Pharmacy Graduates' Experience and Perception On Geriatric Pharmacy Experiential Learning/Clerkship

Experiential learning is a method used by a pharmacy school to enhance the pharmacy student’s interest on the subject materials, empowering learning satisfaction, increases understanding and retention of the course materials, develops the desire and ability to be continuous learners, improve communication and interpersonal skills, problem solving and also the analytical and critical thinking skills of students. However, it is important to explore the student’s experience and perception regarding the experiential learning in ensuring optimum learning outcomes. This study aims to identify the University of Cyberjaya (UOC) Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) graduates’ experience and perception towards geriatric pharmacy experiential learning/clerkship. Only 52.6% (80/152) responded to the online survey despite multiple reminders sent. The respondents in this study were between the age from 22 to 33 years and almost half (42.5%) of the respondents were from were from batch number 7. This study also found that respondents have an overall good experience towards geriatric pharmacy clerkship especially on time access to the ward (69.0%) but <50.0% found the duration of clerkship was adequate. Besides that, preceptors in charged were found accessible (63.0%) and helping in finding evidence-based cases (66.0%). Furthermore, there was statistically significant difference in mean experience scores between graduates’ batches (p = 0.014). Other than that, this study also found that the respondents have an overall positive perception towards geriatric pharmacy clerkship. They perceived the pharmacist in geriatric ward to have prestige (62.0%) and respected (84.0%). The respondents also perceived the geriatric patients to have multiple of ailments (94.0%). However, there is no statistically significant difference in mean perception scores between various subgroups of demographics. Apart from that, there is moderate (r = 0.26-0.50) positive statistically significant correlation between experience and perception (r = +0.331, p = 0.011). This study concluded that the respondents have an overall good experience alongside with positive perception towards geriatric pharmacy experiential learning/clerkship. However, future similar online study on students instead of graduates and survey with better response rate are required to confirm and provide a clearer picture of the results highlighted.