104th Annual Meeting, July 20-23, 2003, Minneapolis, Minnesota

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 2003

ADMINISTRATIVE, INSTITUTIONAL, AND PROGRAMMATIC ISSUES

The Challenges of Recruiting Minority American Graduate Students. Anthony C. Capomacchia, The University of Georgia. Objectives: The objective of the current work is to examine the Coach Model for recruiting minority students for the pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences at The University of Georgia (UGA); with the long-term goal to build a recognized program for their training. Methods: Attendance at regional graduate and professional fairs, special recruiting trips for interested students, seminars, workshops, and visits to UGA are used to attract the best students possible. Also, direct family contact and visits, assuring that funding is available, and finding agreeable mentors are vital. Results: During the nine years of the study, 22 students were matriculated to graduate programs in the pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences. Seven have graduated, one transferred, the rest remain on track to graduate within four or five years of entering the program. Funding for each student was obtained from a combination of sources including the Department, Graduate School, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Faculty status was deemed to play a pivotal role in the success of the project. Implications: A graduate program for training minority students in the pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences can be implemented, and perhaps for other science disciplines as well. Providing faculty and Department are willing to devote time and resources to the effort. The need for a positive training environment cannot be overemphasized.

Citation Analysis of Lyman Award Winning Papers (1967 - 1997). Dennis F. Thompson, Nina R. Morris, Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Purpose: The purpose of this research was to characterize the citation pattern of Lyman award winners from 1967 - 1997. Methods: A list of all Lyman award-winning papers was obtained. Each paper was searched on the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Knowledge to obtain citation counts. For comparison, the most cited paper from the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education (AJPE) for each year was also obtained. Lyman award winners were ranked by number of citations per year. The highly cited 1993 article from the "Commission to Implement Change in Pharmacy" was excluded from the analysis. Results: The 1993 Lyman Award winning paper had the highest citation rate at 1.2 citations/year. The top five Lyman Award papers were 1993, 1987, 1995, 1976, and 1996. Only one paper received the Lyman Award and was the most cited paper for that year (1993). The average number of citations received for the top 22 Lyman award winning papers was 7.9 citations vs. 17.6 citations for the corresponding most cited paper in AJPE for that year. Average citations per year were 0.49 for Lyman Awards winners vs. 1.2 for the most cited AJPE articles for the corresponding years. Conclusions: Lyman Award winning papers are generally not the most cited papers in AJPE.

Use of a Weekly Open Forum to Acclimate Students in a Distance Education Environment. Mark L. Britton, Keith A. Swanson, Melissa S. Medina, University of Oklahoma. Objectives: A weekly open student forum is used to assess and address student concerns, assist in their emotional and academic acclimation in a distance education (DE) environment, facilitate development of a single class identity and class unity, and to aid in professionalization. Methods: All first year pharmacy students on the Oklahoma City and Tulsa campuses are required to attend a weekly class meeting over the noon hour on Wednesdays during the first academic year moderated by either the academic dean or the director of student services. Others regularly attending these sessions include the assistant directors of student services, classroom facilitators, the chair of the curriculum committee, the director of instruction and assessment, and any interested faculty. Students are welcome to bring up any topic of concern during the meeting and are encouraged to submit agenda items to the academic dean. Students are periodically being surveyed about their experiences in a DE learning environment and also provided the opportunity to express their opinions in a chat room. Implications: As DE technologies become more common in pharmacy education to assist in relieving the pharmacy manpower shortage, faculty and administrators must intentionally provide many unique opportunities for student expression. A weekly open forum may assist students and faculty in interpreting the educational environment and its effects on learning and classroom interpersonal dynamics.

Standard Time of an Outpatient Prescription Processing at Saniut Sakhon Hospital. Chanuttha Ploylearmsang, Petcharat Pongcharoensuk, Saichol Pimkow, Amnouy Preukpakpoom, Mahidol University, Thailand. Objective: To determine standard time and workload of outpatient pharmacy services at Samut Sakhon Hospital, a 500-bed public institution in Thailand. Methods: Workflow analysis was first conducted to identify activities of outpatient prescription processing. Activity data were collected during 8 am to 4 pm, for 14 days during October 15 to November 2, 2001. Both direct time study and a 5minute interval of work sampling were used to collect timing of 14 activities. Results: A total of 5,320 and 12,724 observations were recorded for pharmacists' and non-pharmacists' activities respectively. Overall, an average of 1,051 prescriptions was filled per day, with an average of 3.21 drug items per prescription. It takes 13.95 minutes to process a prescription, starting when the prescription arrives at the pharmacy until the patient collects the drug products. Pharmacists and non-pharmacists spend a total time 1.81 and 6.63 minutes per prescription, respectively. The three activities with the highest standard times were prescription filling, dispensing/counseling and data entry; 98.11, 51.64, and 45.75 seconds respectively. Productive time of pharmacists and non-pharmacists were 71.94% and 73.83%. From the standard time, it requires 26 and 83 man-hours per day of pharmacist and non-pharmacist for outpatient prescription process. Implications: Standard time and workload measurement could be an effective tool to efficiently manage the available manpower in hospital. These results could provide the basic information for other hospitals' managers to assess efficiency of their pharmacy services.