Experiential training during COVID-19 pandemic: a virtual attachment experience from a college of pharmaceutical sciences in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Description: The COVID-19 pandemic compelled the traditional higher educational institutions to make a quick transition to the virtual instruction model. Considering the COVID-19 restrictions, the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology at Ras Al Khaimah College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, United Arab Emirates restructured their original onsite experiential training for final year Bachelor of Pharmacy students as a virtual online experience to ensure educational continuity. Evaluation: The virtual experiential training was conducted over two weeks and was imparted employing different virtual platforms like Google Classroom, Google Meet, Google Forms, Google Docs, etc. As a part of the community pharmacy training, the students were given different e-activities and tasks like e-case scenario analysis and interpretation, e-prescription screening, virtual patient education and were shown various 3-D animated videos related to community pharmacy. For the hospital training, the students were given different e-cases for developing pharmaceutical care plans, e-case scenario analysis, e-drug information query and were shown different animated videos related to rounds of different hospital departments. Conclusion: The virtual experiential training was successfully conducted achieving the desired learning outcomes and was well received by the students. Based on this experience, it is recommended that efforts should be made to develop an integrated model for experiential training in the future, which can be an amalgamation of online tools and traditional experiential methods.

Experiential pharmacy education in trying times: Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology at Ras Al Khaimah College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, United Arab Emirates, shifted their on-site experiential training for final year Bachelor of Pharmacy students into a virtual online experience to ensure educational continuity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Rabbani et al, 2021). Virtual community and hospital pharmacy rotations were conducted over two weeks with faculty members as preceptors.…”

“…Different e-activities and tasks were given, including e-case scenario analysis and interpretation, e-prescription screening, and virtual patient education. The students were given a virtual tour of a model community pharmacy with 3-D animated videos and were provided with reading materials covering different aspects of community pharmacy (Rabbani et al, 2021). Concerning virtual hospital rotations, they covered all the core areas of hospital practice, such as Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Neurology, Nephrology, Psychiatry, Nutrition, Hospital Pharmacy, and Drug Information.…”

“…The students were given one case scenario for writing a pharmaceutical care plan and one case scenario for analysis and interpretation of each of the core areas that were discussed virtually with the preceptor using Google Meet. Moreover, the students watched explanatory videos about the different hospital pharmacy services, roles, and responsibilities of a hospital pharmacist, storage of medications in hospital pharmacy, and various inpatient and outpatient hospital pharmacy services (Rabbani et al, 2021).…”

Mental health assessment of Lebanese pharmacy students after returning to school post-COVID-19: A cross-sectional study

“…Moreover, a total of 27.7% of our participants experienced moderate to severe insomnia. In a comparable survey of healthcare students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), 61.41% reported poor sleep and frequent nightmares (Rabbani et al, 2021). Another research in Egypt found that 93.1% of nursing students suffered from mild/moderate insomnia (Metwally Elsayed et al, 2021).…”

Pharmacy education shift during times of pandemic and collapse: A perspective from a school of pharmacy in Lebanon

“…Both pharmacy faculty and students alike had to adapt to a new teaching and learning environment (Kawaguchi-Suzuki et al, 2020). Not only were the aspects of didactic instruction, assessment tools, services, and scholarship affected, at the peak of the pandemic, restrictions were also imposed on all higher education institutions and teaching hospitals, stressing the need for alternatives in experiential training (Rabbani et al, 2021).…”