Anonymous Peer Assessment of Medication Management Reviews

Abstract

To investigate whether pharmacy students' anonymous peer assessment of a medication management review (MMR) was constructive, consistent with the feedback provided by an expert tutor, and enhanced the students' learning experience. Fourth-year undergraduate pharmacy students were randomly and anonymously assigned to a partner and participated in an online peer assessment of their partner's MMR. An independent expert graded a randomly selected sample of the MMR's using a schedule developed for the study. A second expert evaluated the quality of the peer and expert feedback. Students also completed a questionnaire and participated in a focus group interview. Student peers gave significantly higher marks than an expert for the same MMR; however, no significant difference between the quality of written feedback between the students and expert was detected. The majority of students agreed that this activity was a useful learning experience. Anonymous peer assessment is an effective means of providing additional constructive feedback on student performance on the medication review process. Exposure to other students' work and the giving and receiving of peer feedback were perceived as valuable by students.