Pharmacy students’ interprofessional perceptions towards the pharmacy profession

Background and Aims: Interprofessional skill revolves with interconnected professional skills of health care professions. This skill is essential to deliver more effective, organized healthcare and welfare services. This study could help to improve the interprofessional training among pharmacy students (1). The study was aimed to investigate the perceptions of pharmacy students in a public university in Malaysia towards interprofessional in the pharmacy profession in Malaysia.

Summary of work: A validated questionnaire with 27 items was used. A universal sampling method was adopted and all the undergraduate pharmacy students in Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia were invited for their participation in this study. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. P-values <0.05 were considered statistically significant.

Outcomes: Total respondents of this survey were 275 students (92.0% female; mean age 21.88 SD ± 1.35). There was no significant difference in the interprofessional perception between the variable groups except for the academic year (P <0.05) for all the four tested domains as well as recent hospital or community pharmacy training (P <0.05 for domain 1, 3 and 4).

Discussion and conclusion: Under the guidance of the pharmacist preceptor they learnt how to engage in the interprofessional relationship and interaction. Exposure to the hospital or community pharmacy training allowed the student to inculcate and appreciate perspective on professional competence and autonomy. The findings is in congruent with study conducted in Saudi Arabia and UK (2, 3). We found that promoting professionalism among pharmacy students could create an environment for future practitioners to share knowledge to improve the quality of pharmacy education, practice, and patient care. The findings call for a syllabus that also focuses on the behavioral and administrative aspects of the pharmacy profession (4). In summary, this study showed that hospital and community training are the main factors enhancing the attitude of students towards interprofessional collaboration. The professionalism would instill the sense of professional coordination, mutual respect, and trust.

References:

1. Rider EA et al. (2014). Patient Education and Counseling 96: 273-280.

2. Khan TMet al. (2015). Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning 7: 62-69.

3. Alinier G et al. (2014) Clinical Simulation in Nursing 10: e205-216.

4. Hammick M et al. (2007). Medical Teacher 29: 735-751.