Abstract
Background
• The BPharm curriculum includes several elective clinical attachment courses:
- PHAR 4304 Clinical Pharmacy Clerkship: Psychiatry
- PHAR 4305 Clinical Pharmacy Clerkship: Oncology and
- PHAR 4307 Clinical Pharmacy Clerkship: Paediatrics
• The courses are normally conducted in the teaching hospitals (Prince of Wales Hospital and Shatin Hospital) where students learn to apply clinical and critical thinking skills necessary to care for real patients.
• The teaching format of the course includes bedside clinical teaching, local and international guideline discussions and case discussions of patients encountered by students each week.
• The three courses have repeatedly been voted as top elective choices amongst students and the class quota have been fully occupied consistently every year.
• As clinical teaching in hospital are suspended during the time of COVID-19 outbreak, teachers attempted conduct pre-assigned case discussions via the use of Zoom.
Preliminary Challenges Identified
• During a trial period using Zoom, teachers identified the following challenges:
- Inadequate student engagement; peer students may not be paying attention when one student is presenting a case
- Insufficient time to re-construct teaching materials obtained from overseas professional sources (e.g. international guidelines and practice cares) for before-class homework and online teaching. Such teaching materials were NOT in use/ available in face-to face instruction (i.e clinical attachment) where students used to spend more time on direct patient contact and collecting information from cases they encountered.
Project Goal and Objectives
The overarching goal of this project is to promote student engagement and to cultivate skills of critical thinking and global perspectives via the use of Zoom teaching, especially at a time when clinical attachments cannot be conducted in hospitals.
The project aims to
• Re-construct teaching materials and create poll questions to encourage student engagement prior to class and in the online classroom
• Incorporate local and overseas professional teaching sources for online teaching with discussion of practice and guideline differences between Hong Kong and other countries
Expected Benefits
• Provide students with a diverse set of local and international patient cases to practice problem-solving techniques
• Cultivate the ability to differentiate key differences in local vs international guidelines and practices, with critical evaluation of their pros and cons
• Create a more engaging online learning environment for students by use of before- and during class poll questions
• Enable teachers to better evaluate students’ knowledge and areas of weakness
Brief write-up
Project objectives
The project aimed to (1) re-construct teaching materials and create poll questions to encourage student engagement prior to class and in the online classroom; and (2) incorporate local and overseas professional teaching sources for online teaching.
Activities, process and outcomes
• Local and overseas patient cases of disease states in psychiatry, oncology and pediatrics were collected, standardized and reformatted into drug-focused case handouts.
• Poll questions derived from the cases were created for pre-class assignment and in-discussion. A combination of multiple choice questions and open-text questions of various difficulty levels were used.
• The first draft of the poll questions created were reviewed by postgraduate students who have experienced the same clerkship courses in undergraduate studies. Constructive feedback were incorporated.
• Finalized poll questions were completed by students before clerkship. The questions were reviewed and discussed in class.
Deliverables and evaluation
Eighteen patient cases and ninety poll questions were created. The evaluation consists of: (1) student engagement/ participation during case discussions; (2) student’s responses in Zoom / uReply polls; and (3) student survey. Students’ feedback was very positive.
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
The project will be presented in the next Teaching & Learning Innovation Expo and future pharmacy educational conferences. The exercises created may also be used for student’s self-practicing for OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) exam.
Impact on teaching and learning
The project deliverables have been used in three courses in Spring 2021. The feedbacks from the students were positive. Besides, teachers observed that students were much more engaged during the case discussions. The average Course and Teaching Evaluation (CTE) score was 5.67.
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