Developing Teaching Skills during the Pharmacy Practice Residency Program: Stakeholders’ Expectations
The UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences requires undergraduate students to give oral presentations to peers many times throughout the curriculum. In doing so, students develop learning objectives and provide feedback to one another. However, the curriculum does not give them any opportunities to develop the skills in teacher-student relationships that will be needed in pharmacy practice, specifically the ability to establish 2-way dialogue and verify that learning has occurred.
In the UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Structured Practice Education Program (which is responsible for undergraduate student clerkships) requires that practice preceptors be licensed pharmacists and have a minimum of 6 months of experience as practising pharmacists (among other criteria), but it does not have any requirements for teaching or precepting skills, nor does it have any teaching or precepting competency standards. Although a preceptor workshop is offered regularly to allow preceptors in the Structured Practice Education Program to learn about various aspects of teaching and precepting, attendance is not mandatory. The expectations of the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia for practising pharmacists are similar. The only set requirements are guided by principles related to proper registration and licensing; teaching and precepting skills are not addressed, which exposes an apparent gap in the transition from undergraduate student to preceptor. Pharmacists who practise in the hospital setting are theoretically guided by CSHP’s requirements that they “mentor students and other pharmacists” and that they be “involved with the education of students”3 Interestingly, the CHPRB accreditation standards for residency programs includes the criterion that “the program shall provide opportunities to develop teaching skills in the resident”, the word “shall” implying an absolute requirement. Thus, even though little or no training in teaching and precepting is provided during undergraduate and residency programs and even though only some training of this type (and that of questionable value) is provided to hospital pharmacists by their employers as they start their jobs, the profession demands competent and skilled preceptors.
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The results reported here indicate that, as of 2004, only 6 of 25 accredited Canadian pharmacy practice residency programs surveyed incorporated a teaching or precepting activity; in British Columbia, only 1 of 6 programs did so. This, combined with the questionable value of the training in teaching and precepting that program graduates receive from employers upon graduation from the residency program, leads to the question of who should assume the responsibility to train future preceptors: the residency programs, faculties of pharmacy, pharmacy licensing bodies, employers, or individual pharmacists?
