Director of Experiential Education University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Buffalo, New York, United States
Objective : To analyze the number and type of Advance Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) rotations assigned outside of the school’s state. Monitoring the location, type, and number of out of state rotations can assist with the Experiential Education’s quality assurance and/or quality improvement program.
Methods: Data from the final Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience schedule was exported to Microsoft Excel® for analysis. The number of out of state rotation assignments were sorted by state, required rotation type (4) and elective rotation type (3). The data was placed in graphical form for analysis.
Results: A total of 116/938 (12.4%) rotation assignments were made outside of the school’s home state for an entire class. The number of required rotations assigned outside of the home state totaled 54/116 (46.6%), with the following breakdown: The Ambulatory Care and Community Pharmacy rotation were each assigned 16/116 (13.8%) outside the home state and the Hospital/Health System and General Medicine were 13/116 (11.2%) and 9/116 (7.8%) respectively.
Conclusions: Analyzing and monitoring the type of rotations and number of rotation assignments outside of the home state may be useful for setting yearly out of state availability goals, providing students with potential exposure to advanced practice models not available in the school’s home state, and student satisfaction.
