A Global Comparison of Initial Pharmacy Education Curricula: An Exploratory Study

Arakawa, Naoko; Bruno, Andreia; Bates, Ian

Abstract

Background: Time-tabled curricular contents and syllabi reflect the actual delivery of the academic programme and one of key quality components in healthcare professional education. There is a need of global evidence base of Initial Pharmacy Education and Training (IPET) curricula for assisting the advancement of IPET globally.

Objectives: To seek the differences and similarities among IPET curricula and to explore relative trends and weighting of IPET curricula globally.

Methods: Sample curricular documents were collected purposively either through a parallel survey study investigating the structures and processes of IPET globally in collaboration with the International Pharmaceutical Federation Education (FIPEd), or through research team network. Collected textual documents containing IPET curricular contents were analysed by a mixed approach of the comparative content and framework analyses, using curriculum clusters in a guideline from the PHARMINE project.

Results: IPET curricular documents were collected from 16 countries and territories. The study showed study years spent in the IPET years range from four to six years, and a sample mean of average syllabus time spent per year is 728 hours/year (excluding outlier). There was a biggest variance in the pharmacy practice cluster (PRAC) among samples, ranging from 49.3 to 12.8%, showing a significant negative correlation with the chemical science cluster (CHEM)  = -0.77 (p

Citation

Arakawa, N., Bruno, A., & Bates, I. (2020). A Global Comparison of Initial Pharmacy Education Curricula: An Exploratory Study. INNOVATIONS in Pharmacy, 11(1), Article 18. https://doi.org/10.24926/iip.v11i1.2093

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 18, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Mar 17, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 19, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 17, 2020
• Journal: INNOVATIONS in pharmacy
• Electronic ISSN: 2155-0417
• Publisher: University of Minnesota, Department of Pharmaceutical Care & Health Systems
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: 18
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.24926/iip.v11i1.2093
• Keywords: Content analysis, Curriculum, Global comparison, Pharmacy education, Initial education and training
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3330440
• Publisher URL: https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/innovations/article/view/2093