Evaluation of an Early-exposure Program involving Role-playing and Active Learning in Visually Impaired Patient-Care Scenarios

Abstract

The inclusion of role-playing or improvisational tasks as part of the curriculum to enhance communication skills helps students develop their patient-care skills and information collection abilities. An early-exposure program that included role-playing and active learning in visually impaired patient-care scenarios was conducted for first-year students of a 6-year pharmaceutical course at Toho University. To evaluate the impact of the program on role-playing and active learning, the students were asked to complete a questionnaire after completing the program. The questionnaire asked students about the development of their communication skills through the program. The students' scores on questions related to their consideration of visually impaired patients during dispensing and medication counselling significantly increased after the program. In particular, the mean font size that the students used for drugs written on envelopes clearly increased. These results suggest that our program may be useful for guiding pharmacy students to learn how to think and convey information from the perspective of their patients.