PEARs 2 —Interprofessional education within Irish pharmacy schools

Introduction: The Pharmacy Education and Accreditation Reviews (PEARs) Project was commissioned in 2008 by the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI) to review both the five-year programme of pharmacy education and training and the process of undergraduate course accreditation. This abstract describes the views of university staff and students on interprofessional education (IPE).
Materials & Methods Design: Review of school (n = 3) documentation;qualitative interviews (n = 7) with key school staff (n = 8);self-completion questionnaire surveys of all undergraduate students(response rate 84.5%; n = 584/691) and pharmacy school staff(response rate 59.8%; n = 49/82). Setting: Irish schools of pharmacy.Main outcome measures: Views of staff and students on IPE in pharmacy.
Results: Although nearly two-thirds of student respondents (64%,n = 371/579) stated that they had experienced IPE within lectures,only one-quarter (24%, n = 138/573) stated they had experience within interactive sessions (e.g. workshops or tutorials). Those students with experience of IPE were asked how useful it had been, with only 28% (n = 106/377) indicating that it had been very or moderately useful. When limited to those students with experience of IPEwithin interactive sessions, this figure increases to 43% (n = 58/136). Nevertheless, two-thirds (67%, n = 30/45) of staff considered interprofessional learning as a useful method to enhance learning that teaching pharmacy students on their own would not achieve.
Discussions, Conclusion: As the practice of pharmacy evolves to a more patient facing clinical role, pharmacists will increasingly work with other health professionals. At the time of the PEARs Project,pharmacy students undertook very little interactive learning with other health students and where it did take place, students were unsure of its relevance. However, pharmacy staff indicated value in this type of education. The PEARs Project recommendation that the current4 + 1 model of pharmacy education to first registration should be replaced by a five-year fully integrated programme of education,training and assessment should help to integrate university teaching with practice experience. This in turn should go some way to help contextualise IPE and increase the value placed on it by pharmacy undergraduate students.
Disclosure of Interest None Declared