Preparedness of UiTM third-year pharmacy students to practice in community pharmacy attachment: pre and post assessment

The Community Pharmacy Attachment programme is a compulsory practical training for UiTM third-year pharmacy students, served to provide an early exposure of pharmacy practice to students in the community pharmacy setting. The study is designed to fulfill three objectives which are to evaluate preparedness of UiTM third­ year pharmacy students to practice in Community Pharmacy Attachment, to compare students' level of competence and personal assessment before and after the program and to determine effectiveness of Community Pharmacy Attachment program in giving early exposure of pharmacy practice to students. A 52-items self-administered questionnaire which consists of three sections; SECTION A (Demographic Profile); SECTION B (Student's Level of Competence in Community Pharmacy Attachment); SECTION C (Student Personal Assessment in Community Pharmacy Attachment) were developed and distributed to 139 respondents from UiTM third-year pharmacy students before and after the Community Pharmacy Attachment programme. Pre- and Post-Assessment were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics Software 22. Based on the analysis and discussion, UiTM third-year pharmacy students perceived themselves as "Not Very Skilled" before going to Community Pharmacy Attachment. Thus, they are not well-prepared to go for this programme. There are also significant changes in student's level of competence and personal assessment before and after going to Community Pharmacy Attachment with p-values=0.0000 ( ≤ 0.05) in Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test. These significant changes indicate that Community Pharmacy Attachment programme is effective in providing early exposure of pharmacy practice to students in the community pharmacy setting.