scholarly journals Challenges and Innovations Brought about by the COVID-19 Pandemic Regarding Medical and Pharmacy Education Especially in Africa and Implications for the Future

Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1722
Author(s):  
Ayukafangha Etando ◽  
Adefolarin A. Amu ◽  
Mainul Haque ◽  
Natalie Schellack ◽  
Amanj Kurdi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Teaching ◽  
Pharmacy Education ◽  
Pharmacy Students ◽  
Disadvantaged Students ◽  
Complex Patients ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Key Questions

Background: Multiple measures introduced early to restrict COVID-19 have dramatically impacted the teaching of medical and pharmacy students, exacerbated by the lack of infrastructure and experience with e-learning at the start of the pandemic. In addition, the costs and reliability of the Internet across Africa pose challenges alongside undertaking clinical teaching and practical programmes. Consequently, there is a need to understand the many challenges and how these were addressed, given increasingly complex patients, to provide future direction. Method: An exploratory study was conducted among senior-level medical and pharmacy educators across Africa, addressing four key questions, including the challenges resulting from the pandemic and how these were dealt with. Results: Staff and student members faced multiple challenges initially, including adapting to online learning. In addition, concerns with the lack of equipment (especially among disadvantaged students), the costs of Internet bundles, and how to conduct practicals and clinical teaching. Multiple activities were undertaken to address these challenges. These included training sessions, developing innovative approaches to teaching, and seeking ways to reduce Internet costs. Robust approaches to practicals, clinical teaching, and assessments have been developed. Conclusions: Appreciable difficulties to teaching arising from the pandemic are being addressed across Africa. Research is ongoing to improve education and assessments.

scholarly journals The effect of generic medicines e-learning course via Web 2.0 tools on knowledge of pharmacists and pharmacy students

2021 ◽  
pp. 679-689
Author(s):  
Ramez M. Alkoudmani ◽  
Ramadan M. Elkalmi ◽  
Mohamed Azmi Hassali ◽  
Jennifer Apolinário-Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Educational Intervention ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Pharmacy Education ◽  
Pharmacy Students ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Generic Medicines ◽  
Web 2.0 Tools ◽  
Novel Technologies ◽  
E Learning

Background: Research scoping on e-learning and novel web 2.0 tools in pharmacy education in Arabic Language Speaking Countries (ALSCs) is scarce. Aim and methods: Therefore, this study aimed to develop an online educational course on generic medicines to reveal the views of Arab pharmacists and pharmacy students about emerging technologies in transferring pharmaceutical knowledge and assess the differences in knowledge scores before and after the online educational intervention and the differences in knowledge scores among study subgroups. Results: The total mean knowledge score after attending the online educational intervention significantly increased, from 4.9±1.68 to 7.75±1.75 (t(86) = 4.6, p<0.001). Providing an online course using web 2.0 tools to transfer pharmaceutical knowledge was viewed as highly positive (mean score = 62.23±6.08, range 45-75 points). Significant sex and status differences were identified post-assessment. Female participants and pharmacists had higher knowledge scores compared with males and students, respectively. Conclusion: The online course development was successfully implemented using Schoology as an online learning management system (LMS) and Facebook as a social network site (SNS). Arab pharmacists and pharmacy students found e-learning and web 2.0 tools to be effective novel technologies in transferring pharmaceutical knowledge.

scholarly journals Perception of pharmacy students towards their community pharmacy training experience: a cross-sectional study from Jordan

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Abu Farha ◽  
Eman Elayeh ◽  
Needa Zalloum ◽  
Tareq Mukattash ◽  
Eman Alefishat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Positive Feedback ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Pharmacy Education ◽  
Pharmacy Students ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
Training Experience ◽  
Patient Centered ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Need To Evaluate

