(237) Pharmacy faculty opinions about implementing competency-based education in pharmacy education

Objective : There is increasing interest in competency-based education (CBE) in pharmacy education. Little is known about pharmacy faculty’s perspectives about CBE in pharmacy education in general and the benefits and challenges associated with implementing CBE in pharmacy education. The purpose of this study is to investigate pharmacy faculty’s perspectives about the traditional education system and the benefits, challenges and appropriateness of adopting CBE in pharmacy education.

Methods: We obtained IRB approval for this cross-sectional study. A national convenience sample of pharmacy faculty were asked to complete an investigator designed 52-item online survey in Summer 2022.

Results: Of the 174 respondents, most were from private institutions (59.9%), and pharmacy practice discipline (61.0%), with 11 or more years of work experience (56.0%). A majority had favorable attitude about the traditional pharmacy education system (e.g., 66.6% agreed that it meets the needs of the pharmacy profession). Respondents also agreed that CBE will increase pharmacy faculty’s workload (67.4%); increase faculty training requirements (83.1%); increase the amount of time faculty devote to teaching and assessment (68.3%), and will have many challenges (82.0%). Respondents indicated that their pharmacy program did not have an adequate number of faculty to successfully implement CBE (51.7%) and appropriately trained faculty to implement CBE (71.7%); was not prepared to adopt CBE (58.6%).

Conclusions: Pharmacy faculty had positive opinions about the traditional education system as well as CBE. The respondents did not have an adequate knowledge about CBE and also indicated that the adoption of CBE was associated with inherent challenges.