Comparison of Pharmacy Students’ Perception of Learning Experiences in Interprofessional Education in the Philippines and Indonesia

Abstract

Background: The inclusion of Inter-professional Education (IPE) in pharmacy schools has long been recommended by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy to provide faculty and students the opportunity for collaborative practice. However, IPE has not been fully embraced in all pharmacy schools. The University of the Philippines Manila (UPM) College of Pharmacy and Universitas Ahmad Dahlan (UAD) Faculty of Pharmacy in Yogyakarta, Indonesia were among the first in Asia to incorporate IPE in their respective countries.

Objective: The objective of the study was to compare the perception of the learning experiences of pharmacy students of UPM and UAD. Findings from this study may provide an indication whether IPE is an effective teaching strategy to make pharmacy students “collaborative practice-ready” graduates regardless of the health professions they work with, scope of IPE experience, and location of IPE.

Methods: The study was a quantitative, comparative pre- and post-intervention which utilized the validated questionnaire by Luecht (1990). This was administered to 15 UPM and 18 UAD first batch of pharmacy students who participated in IPE in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Results and Conclusion: The results showed high scores for both universities but UPM students had consistently improved scores in terms of autonomy, competency, perceived need for cooperation, and understanding the roles of others. The differences in the results may have been contributed by the small sample size, results being self-reports, established IPE program in UPM, diversity of the team, and previous experience of faculty preceptors handling multi-disciplinary teams. Despite the differences, the study still showed that IPE can be a valuable tool in producing “collaborative practice-ready” pharmacy graduates who can promote better patient and community outcomes.