Foundation for the creation of a laboratory skills toolkit: A case study

Abstract

Objective: To create and implement a toolkit to help guide teaching and skill development in the school's pharmacy skills laboratory (lab) course sequence.

Methods: After the first year of the school's newly implemented Practice and Team Ready curriculum, faculty completed a survey designed to attribute levels of entrustability and frequency to each skill taught in the lab course sequence. Each skill was then categorized into a respective tier: Tier 1 (3+ times and indirect supervision); Tier 2 (3+ times and direct supervision); Tier 3 (various combinations of less than 3+ times and less than direct supervision); "Non-tiered" (any skill with the highest percentage answer being the lowest entrustability or lowest frequency level).

Results: A total of 33 faculty categorized 73 skills into tiers, comprising 16 Tier 1 skills (22%), 14 Tier 2 skills (19%), 38 Tier 3 skills (52%), and 5 "non-tiered" skills (7%).

Conclusion: The toolkit is a unique effort that may inspire and guide what skills should be taught and developed in a lab course sequence. The toolkit serves as a case study and requires additional revision and continuous quality improvement to improve its validity and generalizability.

Keywords: curricular hoarding; entrustable professional activities; laboratory; skills; toolkit.