Experiential community pharmacy training: Assessment of students' perceptions in the United Arab Emirates

Introduction: Community pharmacy settings provide places for promoting the effective and safe use of medicines all over the world. This study explored pharmacy students' perceptions of the barriers they had faced during their community pharmacy training as well as the factors affecting the training process outcome and their satisfaction with the training programme. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among pharmacy students who had received their training in community settings and studied at academic institutions across the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A well-designed and validated questionnaire was employed. Logistic regression analyses were used to identify independent predictors of the students' satisfaction with their training experience. Results: A total of 250 (83.3%) pharmacy students responded to the questionnaire. The results showed that the students were satisfied with their training experiences. However, they faced some barriers, such as not being able to respond to drug information inquiries from patients and/or interact with other healthcare providers and/or patients. Additionally, these factors were identified as independent predictors of the students' satisfaction with the training programme - that is, having a BSc. in Pharmacy as an academic major (p=0.001), a student being in his/her fourth year of study (p=0.003), increasing the average number of prescriptions per day at the pharmacy site (p=0.004), having used prescription software at the pharmacy site (p=0.049), and increasing the number of pharmacy preceptors in the pharmacy site per day (p=0.002). Conclusion: This study confirmed that a training programme will help equip pharmacy students with the required knowledge and skills to practice the pharmacy profession effectively. However, the trainees reported barriers and problems that they had faced throughout their training.