Pharmacy Student's Self-Identified Interests in a Hospital Pharmacy Internship Course in Iran

After revision of pharmacy curriculum by, Iranian Health and Education Ministry reviewed in 2005, it was decided that pharmacy students need extra internship courses such as hospital internship course. Hospital internship course could provide students with the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and master the skills required for current pharmacy practices in community and hospital setting. The aim of this study was to identify and analyze pharmacy students’ experiences during hospital internship. Each student attended in 3 wards and provided a logbook for each ward. Students were asked to document at least one topic interesting for them on each day. The collected information was divided into sections and analyzed using SPSS ver 14. Seventeen students enrolled in the course. Endocrinology and nephrology wards had the highest and neurology the lowest number of attended students. Seven hundred and one reported learning subjects were divided into 24 areas. The highest numbers of reported topics were the drugs indications, adverse drug reactions and diagnosis of diseases while the lowest number was pretreatment laboratory tests, pharmacoeconomy, counseling medical staffs and off label use of medications. Gastroenterology and endocrinology wards with 210 reports had the highest and neurology ward with 12 had the lowest number of reports. Completing the logbooks was an encouragement for students to seek and document and learn new topics and also a major feature of the clinical assessment scheme of the course. The majority of the reported topics were learning objectives but not the interventional ones. The present study showed us some areas of pharmacy education which need further attention.