Evaluation of Pharmacy Student’s Placements Experience at Community Pharmacy Settings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Objective: To assess opinions of pharmacy students towards community pharmacy placements experience. Methods: A cross-sectional study of male pharmacy students were conducted at king Saud university college of pharmacy. Data was collected by self-administered questionnaire for the period of June 2020 to July 2020. Deceptive statistics was applied to describe variable study. Results: A total of 77 out of 120 pharmacy students were returned the survey. Less half of the students (46.8%) agreed that their pharmacy preceptors organized interesting learning activities (either agreed or strongly agreed). A minority of students agreed that workload allocation in their workplace training was carefully planned. About 60% of students reported that their community pharmacy placements were a waste of time. Additionally, 32.5% of students stated that no one at the community pharmacy placement staff was interested in their problems. Only 37.8 % of the students enjoyed working at their community pharmacy placements, and about 46% of the students stated that they would like to return to their pharmacy placements. Conclusion: Findings shows that the pharmacy students had relatively low engagement with their pharmacy experiential placements. Pharmacy students had experienced low levels of satisfaction during their community pharmacy experiential placements. Key words: Pharmacy students, Placements, Preceptors, Saudi Arabia, Community pharmacy, Learning, Experience.