(214) A Focus on Design Thinking within a Personal & Professional Development Course

Objective : Describe the components of a personal & professional development (PPD) course focused on the Design Thinking Creative Problem-Solving (DT) framework for student pharmacists in the third professional year.

Methods: In response to a need for more intentional skill development in innovation and creative problem-solving, the authors developed and implemented didactic coursework within a PPD course using publicly available resources. Student pharmacists participated in a DT series over 3 class sessions. The learning activities were mapped to the phases within the DT Framework (empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test). Empathy was assessed via completion of a journey map of a day in the professional life of an individual who works in community pharmacy practice. Students created a list of “How Might We…” questions to define a problem faced by this individual. They practiced divergent and convergent thinking by brainstorming all possible solutions (ideate) within 4 constraints and then selecting their preferred solution. Student teams developed prototypes of solutions by using “Creativity Boxes.” Finally, teams tested their solutions by obtaining feedback from other student pharmacists.

Results: In spring 2024, 96 student pharmacists enrolled in the PPD course across two campuses. Average student scores were lowest in empathy (71.5%) and ideate (79.0%) compared to define (93%), prototype (96.5%), and test (95.7%). A solution-oriented bias interfered with their ability to explore problems and a perfection-bias hindered their ability to identify a diverse list of potential solutions.

Conclusions: Mapping assignments and their corresponding assessment rubrics to the DT Framework allowed the authors to assess the student pharmacists' use of the DT Framework. Additional research is needed to evaluate the impact of the DT series on innovation and creative problem-solving skills.