Abstract:

One of the principal aims of the teaching staff of the School of Pharmacy of the University of Castilla-La Mancha relies on the complementation of the knowledge acquired by the students in the theoretical classes with specialized workshops to improve their academic training. In this case, we propose a theoretical and practical workshop in an innovative classroom, which mimics a real community pharmacy (Simulated Pharmacy), to teach to our students the health agent’s approach of the treatment of the Parkinson Disease (PD). To this end, different specialist in health science and patients coming from the Association of Relatives and PD Patients of Albacete have participated in the workshop.

The workshop was organized in three theoretical and one practical sessions. In the theoretical sessions, the students acquired specific knowledge of the disease, tackling subjects like physiopathology, pharmacology, speech therapy, physiotherapy psychology, occupational therapy and pharmaceutical care. All sessions were guided by specialized personal in the field of interest as well as patient belonging to the association. The fourth session was developed as a role-playing session in which the students assessed, from the community pharmaceutical point of view, the clinical situation and the pharmacological treatment of a real patient of PD. In this session, they had the opportunity of implement the knowledge acquired in the theoretical sessions.

Fourteen students were registered in the workshop. A survey consisting on 46 items was completed to assess the project. As a control, the same questions were completed by sixty-one students from third and fourth courses of the degree of Pharmacy, who didn`t assist to the workshop. The questions were based on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 5-strongly agree to 1-strongly disagree, and was grouped in five areas: general knowledge of the disease, pharmacology, nutrition, pharmaceutical care and other therapeutic approach.

Our results show that, after participating in the workshop, the students had better results in the test and they had a higher level of homogeneity in the selection of the right option, where the control group tend to have results that were more heterogeneous in the test. In addition, this result is reflected in all the areas analysed, for instance, in pharmacology, the percentages of right answers was at least five times higher in the group that participated in the workshop.

As a significant conclusion, it is important to note the high level of humanization and empathy that the participants developed for the patients, which was reflected in the satisfaction and personal opinion survey. Besides, the Simulated Pharmacy, was a useful tool that allowed us the staging of real situations thanks to the involvement of patients of PD, preparing students to the management of these situations in their professional future.

Keywords:

Parkinson's Disease, community pharmacy, patients' experiences, pharmaceutical care.