(328) Student preference-informed curricular offerings to drive personalized education and increase satisfaction

Objective : Pharmacy student enrollment in elective courses changed over the past several years. Researchers aimed to identify 1) student interest in 16 diverse areas for professional development within required curriculum, electives, rotations and certificates and 2) specific reasons for selecting the offerings.

Methods: Using a Qualtrics link distributed in Personal and Professional Development courses (PY1 – PY3) and on APPE rotations (PY4), students were surveyed on their interests. The data was stratified according to the professional year and evaluated by topic areas.

Results: In total, 126/662 (19%) of students responded to the survey, with many respondents being PY1 (41%). Of the respondents, 35%-48% were interested in having exposure to the assorted topics (1-2 lectures in required courses). Seven topics with the highest interest in 1) elective courses, 2) rotations or 3) certificates include inpatient specialty (36%/51%/23%), industry (36%/44%/33%), ambulatory care (32%/47%/21%), compounding (38%/32%/14%), specialty pharmacy (36%/37%/18%), specialty populations (35%/33%/19%), pharmacogenomics (38%/31%/23%).

The three most important factors for selecting offerings were interest in the topic (88%), convenience of the time offered (69%), and reputation as difficult but great learning opportunity (39%).

Conclusions: As enrollment changes and new fields/careers continue to develop in pharmacy, it is essential for educators to provide timely offerings to students. This data was used to inform the School of Pharmacy’s Program Innovation Strategic Planning Team in their 5-year development of offering an updated curriculum that both improves student satisfaction with the program and creates more personalized education. Educators must develop student awareness of opportunities, solicit their areas of interest, and make data-informed curricular offerings. Study strengths include participation of all PY cohorts with low response rate, especially with P4 students being the main limitation.