Pharmacist-led review sessions with medical students and their impact

Abstract

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) called for a new emphasis on interprofessional approaches to medical education suggesting the ever challenging and complex needs of patients can best be addresses by healthcare professionals communicating and working together as members of an interprofessional healthcare team. A number of different articles are published on the effects a pharmacist can have on medical education in the clinical years. Few articles detail the effect pharmacists could have on medical students in their pre-clinical years. The purpose of this study was to determine if an interprofessional educational approach, defined as having a pharmacist-led pharmacology review session(s), can impact medical student attitudes towards pharmacists. A pre-post survey design using a reliable and validated tool was performed. This study supports, using trending data, the premise that interprofessional education can impact attitudes of healthcare students towards each other. Pharmacist educating medical students in pre-clinical years was shown to have an impact of medical students’ attitudes towards the role of pharmacist, especially in providing drug treatment decisions.