(223) Emergency Preparedness Point of Dispensing Training Evaluation for a Pharmacy & Nursing School Students

Objective : To evaluate perceptions of pharmacy, nursing students and faculties at a metropolitan school of pharmacy and nursing regarding their knowledge on roles of healthcare professionals and skills including problem-solving, communication and collaboration before and after participating in an Emergency Preparedness Point-of-Dispensing (POD) training.

Methods: A cross-sectional designed, convenience sampling pre-post survey was administered before and after an emergency preparedness POD training. The pre-post survey were statements based on the COEPA (Curriculum Outcomes and Entrustable Professional Activities) outcomes to assess the perceptions of participants’ ability in applying a variety of skills in an emergency preparedness setting. All statements were assessed by utilizing the Likert scale of (5) Strongly agree, (4) Agree, (3) Undecided, (2) Disagree, and (1) Strongly disagree.

Results: A total of 121 students and faculties participated in the POD training (94.2% students and 5.8% faculties), 70.2% were from the School of Pharmacy, 29.8% from the School of Nursing and 83.3% had not attended POD training before. In the pre-survey, 23.7% of students strongly agreed that they applied problem-solving skills effectively during POD training. In the post-survey, this number increased to 54.5%. Conversely, 10.7% of students disagreed with this application in the pre-survey, while only 0.8% disagreed in the post-survey. Approximately 23.7% of participants were undecided in the pre-survey in their ability to listen and communicate verbally when interacting with or educating people during the training, versus 1.7% in the post.

Conclusions: An Emergency Preparedness POD training may have enhanced knowledge and resulted in a positive effect on the perceptions of applying problem-solving and communication skills of students and faculties at a School of Pharmacy and Nursing.