Evaluation of Pharmacy Student’s Placements Experience at Community Pharmacy Settings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Objective: To assess opinions of pharmacy students towards community pharmacy placements experience.Methods: A cross-sectional study of male pharmacy students were conducted at king Saud university college of pharmacy. Data was collected by self-administered questionnaire for the period of June 2020 to July 2020. Deceptive statistics was applied to describe variable study.Results: A total of 77 out of 120 pharmacy students were returned the survey. Less half of the students (46.8%) agreed that their pharmacy preceptors organized interesting learning activities (either agreed or strongly agreed). A minority of students agreed that workload allocation in their workplace training was carefully planned. About 60% of students reported that their community pharmacy placements were a waste of time. Additionally, 32.5% of students stated that no one at the community pharmacy placement staff was interested in their problems. Only 37.8 % of the students enjoyed working at their community pharmacy placements, and about 46% of the students stated that they would like to return to their pharmacy placements.Conclusion: Findings shows that the pharmacy students had relatively low engagement with their pharmacy experiential placements. Pharmacy students had experienced low levels of satisfaction during their community pharmacy experiential placements.

Keywords: Pharmacy students; Placements; Preceptors; Saudi Arabia; Community pharmacy; Learning; Experience