Case-based Learning(CBL)employing video tapes has been used in drug counseling training for pharmacy school students at the Ehime University Hospital.This system aims to help improve students’counseling skills.
From our use of the system,we identified two issues that need to be addressed.One of them is improvement of the simulated cases by tailoring the information to individual abilities because the cases were not easy to understand for many students.The other is improvement of the training method and evaluation system.We attempted to address them by revising the curriculum to increase the number of simulated cases as well as repeating the CBL training.In addition to doing this,we sifted through the evaluations of individual student's counseling skills made by clinical pharmacists using a scoring system.This made it possible to evaluate their skills more easily and objectively,which was done by giving a score of 1 to 5 for 20 aspects of counseling skills.Thereafter,students evaluated the repeat CBL using our questionnaire on their training.
The total scores for students’counseling skills given by the clinical pharmacists for the second training session were significantly higher(p<0.0001)than for the first session.Also,many students felt that their counseling skills in the second session were better than they had been in the 1st session and most of them appreciated being able to repeat the CBL.These findings suggest that repetition of CBL would be a simple and productive way of enhancing pharmacy practice training for students.
