Identifying gaps in communication skills between pharmacy curricula and pharmacy practice

Background: Students are required to complete a minimum of 150 hours, respectively, in both community and health system introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE) rotations as part of a PharmD programme completion in the USA. The goal is to introduce students to medication use processes; patient and provider communication; interprofessional team dynamics, and inpatient and outpatient healthcare delivery.Context and Objective: Experiential learning environments offer pharmacy students exposure to interactions with patients, pharmacy technicians, suppliers, practitioners and insurance companies. However, an experience gap appears when graduating pharmacy students enter their careers as licenced pharmacists. This study sought to understand this gap and to provide pharmacy schools with insight so that they can better equip future pharmacists with the tools needed for successful pharmacy communication in practice.Method: A total of 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted with pharmacists (N = 14) in various healthcare settings in Florida, USA: community pharmacy, ambulatory care, health system pharmacy and long-term care/mail order environments. Content and thematic analyses were conducted to identify themes in the data.Results: Three overarching themes were developed: staff, management and operations; communicating with healthcare providers; and counselling patients. In addition, the pharmacists offered recommendations pertaining to topics that could be included in curriculum updates.Conclusion: The themes developed from the study highlight competencies that pharmacists had to learn in the field. There are skills that pharmacists need to practise effectively in their area of pharmacy that their pharmacy schools failed to prepare them for. The analysis will be useful to pharmacy schools seeking to update their curriculum to reflect common practices in different areas of pharmacy and ultimately to better prepare their students for future careers.