Teaching and Assessing Pharmacy Students on Sterile Compounding Accuracy Checks

Abstract

Objective. Accuracy checks are required by United States Pharmacopeia General Chapter <797> to ensure patient safety when dispensing compounded sterile preparations (CSP). Despite the importance of this task, reports of training pharmacy students to perform CSP accuracy checks are lacking. This study aimed to, first, report a method for teaching CSP accuracy checks to students and, second, determine whether increased time on this content and intentional focus on this skill would improve student performance in a simulated hospital environment.Methods. A laboratory teaching team identified the six most common types of errors in CSP accuracy checks. Student performance regarding these six errors and competency grades of final accuracy checks were compared between the fall 2019 and fall 2020 semesters.Results. Students had better overall performance on the competency assessment for accuracy checks in fall 2019 versus fall 2020, but students performed substantially better on the remediation in fall 2020 versus fall 2019. In each semester, students had different errors commonly missed during the first and second attempts.Conclusion. Despite enhanced teaching content and the incorporation of practice testing, students performed worse in fall 2020 than fall 2019. This effect could have been explained, in part, by the virtual environment required during the COVID-19 pandemic. To improve student performance, continued improvement in teaching methods and a restructured remediation process is needed.