Pharmacy preceptors views of pharmacy students’ competency in pharmacy informatics

IntroductionThis study aimed to survey Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) preceptors’ perception of students’ competency in pharmacy informatics during their APPE rotations or experiences based on the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) version 2.0 accreditation standards.MethodsAll APPE preceptors associated with the University of Cincinnati were emailed a link to the survey. Follow-up interviews were conducted on pharmacy preceptors to identify reasons for nonresponse.ResultsIn total, 33 surveys were returned from the 288 preceptors contacted. Respondents believed the pharmacy students displayed the highest levels of competency in domain four regarding the benefits and current constraints in using information and communication technology in health care. However, respondents believed pharmacy students had the lowest competency on items included in domain three regarding data in continuous quality improvement initiatives. Half of the respondents believed the students’ knowledge was inadequate on all items included in this domain. This corresponds with nearly half of the respondents also rating pharmacy students as having inadequate knowledge of unified medical language system and meaningful use in domain one. Follow-up interviews identified that some preceptors did not feel comfortable with pharmacy informatics themselves.ConclusionsThis preliminary study showed that the majority of responding pharmacy preceptors believed pharmacy students had a reasonable understanding of the reasons for systematic processing of data, information, and knowledge in health care and the benefits, current constraints in using information, and communication technology in health care. However, they felt their knowledge was inadequate surrounding some basic terminology and use of data in continuous quality improvement initiatives.