Student Exposure to Actual Patients in the Classroom

Clinical Applications I (CA I) and Clinical Applications II (CA II) were created and implemented to facilitate the development of first professional year pharmacy students’ interaction skills through the use of case presentations and a multidisciplinary faculty team. During the Clinical Applications (CA) classes taught in the 1995-1996 academic year, actual patients presented to the students. When patients were not available, course coordinators presented simulated patient case studies to the class. Following each case presentation, the class divided into groups of 15-20 students to discuss the patient’s disease state further. Faculty members from Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacy Care Administration, Pharmaceutics, and Pharmacology as well as Pharmacy Practice served as moderators to facilitate group discussions. A survey found that each CA course was a valuable learning experience (CA I =4.62±0.70; CA ll= 4.40±0.90; scale: 1 = “strongly disagree” to 5 = “strongly agree”) and that learning more about the disease states with actual patients was more effective than from simulated case studies (P<0.01). Students also preferred to learn by case presentations or by the combination of traditional lectures and case presentations, rather than traditional lectures alone (P<0.01). Results of the study suggest that the use of actual patients in the classroom is effective in the education of first year pharmacy students.