Presenting Author Western New England University Springfield, Massachusetts
The Integrated Cardiovascular Acute Care disease module in the second professional year at Western New England University, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, introduces disease states pharmacotherapeutics such as coronary artery disease, shock, and arrhythmias. To improve learner understanding and application of this material, we introduced the use of flowcharts in the module. Flowcharts are skeletal outlines of key concepts that help summarize acute cardiovascular diseases by combining pharmacological concepts with evidence-based pharmacotherapeutic decision-making. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of flowcharts as an instructional tool in the therapeutics module.
A skeletal outline of the flowcharts was provided to the students on the College’s learning management site. The instructors completed the charts using a doc-cam system during class at the end of each disease state. A pre- and post-survey was administered to evaluate the effectiveness of these flowcharts. The study was initiated in Spring 2019 and data was collected until Spring 2021.
A pre-survey showed that 83% (n=45) agreed that flowchart use would improve their knowledge; the post-survey showed that 91% (n=60) agreed that flowcharts improved their overall knowledge in the course. While 90% (n=60) agreed that flowcharts improved their understanding of pharmacology, 95% of the surveyed participants agreed that flowcharts helped them understand the role of drugs in pharmacotherapy. Furthermore, 96% (n=60) of the participants agreed that they would like to see more use of flowcharts in the other pharmacotherapeutics modules. A topic-wise comparison of the average scores demonstrated significant differences in the mean±SD score on summative assessments for the classes that received flowcharts versus those that did not use flowcharts.
In order to gain insight into how the students use flowcharts for learning, we also conducted focus-group interviews of the students using predesigned questions. A total of 16 students were interviewed in groups of 4-5. Thematic coding of the interview transcripts is currently being performed. However, preliminary 1st and 2nd round coding identified emerging themes such as “visually useful,” “summarizes material,” “helps retain and memorize”, “helps in exam” etc.
The results from our study indicate that the use of flowcharts improved content delivery and application in an acute care cardiovascular disease pharmacotherapeutics module. The flowcharts provide the students with a decision-making framework to make informed therapeutic decisions. We believe that the use of these flowcharts benefit student learning and understanding and can be used in other disease state modules.
A topic-wise comparison of the average scores demonstrated a higher mean±SD score on summative assessments for the course offerings with flowcharts (2019 and 2020) versus those that did not use flowcharts (2017 and 2018). In addition, the use of flowcharts improved overall course grades. As the Spring 2021 semester is ongoing, the data was collected but not included in the poster. CAD/ACS= Coronary Artery Disease/Acute Coronary Syndrome. (*comparison with 2017, ^comparison with 2018)
