 47.1% rating as developing and 40% rating as skilled. All eight skills had statistically significant improvements pre- and post- assignment (p < 0.001).
 Implications: Preparing arguments for and against treatment options is an important clinical skill, used regularly by pharmacists. A clinical controversy debate activity resulted in reports of improvement on eight measures of evidence based medicine-related skills.
 
 Type: Case Study

Evaluation of a Modified Debate Exercise Adapted to the Pedagogy of Team-Based Learning

“…Consistent with previous studies of debates in health care education, students perceived particularly strong improvements in presentation skills and ability to form evidence-based decisions. 4,5,11 Moore and colleagues describe a clinical controversy debate format similar to ours while also summarizing the findings from other studies on debates in the allied health curricula. 11 Students were enrolled in an ambulatory care elective and 13/18 students were included in the study.…”

“…4,5,11 Moore and colleagues describe a clinical controversy debate format similar to ours while also summarizing the findings from other studies on debates in the allied health curricula. 11 Students were enrolled in an ambulatory care elective and 13/18 students were included in the study. Overall, students either agreed or strongly agreed that the debates improved their ability to make evidence-based decisions, think critically, and to deliver presentations.…”

Using Debates to Mimic Clinical Discussion in Experiential Education

“…Each student was responsible for argumentation in a single debate during the semester with the remaining time spent in active audience engagement. [12][13][14][15][16][17] Interestingly, student perceptions were similar to the online format with respect to development of critical thinking and communication skills.…”

“…Debates in the classroom setting have been described in the pharmacy literature for over 10 years, [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and much can be gleaned from the use of debates in this setting. Use of debates has been described in a variety of pharmacy student training levels, formats, and curricular courses.…”

“…Student participation ranged from first to third professional year and included online and live formats. While traditionally thought of as a small group activity, debates have been described in large courses [10][11][12]14,[16][17] (e.g. pharmacy therapeutics) and small professional electives.…”