Creating and Evaluating the Over-the-Counter Coach App to Assist Pharmacy Students in Their Education

Abstract

This challenge is described as follows: it is intended that pharmacy students would study how condition and patient-specific variables impact pharmaceutical decision-making. Our goal in developing this interactive learning tool was to help students better understand the many personal aspects that influence the recommendations for over-the-counter (OTC) medications. Innovation description: Student pharmacists may practice making recommendations regarding over-the-counter drugs with the help of OTC Coach. The OTC Coach, an optional resource for first-year pharmacy students taking the mandatory self-care therapeutics course, offered computerized decision algorithms covering ten different areas. The opinions of the students were gathered by means of an online survey. Evaluate thoroughly: OTC Coach accounts were activated by two-thirds of the first-year students engaged in the self-care treatments course (n=53/79, 67%). Participants who used the tool and filled out the survey (n=60/75, 80%) agreed that it helped them understand the material (78%), felt more confident in making good therapeutic recommendations (78%), were more comfortable answering exam questions (63%), and performed better on exams (61%). What comes next: Students self-reported that they learned more about over-the-counter medicine recommendations after using an electronic application. An ability to create a series of scenarios with randomly assigned patient and condition characteristics is being added to the application so that students may practice producing patient-centered recommendations more effectively.