The impact of a required course on third year pharmacy students’ perceived abilities and intentions in providing medication therapy management

Background and purpose: To examine the impact of a Medication Therapy Management (MTM) course on third-year pharmacy students’ (P3s) perceived abilities and intentions to provide MTM services before and after the course. Educational activity and setting: An anonymous 48-item self-administered survey was administered to P3s before and after the MTM course. Forty-six items using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) measured abilities in MTM provision using the following seven subdomains: general MTM ability (GA), medication therapy review (MTR), medication-related problems identification/recommendations (MRPIR), disease measurement/monitoring (DM), communication (CO), follow-up/referral (FR), and billing/documentation (BD). Two items assessed intent to provide MTM in practice. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alphas, and paired t-tests were used. Findings: All enrolled P3s (n = 110) completed both surveys. Subdomain Cronbach's alphas ranged from 0.70–0.97. Paired t-test showed no significant difference in intention to provide MTM before and after the course; however, the results revealed a significant increase in perceived abilities (before vs. after, respectively) regarding MTR (3.2 ± 0.6;4.2 ± 0.4; p < 0.0001), MRPIR (3.3 ± 0.6;4.2 ± 0.4; p < 0.0001), DM (4.2 ± 0.6;4.5 ± 0.5; p = 0.0004), CO (3.9 ± 0.5; 4.3 ± 0.4; p < 0.0001), FR (3.7±0.8;4.2±0.6; p = 0.0002), and BD (2.4±0.9;3.9±0.8; p < 0.0001). Discussion and summary: A required MTM course with both didactic and experiential components were instrumental in improving P3s’ perceived abilities to provide MTM services. Additional research is needed to understand why students’ intention to provide MTM did not change pre- to post-course completion.