Abstract:

Introduction:
The School of Pharmacy of the University of Valencia organizes every year an International Pharmacy Students Congress in Valencia. The main objective of this congress is to show the students the different professional career opportunities in the field of Pharmacy. Several participants from different areas (Industry, Hospital, Research and Community Pharmacy) present their perspectives and the relevance of the education in Pharmacy in their professional activity. Various parallel workshops are organized as practical sessions where the students receive particular information focused on several topics. Our research group has participated organizing a hands-on session in rheology, transdermal absorption and computational analysis for drug development of new medicinal products. The objective of this work is to analyze the concordance between the student’s expectancy and satisfaction of the workshop in order to anticipate their professional perspectives.

Methods:
12 Pharmacy students from the 1st to the 5th academic year were enrolled in our workshop. Two different surveys were performed, containing 6 questions each one:
(i) at the beginning of the hands-on session, a survey covering the expectatives of the students was performed; and,
(ii) the satisfaction and academic progress was assessed at the end of the session.

Results:
Three different aspects were observed. When assessing the initial expectations with the satisfactions of the students in regards to the concepts introduced during the workshop, greater satisfaction was observed with students that chose the workshop as a first option, enhancing their learning capacities. Additionally, students from the last year considered the workshop more useful for their professional career. The three activities were considered relevant and useful by the students and they would recommend them for the following editions of the International Pharmacy Students Congress.

Conclusion:
These results confirm that the workshop provides a valuable opportunity to the students since student’s satisfaction was ranged medium/high. The contents of the workshop adequately matched the student’s expectancy, improving their knowledge and learning abilities for their professional future activity.

Keywords:

Advanced workshops, pharmacy, expectancy, satisfaction.