Abstract Background The fact that pharmacists are in the front line of patients’ care gives a great responsibility to focus on education and training of pharmacy students to build a ‘patient-centered’ clinicians. Unfortunately, pharmacy education in the developing countries, have been lagging behind actual practice delivered by pharmacists. This highlighted the need to evaluate the perceptions of undergraduate pharmacy students regarding their current pharmacy training practices and experiences. Methods This is a cross-sectional study that was conducted in Jordan during the period from August 2018 to October 2018. During the study period, a questionnaire was distributed to pharmacy students to collect information regarding 1) pharmaceutical care services provided by them during their experiential training, 2) their perceptions towards training sites, 3) their perceptions of the outcomes of their training experience, 4) information about their training site and 5) their demographics characteristics. Results A total of 202 pharmacy students responded to the questionnaire. The majority of them reported having the opportunity to dispense refill or new prescriptions (73.8%, n = 149), and conduct patient interviews (69.8%, n = 141, but they were not provided good opportunities to create electronic patient profiles using the information obtained (53.0%, n = 107), perform required dose calculations based on patient information (37.6%, n = 76), and interact with other healthcare professionals (34.6%, n = 70). In addition, students showed positive attitudes toward training sites, positive feedback about the outcomes of their training experience (median scores range between 4 and 5 for all statements (IQR = 1 for all)). Conclusion Students showed positive feedback about the outcomes of their training experience, but they felt that the selected training sites do not have adequate resources to meet their training competencies. Memorandums of understanding development is needed to specify the purpose of training and define the responsibility for both parties of the training process.

Why Oral Medicine is an exemplary choice for specialty? A Comprehensive Review

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shibani Sahni
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Skills ◽  
Systemic Disease ◽  
Specialty Training ◽  
Oral Medicine ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Oral Manifestation ◽  
Complex Patients ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
Definition Of

The purpose of this article was to describe a narrative review of the literature for understanding the reasons behind Oral Medicine gaining popularity as a choice for post graduate specialty training. Oral Medicine is the intersection of medicine and dentistry, and the clinicians are responsible for the management of oral mucosal disease, salivary gland dysfunction and oral manifestation of systemic disease, and facial pain in the definition of oral medicine and hence having a wide range of responsibilities. Breadth of knowledge on medically complex patients for example, rheumatologic, cardiovascular, cancer, endocrine, immuno-deficiency patients is required, which makes it an extremely interesting specialty and enables the clinicians to provide interdisciplinary care to the patients. It is important for dental education to foster new techniques in learning and preparing the students for clinical skills prior to patient care. The scope of impact of Oral Medicine has increased over the years, leading to it gaining popularity amongst dentists to take it up as a specialty training. The future direction of the study will be to understand how to enhance the research, clinical practice, and education for Oral Medicine.

scholarly journals Embedding gender equality into institutional strategy

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
International Level ◽  
Sanger Institute ◽  
Institutional Strategy ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Key Participants

The SiS (Sex in Science) Programme on the WGC (Wellcome Genome Campus) was established in 2011. Key participants include the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, EMB-EBI (EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute), Open Targets and Elixir. The key objectives are to catalyse cultural change, develop partnerships, communicate activities and champion our women in science work at a national and international level (http://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/sex-science). In this paper, we highlight some of the many initiatives that have taken place since 2013, to address gender inequality at the highest levels; the challenges we have faced and how we have overcome these, and the future direction of travel.

scholarly journals Challenges of Virtual Medical Sciences Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhad Salari ◽  
Vida Sepahi
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Medical Education ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Virtual Education ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Study Selection ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
Sudden Transition

Context: Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been numerous higher education challenges. Medical universities have been urged to dispel students from educational and clinical settings and led them toward virtual education. This sudden transition has been accompanied by multiple challenges. Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the challenges of virtual medical education in the COVID-19 pandemic. Study Selection: This systematic review was performed by reviewing the current literature on the research subject and the studies conducted in this regard during March 2019 to April 2021 by searching via five key search engines and databases, including Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, PubMed, Scopus, and ERIC. Results: In total, 23 studies were assessed, and different virtual education challenges in medical universities were classified into three categories of structural challenges, student-related challenges, and teacher-related challenges. In addition, strategies were proposed for overcoming the identified challenges. Conclusions: Since medical education was not properly pursued before the COVID-19 pandemic and the necessary infrastructures are lacking in this area, designing and implementing such programs could bring about fundamental challenges in several countries (especially developing and low-income countries), thereby decreasing their success rate. On the other hand, the coronavirus crisis could be an opportunity to identify the weaknesses, shortcomings, and infrastructural deficiencies in e-learning and address these issues effectively.

scholarly journals Data Scaling by Differential Evolution for FCA over Data from LMS eLogika

MENDEL ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Jakub Kermaschek ◽  
Pavla Drazdilova ◽  
Marek Mensik
Keyword(s):  
Differential Evolution ◽  
Learning System ◽  
Data Scaling ◽  
E Learning ◽  
The Many

The e-learning system eLogika serves for teaching logic. The system collects data about users who arelogged in, e.g. time spent on a particular activity, the number of activities performed by particular students, whatdata is a student interested in, etc. The goal of this paper is to describe the application of many-valued formalconcept analysis (FCA) in order to discover typical patterns of students behavior. Since the data stored in theeLogika system are numerical we need to categorize them in order to be used in the many-valued FCA method.In the paper we describe a way of data categorization by di erential evolution that proved to be applicable in theFCA method with promising results.

scholarly journals E-learning in Pharmacy Education: what do we know about it?

