(349) Elective Empowerment: Students Prescribe Their Ideal Pharmacy Education Journey

Objective : Elective courses are integral to pharmacy curricula to help create a more comprehensive education for students. Per ACPE Draft Standards 2025, electives should “permit exploration of and/or advance studies of professional interest.” The objective of this research was to better understand what P1 through P4 students might find interesting for elective topic areas, to find if they would be interested in additional elective options and if they are interested in the opportunity to earn badges or concentrations.

Methods: A student survey gathered the following information: what academic year a student is enrolled, what electives P1 through P2 students would be interested in taking, and what electives P3 through P4 students would have liked to take. Additionally, the survey asked if students would be interested in earning a badge or concentration and was open for responses for two weeks.

Results: Eighty-one students responded to the survey (response rate = 23.5%). Among P1 students, the top three elective areas of interest were industry (12.21%), oncology (11.45%), and pediatrics (10.69%) and for P2 students, industry (12.5%), oncology (12.5%), and research (9.38%). P3 and P4 students indicated that they would have liked industry, programming/informatics, and critical care electives among others. Additionally, 93.44% and 91.53% of students showed interest in either learning more about or pursuing a concentration or badge, respectively.

Conclusions: Results suggest that students in the P1 and P2 years have more interest in research and industry electives, while students in the P3 and P4 years have more interest in advanced clinical topics. This pattern is not unexpected and may be attributed to the increase in clinical exposure students gain later in the curriculum.