Development and evaluation of a student pharmacist clinical teaching unit utilizing peer-assisted learning.

The demand for experiential learning opportunities for student pharmacists has been increasing in both Canada and the United States. The increasing number and duration of experiential placements in hospitals, combined with a limited number of pharmacist preceptors, may jeopardize the ability to achieve curricular outcomes. Many institutions use a 1:1 ratio of student pharmacists to preceptors for hospital experiential programs. Anecdotally, this model may build a strong one-to-one relationship between the preceptor and the student, allowing demonstration of the student’s contributions. However, it cannot accommodate a large number of students, and the preceptor must spend a substantial amount of time organizing each rotation. Practitioners and researchers are calling for creative options to deliver experiential education. Peer-assisted learning employs “people from similar social groupings who are not professional teachers helping each other to learn and to learn themselves by teaching”. Peer-assisted learning and the use of higher student-to-preceptor ratios has been advocated in a number of health care professional programs, but this model has not been investigated for experiential training of pharmacists. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a clinical teaching unit for experiential education of student pharmacists, whereby a group of students mentored one an other in the provision of patient care.