Importance–performance analysis: Perception gap between community pharmacy preceptors and students

Abstract

This study compared students’ and preceptors’ perceptions of the latter’s role importance and performance during community pharmacy experiential practice (CPEP) under the newly implemented two + four-year programme in South Korea. This cross-sectional study was based on two nationwide surveys and adopted importance–performance analysis (IPA) and multivariate analysis. A total of 390 preceptors and 1138 preceptees of CPEP participated. Overall evaluation was positive in both groups. Students rated the importance of the preceptors’ role higher than preceptors did (average gap: 0.13). Further, students rated their performance lower than preceptors (average gap: −0.22). In IPA, both considered that the “pharmacists’ ethics adherence” was crucial and that their performance was great, while they regarded “systematically organising practice activities” as highly important with low performance. Students regarded preceptors as “being a role model or mentor” (3.56/4.0) but evaluated their performance as low (3.12/4.0). More efforts are needed to reduce discrepancies between preceptors and students in CPEP.