Pharmacy Students’ Understanding and Attitudes Toward Implementing Competency-Based Education (CBE) in Pharmacy Education

The purpose of this investigator-initiated study is to determine doctor of pharmacy students’ opinions on competency-based education (CBE).The primary objective of this study is to obtain data on how many students are aware of CBE and their perspectives on its usefulness. Perspectives will be analyzed and compared between students currently enrolled in pharmacy school with CBE and students who are enrolled in traditional pharmacy school curriculums.

This is a cross-sectional study. Data will be collected via an online survey. No interventions are involved. Data will be collected via Qualtrics, which is a software that records the survey response from the participants in this study. One pharmacy school administrator from each school will be identified and asked to help to distribute the survey to pharmacy students at their respective pharmacy school. A survey will be distributed to pharmacy students via email. Participants will receive an email describing the purpose of our study and the link to the Qualtrics online survey. After two weeks of the original email, a follow-up email reminder will be sent. Surveys will be collected over an eight-week period. At the end of the survey, the respondents will be given the option to include their email addresses to be entered into a drawing to win one of five Amazon gift cards worth $40 each. The winners will be contacted via email after the survey closes.

Data are currently being collected. We project 300 participants with most responses coming from the investigator-based school, Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy. This school does not currently utilize the CBE model and can be contrasted, along with other non-CBE pharmacy schools, with the University of California, San Francisco, which does. We are expecting students at UCSF to view CBE as a positive aspect to their education after an interview with the executive vice dean.

We expect the majority of pharmacy students will not have heard of CBE directly, but will share positive opinions about this educational model based on responses from targeted questions asked in the survey. While studies have previously been conducted on the effectiveness of CBE, no prior research has investigated the opinions of the students which this curriculum affects. This study looks to inform curriculum developers upon the academic desires and expectations of the students that are affected.