Comparison of Continuing Pharmacy Education Programs; Industry Versus Non-Industry Sponsored

Abstract

Objectives: Continuing pharmacy education (CPE) programs are required for pharmacists to maintain licensure and necessary to maintain current clinical knowledge. This study attempts to compare the quality of CPE programs from industry sponsored versus non-industry sponsored sources. Methods: Three CE programs were analyzed by comparison to an established guideline source. Diabetes mellitus was selected as the disease state because there was a recently published and widely accepted guideline document available. Two CPE programs were industry sponsored and one was independent of industry. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) guideline document on the management of type 2 diabetes was used to develop a scoring tool. Each CPE program was evaluated for consistency with the ADA guideline, using the scoring tool. The results were analyzed using the Fisher’s exact test. Also, the number of times that a drug name was mentioned in each program was recorded. Results: There was some discordance between the content of the three CPE programs and the ADA guidelines, but no discernible pattern was seen. There was a statistically significant difference between the non-industry sponsored programs. There were some inconsistencies among the three programs relative to “mentions” of drug names, but again no consistent pattern. Conclusions: This work does not provide convincing evidence of bias among industry-sponsored CPE programs. In retrospect, the choice of the specific CPE programs may have been inappropriate considering the nature of the guideline document and the evaluation tool that was developed from it.