2020 Volume 4 Article ID: 2020-037
Fifth-year pharmacy students undergo practical training in hospitals to acquire the basic qualifications required of a pharmacist in a medical setting and learn clinical skills based on the revised model core curriculum. In this study, two types of clinical pharmacy instruction systems (team advisor system and fixed advisor system) were adopted to achieve high-quality participatory training in a Japanese general hospital. These systems were evaluated with questionnaires. The students’ proficiency level was not significantly different between the two approaches regarding pharmacotherapy for eight major diseases; however, the instructional staff’s guidance level was higher for the fixed advisor system in four of these diseases. In addition, the students’ degree of satisfaction with ward training and overall hospital training under the two instruction systems remained high, with no noticeable difference in daily work-related stress for the instructional staff. The accumulation of evidence for establishing practical training instruction in general hospitals, such as used in this study, will lead to the homogenization and universalization of hospital practical training.