Student Pharmacists, Med Students Glean Knowledge Through Precision Medicine Teams

An educational experience that placed third-year pharmacy students and first-year medical students onto small, interprofessional teams enhanced knowledge of pharmacogenomics but did not significantly increase understanding of each profession’s role in precision medicine, according to a study published in Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning.

The experience, which aimed to educate on the roles and responsibilities of pharmacists and physicians in pharmacogenomics, grouped students onto interprofessional teams of two to three students each.

“The teams resolved pharmacogenomics patient cases, medical students wrote prescriptions for altered drug therapy based on the pharmacogenomics profiles of the patients, and pharmacy students assessed and provided feedback to medical students about the prescriptions,” researchers explained.

For the majority of participants, the experience significantly enhanced knowledge of pharmacogenomics as well as confidence in using it in patient cases, the study showed. Yet it did not increase recognition of each discipline’s role in precision medicine in a statistically significant way.

The study also found first-year medical students had difficulty with accurate prescription writing. Just 44.3% of their prescriptions were correct.

“Interprofessional experiences focused on pharmacogenomics present an ideal opportunity to educate and initiate collaborations between pharmacists and physicians and to promote utilization of pharmacogenomics in precision medicine,” researchers wrote. “The roles and responsibilities for each discipline can be easily recreated in an interprofessional experience to provide robust training to the students.”

Reference:
Calinski DM, Hoefer C, Kisor D. An interprofessional education experience to promote the role of the pharmacist in precision medicine. Curr Pharm Teach Learn. 2021;13(10):1370-1375. doi:10.1016/j.cptl.2021.07.017