School of Pharmacy team wins AACP teaching innovations competition
A portfolio submitted by VCU School of Pharmacy faculty has won the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy’s Innovations in Teaching Competition. The innovation is titled “Use of Video-Recorded Clinic Visits to Improve Assessment of Student Pharmacists’ Clinical Interviewing Skills.”
Assistant professor Dave Dixon, associate professor Evan Sisson, and Veronica Shuford, director of educational innovation and assessment, will present the submission July 29 during the 2014 AACP Annual Meeting in Grapevine, Texas.
The innovation uses audiovisual recording technology to record student pharmacists performing the clinical interview component of a patient care visit. The preceptor and student review the video together, allowing the student the opportunity to self-assess and identify areas for improvement with guidance from the preceptor.
“Pharmacists are now playing a major role in providing patient care,” said Dixon. “The clinical interview is critical to identify the patient’s needs and potential barriers to ensure the safe use of medications and achievement of treatment goals. We wanted to develop a better method for evaluating our students’ ability to perform the clinical interview.
“Although this approach has been used in patient-simulation exercises, we wanted to see if this would work in the clinical practice setting.”
The team found that students reported feeling more confident and comfortable interviewing patients. Students were more likely to express empathy. They improved in their ability to communicate with patients by avoiding medical jargon and speaking in a manner patients could understand.
“We found it extremely helpful in evaluating the students, and we were able to provide the students with more detailed feedback,” said Dixon. “The response from the students was also highly positive, and every student recommended we continue using this approach in the future.”
Dixon and Sisson have fully incorporated this approach into their Ambulatory Care Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience. Future plans include using this innovative approach to observe the interactions between medical and pharmacy students who see patients as part of an interprofessional team.
AACP’s Innovations in Teaching Competition exists to identify innovative teaching and learning strategies and assessment methods and to engage pharmacy faculty in the process of documenting their scholarly approaches to teaching and learning. Innovations must be in operation as part of the school’s professional curriculum at the time of submission.
Competitors are asked to submit evidence of student learning, as well as student and peer evaluations and a discussion of how the innovation might be implemented at other colleges and schools of pharmacy.
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