Clinical placements by Australian university schools of pharmacy

Background: Rural placements have been instrumental to increase the pharmacy workforce in rural and regional areas. Due to a persisting undersupply in rural pharmacists, these remain an important recruitment strategy. However, it is unclear how rural clinical placement programs are structured in content, length, and objectives among the universities. Our study aimed to describe attributes of rural clinical placements programs that are currently being offered in Australian university schools of pharmacy.

Method: A telephone survey was administered by one of the investigators to all the identified course coordinators or placement officers to obtain the required data from the nominated school of pharmacy representative. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze participants and courses demographics, qualitative data were thematically coded and analyzed using nVivo v10.

Results: A total of 17 out of 18 schools of pharmacy responded. The schools were similar in assessment approach and method, though the number of placement days and placement sites varied considerably. Some universities prefer traditional placement sites in community or hospital pharmacies, whereas others are actively pursuing non-traditional placement sites.

Conclusion: Australian schools of pharmacy have substantial similarities in the assessment of placements; though vary considerably in their approach to placement duration and innovations.