Attitudes and Knowledge of Medical Students Regarding the Role of Pharmacists

Abstract

Specific Aims: To determine the attitudes of medical students towards pharmacists and the roles they play on the healthcare team and how these views change after attending an inter-professional workshop with other University of Arizona healthcare students. Methods: Questionnaires administered during a regularly scheduled class collected rating of teamwork and collaboration, roles for pharmacists in health care settings, and medical student’s expectations of the pharmacist when they are practicing physicians. Previous inter-professional workshop experience, negative experience with a pharmacist, age and sex was also collected. Main Results: Medical students’ attitudes regarding the roles of pharmacist in health care settings became more positive after attending the IPE workshop compared to their attitudes before attending the IPE workshop (X2 = 7.671, p-value = 0.005) and was maintained 1 year after the workshop (X2 = 6.304, p-value = 0.012). Medical students expected pharmacists to be more capable and had higher expectations for them after attending the IPE workshop (X2 = 17.393, p-value = <0.001) and was maintained 1 year after the workshop (X2 = 5.955, p-value = 0.015). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the inter-professional workshop is successful in changing the attitudes of medical students towards pharmacists and the roles they play on the healthcare team. The medical students maintained this change in attitude one year after the inter- professional workshop.