Student Temple University School of Pharmacy, United States
Objective : To assess the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) therapeutics curriculum at Temple University School of Pharmacy (TUSP) regarding inclusion and time spent on topics identified in the 2019 American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Pharmacotherapy Didactic Toolkit.
Methods: Disease state topics identified in the ACCP Toolkit were compared to content in required and elective therapeutics courses in our PharmD program. Course syllabi were collected and topics covered were identified and categorized as Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 based on recommendations from the Toolkit. The number of topics and amount of hours of class time per topic were also collected. Descriptive statistics were used in the data analysis.
Results: 130 therapeutic topics were identified in the curriculum. Using the ACCP Toolkit, 64 (49.3%) topics were classified as Tier 1, 64 (49.3%) as Tier 2, and 2 (1.54%) as Tier 3. Six Tier 1 topics (6.4%), 14 Tier 2 topics (10.5%), and 73 Tier 3 topics (93.3%) were excluded from the didactic curriculum. Most excluded topics were related to self-directed care. The PharmD curriculum contains 348.5 hours of therapeutic topics. 207 (59.34%) of the hours were dedicated to Tier 1 topics, 137.5 (39.45%) to Tier 2 topics, and 4 (1.15%) to Tier 3 topics.
Conclusions: Assessment of the TUSP PharmD curriculum using the ACCP Didactic Curriculum Toolkit reveals almost all Tier 1 and 2 topics are included in our curriculum, with minimal inclusion of Tier 3 topics. The majority of hours in the curriculum are dedicated to Tier 1 topics, with less spent on Tier 2 topics, and minimal time on Tier 3 topics. Our therapeutics curriculum appears to be consistent with recommendations from the ACCP Toolkit
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