Use of Pre- and Post-Tests to Assess Student Pharmacist Effectiveness when Presenting In-services to Other Health Care Professionals

Purpose: This study evaluated the effectiveness of student pharmacist in-service presentations to other health care professionals (HCPs) by the use of pre- and post-test evaluations.

Methods: Student pharmacists present a required in-service to other HCPs during their final year of this Doctor of Pharmacy program.   An opportunity to complete this competency is provided within a required geriatrics advanced practice experience at a continuing care retirement community (CCRC).  Groups of three students assigned to the CCRC work together to address questions posed by other HCPs within the CCRC.    Student groups identified objectives for their topic and developed no more than 10 questions to assess the targeted audience’s understanding of the objectives.  These questions were given as a pre-test before the presentation and the same questions were administered after the presentation for comparison.   Groups presenting for greater than 30 minutes were included in the analysis.   Tests were completed by the in-service attendees and submitted anonymously.   Correct answers were reviewed with the audience after the presentation was completed and the post-tests were submitted.   The percentages of correct answers prior to the presentation were compared to the percentages of correct answers after the presentation.

Results: Of the completed pre- and post-tests reviewed, 162 responses were included for analysis.   The correct responses submitted for the pre-test were 43% and for the post-test were 71% (p<0.05).

Conclusions:   In addition to having a significant impact on HCP understanding of presented topics, in-services provide an opportunity for student pharmacists to further develop presentation skills.  Use of pre- and post-tests give student pharmacists instantaneous feedback on the effectiveness of their performance.  At this clinical practice site, pre- and post- tests allow student pharmacists to develop assessment methods for their presentation objectives and focus on the most relevant material during the presentation.