Introduction
The Hospital Pharmacy Specialization (HPS) is a postgraduate career at School of Chemical Sciences, National University of Córdoba (1). The first cohort of pharmacists began in July 2009. Surveys are used to gather information from a group of people. The questionnaire approach permits anonymous replies, can be used with many respondents and generates mostly quantitative data (2-5). Thus, it is a useful tool for checking the postgraduates? perspective.
Objective: to assess the perceptions of postgraduate students during the first semester of HPS (at FCQ-UNC) focused on the teaching performance, the adequacy and utility of themes, and the strategies utilized.
Materials and methods
The survey instrument was an anonymous self-administered semi-structured questionnaire with 3 subsets of items, and an open one for comments or suggestions. The subsets were: teaching performance (individual estimation), and usefulness of both virtual classroom (Moodle) and final test by module as a whole. A 5 points scale from bad to excellent was utilized. All pharmacists from the HPS were surveyed, between July and December 2009.
Surveys responses were transferred to an Excel spreadsheet for analysis, and the scale was converted into percentages.
Results
All the postgraduate students (N=27) were surveyed about the 5 modules taken during the first semester of HPS:
1. Role of pharmacist in health system. Pharmaceutical legislation and policies.
2. Research methodology.
3. Drug selection and information.
4. Pharmaceutical care I.
5. Drug distribution and dispensing.
The average values in percentages and range obtained by module were the following.
Response rate: 61.5% (44.4%-77.8%)
Assessment of postgraduates related to:
a) Teaching performance subset: 79.1% (66.4%-85.3%).
Theme expertise: 82.7% (69.9%-88.9%)
Objectives? explanation: 78.7% (64.8%-85.6%)
Logical sequence: 77.8% (65.1%-84.6%)
Encouraging participation: 79.1% (64.9%-85.0%)
Educational resources quality: 78.4% (67.1%-85.6%)
b) Virtual classroom subset:
General information: 79.4% (71.6%-83.8%)
Available resources: 79.2% (72.6%-85.0%
Activities: 76.0% (65.3%-81.9%)
c) Module test subset:
Content integration: 77.7% (70.6%-83.2%)
Practical utility: 80.4% (73.5%-87.4%)
Comments/suggestions by module: 9.1% (0.0%-15.8%)
This item ranged between 0 and 3 by module, with a mean of 1.4.
Discussion and Conclusions
Questionnaires were distributed and collected in a different way along the semester. Therefore, the response rate was under 50% in the first 2 modules.
