Needs assessment for developing a program to help train advanced-practice pharmacists for research

Abstract

This needs assessment clearly identified opportunities for improving the infrastructure and content of PGY1 residency research training. At a minimum, training programs should focus on practice-based research concepts using readily accessible health-system data systems and provide universal accessibility and sufficient flexibility to allow residency programs to integrate the training in a manner that works best for the program.

A theoretically informed survey of the views and experiences of practicing pharmacists on research conduct, dissemination and translation

“…The overall scores for research interest, experience and confidence were generally neutral, with those for interest being highest. These findings are not unique and have been identified in other pharmacist populations, [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and other health professions of medicine, nursing, social work and speech-language pathology. [33][34][35][36][37][38] While responses to 'writing a research proposal' were particularly negative, this is not surprising given that not all pharmacists would be expected to be leading research teams or studies.…”

“…Since 2014, a number of similar studies have explored views and attitudes of pharmacists towards practice research, with generally similar findings. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Whilst acknowledging this accumulation of evidence, there are several key weaknesses to these studies. Almost all have focused on aspects of research conduct in one practice setting, and only one survey from Malaysia reporting data on research translation, with higher educational level linked to higher translation.…”

Pharmacy resident research programming at a community health system: Challenges, quality improvement, and outcomes

“…In 2021, Morbitzer and colleagues offered 12 evidence‐based recommendations to pharmacy residency programs in order to provide “high‐quality and feasible research and scholarship training that promotes trainee skill development, advancement of impactful research projects, and presentation and publication opportunities for trainees.” 7 We validate these guidelines as essential to our current residency programs' success and integrated each of them during the development of our rotations and educational programming. Our research educational curriculum also covers all learning topic priorities identified in a prior needs assessment conducted by Bulkley and colleagues 22 . However, our experience suggests that adopting all of these recommendations is exceptionally challenging at community health‐systems, and additional unique strategies may be needed to achieve comparable results to those realized at academic medical centers after similar quality improvement efforts 3,5,11 .…”

“…Pharmacy residency programs nationwide have struggled to provide effective research and scholarship learning experiences, fueling the chasm between the expectations placed upon early‐career clinical pharmacists and the skills provided by their training 5,7,12,14,21,22 . While the benefits of research training in pharmacy residency extend far beyond those of publication, the poor publication rates of pharmacy resident research projects have likely come at the costs of reduced knowledge dissemination and stunted early‐career scholarly productivity 2,3 .…”

“…Our research educational curriculum also covers all learning topic priorities identified in a prior needs assessment conducted by Bulkley and colleagues. 22 However, our experience suggests that adopting all of these recommendations is exceptionally challenging at community health-systems, and additional unique strategies may be needed to achieve comparable results to those realized at academic medical centers after similar quality improvement efforts. 3,5,11 We perceive these additional recommended strategies to include the following:…”