[Approach to Practical Training in Basic Clinical Pharmacy for Third-Year Pharmacy Students: Literature Appraisal and Professional Writing]

Abstract

Training pharmacy students to become future clinical pharmacists is an important mission in the 6-year school of pharmacy curriculum in Japan. Since 2014, we have conducted an on-campus practical training program to develop basic skills in clinical pharmacy for third-year pharmacy students at Meiji Pharmaceutical University. This training program includes searching for and retrieving drug information; interpretation of laboratory findings, vital signs, and physical examinations; literature appraisal; and professional writing. These training sections are arranged in the above-mentioned order to facilitate effective understanding of each. In the literature appraisal section, each student group is assigned a report on a prospective controlled study of a given drug published in English and reads it critically according to the literature appraisal worksheet. Then the group writes a monograph on the drug described in the report based on the literature and other information. Thereafter, all students are reshuffled into new groups so that students who were assigned different drugs are placed together, in the so-called jigsaw learning method. Students then discuss which two or three drugs in a specific pharmacological class should be adopted in the hospital formulary according to the knowledge gained through this training program series. The themes were novel oral anticoagulants in the 2014 academic year, dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors in 2015, and 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase inhibitors in 2016. Although there are some problems that need to be resolved in the future, this approach appears effective in helping students build drug information skills as a basic competence of clinical pharmacists.

Keywords: clinical pharmacy; literature evaluation; professional writing; undergraduate education.