(334) Utilizing Immersive and Skills-Focused Rotations to Maximize Learning within the Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience Curriculum

Objective : To describe an innovative Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience (IPPE) curriculum design, which maintains a particular focus on development of core pharmacy practice skills.

Methods: Utilizing a collaborative approach and prospective mapping, faculty developed a list of core skills to target as part of revision of the IPPE curriculum. Specific skills were identified that could reinforce the didactic curriculum and also better prepare students for future experiential placements and benchmark OSCEs. The curriculum was then designed so that brief skill-focused rotations were intentionally sequenced with longer immersive experiences for further practice and application. Sites and preceptors were specifically targeted for each type of experience, and several non-pharmacists were utilized as preceptors for select skills that fell within their scope of practice. In order to pass the skill-focused rotations, students must complete both a minimum number of hours and achieve a benchmark of competence.

Results: Approximately 60% of the revised IPPE curriculum has been implemented to date. Feedback from both student and preceptor assessments have been positive. Specifically, students report feeling more prepared for core pharmacy practice activities as a result of skill-focused preliminary experiences. Preceptors provided insight on rotation timing and competency markers set for targeted skills. Anecdotally, preceptors have felt real world practice of skills has resulted in more confident, competent students.

Conclusions: The novel mix of short targeted rotations scaffolded with longer immersive rotations may be a novel way of structuring the IPPE curriculum and ensuring student competence with entry level practice skills. In addition, the innovative use of pharmacist extenders to facilitate some of these learning experiences has had a positive impact on success of implementation and preceptor workload.