Abstract

The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) provides standards for colleges of pharmacy to assist in the provision of pharmacy education to student pharmacists. An integral part of all college educational programs includes the provision of experiential learning. Experiential learning allows students to gain real-world experience in direct patient care during completion of the curriculum. All college of pharmacy programs provide several Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs), which include a balance between the four required experiences and a number of other required or elective APPEs. Required APPEs include advanced community, advanced institutional, ambulatory care, and general medicine. The elective APPEs include a myriad of opportunities to help provide a balanced education in experiential learning for student pharmacists. These unique opportunities help to expose student pharmacists to different career tracks that they may not have been able to experience otherwise. Not all colleges offer enough elective APPEs to enable the student pharmacist to obtain experiences in a defined area. Such an approach is required to produce skilled pharmacy graduates that are capable to enter practice in various settings. Elective APPEs are scheduled logically and are based upon student career interest and site availability. This article describes the offering, scheduling and maintenance of different elective APPEs offered by The University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy.

Highlights

  • Pharmacy schools offering professional programs in the US leading to the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) Degree are required to meet several standards to achieve and maintain accreditation. Those standards are developed by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE)

  • This paper describes the offering, scheduling, and maintenance of elective Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs) offerings at a public college of pharmacy

  • As the 3rd year student pharmacists assist in APPE choices for their schedules, they are given the option to emphasize different career tracks

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Summary

Introduction

Pharmacy schools offering professional programs in the US leading to the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) Degree are required to meet several standards to achieve and maintain accreditation Those standards are developed by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE). ACPE provides updates to improve its standards to allow for better ways to evaluate the consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness of the accreditation activities and evaluations [1]. These standards are developed to assure and advance quality in pharmacy education, as well as to reflect the expectations that the US Department of Education has on the colleges and schools offering a professional pharmacy degree [1]. This paper describes the offering, scheduling, and maintenance of elective APPE offerings at a public college of pharmacy

College of Pharmacy Curriculum
Elective APPEs
Health-System Elective APPEs
Community Electives
State Organization Electives
Government Electives
International Electives
Benefits of Offering a Variety of Electives
Quality Assurance for Maintenance of Experiential Learning
Findings
Conclusions
Full Text
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