(204) Where to go from Here? Development of a Quality Improvement Approach to Skills-based Assessment

Objective : To develop and implement a tool in a first professional year skills lab course that evaluates student thought processes in approaching prospective drug utilization reviews (DURs) to inform course design and skills assessment revisions.

Methods: The tool was developed by a course instructor and validated before implementation. It focused on first year student abilities to collect information and assess prospective DURs. The three main components involve evaluating how patient information is collected from a new prescription and patient profile, utilization of pharmacotherapy information, and drug related problem assessment. The tool was implemented into one lab session and a performance-based assessment (PBA). Since the information collected was for informative purposes, student performance results were not significantly affected.

Results: Greater than 90% accurately identified the primary drug related problem for the lab session and PBA. The accuracy of patient information collected from a new prescription ranged between 51.4% to 89.2% for the lab session and between 64.8% to 81.1% for the PBA. The accuracy of patient information collected from a patient profile ranged between 38.4% to 94.5% for the lab session and between 5.5% to 72.6% for the PBA. In the lab session 21.9% of students used two or more pharmacotherapy resources compared to 2.7% for the PBA. The use of three or more drug monograph sections within a drug information resource was utilized by 63.0% of students in the lab session compared to 32.4% of students in the PBA.

Conclusions: The tool indicates that continued evaluation of student thought processes with approach of DUR skills and course assessment are needed. Specifically, students could benefit from additional instruction on navigating pharmacotherapy resources to enhance DUR skills.