Use of a Student-Driven, University-Based Pharmaceutical Care Clinic to Define the Highest Standards of Patient Care

PROLOGUE The goal of this educational strategy is preparation of pharmacy students to care for patients at the highest level possible in terms of a complete and comprehensive pharmaceutical care practice. Pharmacy students’ abilities to provide direct patient care utilizing the pharmaceutical care process are evaluated. This educational strategy is designed for third professional year pharmacy students, although other pharmacy students also participate in the patient care process as care plan team members. A university dental clinic model has been adapted to create a functional structure for the egress of patients through this Pharmaceutical Care Clinic. Patient care process criteria developed by experienced pharmaceutical care practitioners are an important focus of students’ performance evaluation. Patients receiving care in this clinic also evaluate student performance with a patient-as-the-expert strategy utilized in medicine. Patients receiving care in this clinic have, on average, 5.2 medical conditions, take 7.8 active medications/remedies, and have 2.6 drug therapy problems per patient (level four on the resource-based relative value scale). Patient care process criteria utilized to assess student performance can also be applied to evaluation of a student’s performance in experiential clerkship rotations. Future plans include utilizing this clinic strategy to also define pharmaceutical care compensation standards.