The perceived achievement of learning objectives and satisfaction among pharmacy students during control/quality assurance clerkships based on online, on-site, and hybrid platforms

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic affected industrial pharmacy clerkships and the activities were adjusted regarding student and preceptor conditions. The achievement of clerkship learning objectives may be impaired. This study aimed to understand how the training experience during the pandemic affected the perception of achievement of learning objectives and student satisfaction. Method: A cross-sectional survey of students enrolling in quality control/quality assurance (QA/QC) clerkships during the 2020 – 2021 academic years that were affected by the pandemic was performed. Students from 5 institutions who responded to the survey were divided into online clerkships (n = 31), on-site (n = 118), and hybrid (n = 155), regarding convenience sampling. Questionnaires were designed to address three different domains of QA/QC clerkship, including D1, Knowledge and understanding of the quality assurance system, law, good practice guidelines, and international standards; D2, Knowledge and understanding of qualification, validation, and calibration, and D3, Quality control throughout the manufacturing process, analytical methods, pharmacopeia quality checks, and quality inspection instruments. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, and the statistics were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and the Chi-Square test. Results: Online clerkships can offer lecture-based clerkships, but on-site and hybrid clerkships can offer participation and hands-on training, which is associated with a higher perception of achievement of training objectives. Seventeen out of eighteen topics in D1 and all topics in D2-D3 of training-objective achievements were impacted significantly (p < 0.05) by different clerkship platforms. The overall perceptive achievement of the training objective of D1 (from understanding to evaluation) was 0.0% - 66.7%, 0.0% - 31.9% and 0.0% - 38.8% for online, on-site, and hybrid clerkship, respectively. The perceptive achievement of the training objective of D2 was 0.0% - 33.3%, 0.0% – 39.0% and 0.0% – 38.8% and those were in the range of 0.0% - 20.7%, 0.0% – 36.8%, และ 0.0% – 40.1% for D3, based on online, on-site, and hybrid clerkships respectively. Student satisfaction is not significantly different between on-site and hybrid clerkships. However, student satisfaction with online clerkships in most aspects was lower than with on-site and hybrid clerkships, showing a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Different clerkship platforms impact students' perception of training objective achievement and satisfaction.