(93) To Go or to Stay: A Survey on Virtual Site Visit Experiences

Objective : There is little information in the literature regarding the use of virtual site visits by pharmacy experiential programs as a tool in the quality assurance process. This project describes current practices and experiences with virtual site visits within the academy.

Methods: A survey was developed and an invitation to complete the survey was posted to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Connect Experiential Education Section discussion board in Fall 2022. The survey included questions regarding site demographics, programmatic use of virtual site visits, and perceived benefits and drawbacks of the virtual modality.

Results: Completed surveys were received from 32 schools/colleges of pharmacy. The reported utilization of virtual site visits increased from 34% of respondents pre-pandemic to 84% post-pandemic. The most frequently identified barriers to the completion of on-site visits were time allocation and scheduling conflicts. The most frequently identified advantages of a virtual site visit modality were convenience for the experiential office and site staff, while the most frequently identified disadvantage was inability to see the physical facility. The factors most commonly reported to determine whether to visit on-site or virtually were geographical distance to the experiential site, the type of visit (initial versus follow-up), and preceptor preference. All respondents who used virtual visits indicated that, overall, site visit results did not differ between the two modalities.

Conclusions: Virtual site visits are an experiential quality assurance tool being increasingly utilized in the post-pandemic era. The virtual modality offers advantages and disadvantages over traditional on-site visits. The virtual approach may be an effective alternative in some circumstances. Evaluation of survey data from a larger sample size is an area of future study.