Reference Coordinator MCPHS University Boston, Massachusetts
Disclosure: I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Background: The current pandemic has significantly disrupted the everyday activities of healthcare institutions across the United States, affecting students’ advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPE). Most pharmacy students were no longer able to be physically placed on their practice sites. In order to meet the accreditation standards, the Accreditation Council For Pharmacy Education has allowed virtual APPEs to be incorporated into the schools of pharmacy curriculum. This poster describes methods of integrating library instruction in virtual APPE education and making it an essential component of the curriculum, focusing on the advantages of the remote delivery format, the sessions’ content, and technology utilized.
Description: The Library liaison to the Department of Pharmacy Practice has been offering small-group review sessions for students on clinical rotations for the last 15 years. Though revisiting the essential drug information resources significantly benefited pharmacy students’ knowledge retention and increased their chances to perform well, only two pharmacy faculty members have incorporated the library instruction as the required component into their APPE curriculum. The new synchronous virtual rotations format presented a unique opportunity for the pharmacy librarian to reach out to a wider group of faculty and transformed the library review into the 1,5 hours required virtual session for the 6th year pharmacy students. Before the new format delivery was implemented, only 16 students were able to attend the library reviews annually, compared to almost 300 students who took advantage of the virtual content delivery during the last year.
Conclusion: Due to the productive collaboration between library and pharmacy faculty, the number of pharmacy students who have benefited from attending virtual drug information review sessions conducted by the librarian in 2020 has significantly increased. Though no formal assessment of the sessions has been done, feedback provided by students and faculty orally and by email was extremely positive. The virtual sessions’ content and the instruction methods were highly praised by several pharmacy faculty members, who have recorded the review and made it available for their students on Blackboard. Synchronous virtual content delivery allows academic librarians to reach out to a wider audience of learners and successfully integrate information literacy instruction into a variety of courses, including experiential education.
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