Pharmacy Students’ Training in Smoking Cessation and Confidence on Implementation in the Practice Setting

Abstract

Objectives: To assess students’ confidence levels about smoking cessation implementation from different types of training experience and assess what factors contribute the strongest towards successful interventions for students in the practice setting. Methods: The project design involved the administration of a questionnaire for students distributed by the investigator to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year University of AZ College of pharmacy students. Section I provided a grid which asked the student to fill in how many hours of each tobacco cessation training areas they had completed. Section II was focused on how the student addressed these issues in their work setting, and used confidence intervals to identify how confident they were in addressing these issues with patients. Section III focused on work history and addressed issues such as work hours, exposure to patients, counseling opportunities, etc., to get a feel for how active the students were in counseling at their worksite. Section IV of the questionnaire addressed the student’s demographic characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, marital status, and age. Question 18 at the end of Section IV provided the student space for constructive comments about the survey. Results: Scores were derived from the surveys and confidence intervals were compared to total training time using a Pearson r. The third year students were significantly more confident (p < 0.035) for all aspects of counseling, asking, advising, assessing readiness, arranging, and monitoring. Third year students were also more confident than second year students in all aspects of counseling except asking. The differences between the first and second years were not significant for any of the aspects of counseling (p > 0.05). Third year students also had significantly more experience (2.9 years) than first (1.1 years) or second (1.8 years) year students (p = 0.001). Correlations were drawn to compare confidence and: total training hours, work experience, times counseled; to correlate training time and times counseled, and to compare work experience to actual times counseled. The highest correlation drawn to actual times counseled was shown to be total training time, suggesting this is the most important predictor of patient counseling for pharmacy students. ANOVA tests were used to assess any differences in demographics between year of student categories. Implications: Students effectively counseling patients on smoking cessation is most closely related with formal training they complete, rather than how confident they feel or how knowledgeable they are about the effects of smoking.