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrigo Antonio Lorenzoni ◽  
Fernanda Manzini ◽  
Luciano Soares ◽  
Silvana Nair Leite
Keyword(s):  
Pharmacy Education ◽  
E Learning

scholarly journals How Similar are Pharmacy Students and White Blood Cells? Curricular Content Reinforced Through Personification

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Kenric Ware
Keyword(s):  
Blood Cells ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
White Blood Cells ◽  
Pharmacy Education ◽  
Pharmacy Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Curricular Content ◽  
Article Type ◽  
And Gender

Description: This initiative sought to evaluate the use of personification to reinforce immunology concepts among pharmacy students.  A two-part question posed to first year pharmacy students asked if they could physically become two white blood cells (WBCs), which would they choose and why. Students received instruction in immunology prior to providing their feedback. Demographics included campus of enrollment and gender designation. Student ratings 1 to 5 reflected approval levels toward this activity’s usefulness (1: least; 5 most). Key Findings: One hundred and ten of 117 students selected two WBCs they would physically become if possible (94%). Less than two-thirds of students were female (63%) and the Columbia campus featured approximately a quarter of the students (24%). The most and least common WBCs chosen, as first selections by campus and gender, were statistically significant being neutrophils and basophils, lymphocytes and eosinophils, respectively. The median approval values of the WBC personification activity by campus and gender were similar and did not reach statistical significance, 4.5 and 5, respectively. Conclusion: Pharmacy students commended the personification activity for helping them learn the roles and responsibilities of WBCs. Unique and insightful rationales for the choices made for WBCs persisted among the students. In light of these favorable reviews, this type of activity can be adapted to other areas of pharmacy education.   Article Type: Note

The Challenges Faced by Pharm.D Students in Online Learning due to Covid-19 Pandemic and its Impact on their Mental Health in the Northern Border Region of Saudi Arabia

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 2819-2822
Author(s):  
Anwar A Alshammari ◽  
Abdulrahman M Alshammari ◽  
Nawaf M. Alotaibi ◽  
MD Ali Mujtaba ◽  
MD Tauquir Alam
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Online Learning ◽  
Online Education ◽  
Pharmacy Education ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Pharmacy Students ◽  
Poor Sleep ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Northern Border ◽  
Teaching Learning

Objective: The purpose of the survey was to gather information from students on their learning preferences prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, barriers to online education during the pandemic, and the mental and psychological effects of COVID-19 on students. Method: Applying Google Forms, a cross-sectional pharmacy student-targeted online questionnaire designed to develop. In order to ensure that only pharmacy students responded, an introductory opening inquiry of the program name used to select out non-pharmacy students. Following that, these few demographic questions are asked to the participant's present institution and program year in which the participants currently in. Results: A total 260 pharmacy students received the survey, out of total 186 replies were received from professional pharmacy students, resulting in a response rate of around 71.5%. Almost half of the students (94%) chose traditional face-to-face training, while 32.8% preferred a combination of online and face-to-face instruction, and only 16.7% liked online instruction alone. The difficulties to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak show that, Issues with in-person communication (23.7%), pandemic-related anxiety and stress (22%), time management (19.9%), experience in online education (16.7%). The majority of respondents (87%) intended to incorporate online knowledge gained during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak into their teaching/learning techniques. During the COVID-19 epidemic, we discovered that practically all students were plagued by symptoms of sadness, anxiety, tension, and poor sleep quality, with the majority suffering from significant depression (31.2 %). Conclusion: This study concludes that most of the students are in favor of incorporation and applications of online learning experiences in teaching/learning practices garnered during pandemic. Furthermore, the majority of students had changed their behavior as a result of coronavirus, while nearly half of those polled experiencing an increase in anxiety and tension. Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, online learning, mental health, Pharm.D students, Pharmacy education, face to face learning.

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