Students' perceptions of and amount of diabetes education in Canadian schools of pharmacy

Objective: To determine the amount of diabetes content taught at Canadian schools of pharmacy, and students' perceptions of diabetes education.

Methods: Between September 23 and October 23, 2015, faculty members at each pharmacy school were asked to provide the amount of didactic, interactive, and elective hours devoted to diabetes education. These faculty members subsequently emailed an electronic web-survey to all fourth year pharmacy students to ascertain their perceptions of the amount of diabetes-related material they received and comfort level pertaining to diabetes education.

Results: Representatives from each pharmacy school (10/10; 100%) reported the amount of diabetes education provided at their schools (range of 18-43.5hours; mean 25.3hours). Student responses were obtained from 90% (9/10) of pharmacy schools; a total of 313/1216 (25.7%) students completed the questionnaire. The majority of pharmacy students (53.2%; 166/313) reported feeling the overall amount of diabetes content in their curriculum was just right while 46.2% (144/313) felt there was too little. 95.6% (299/313) disagreed diabetes received too much attention in the curriculum. A post-hoc analysis revealed that students who attended schools with more contact hours or a diabetes-specific elective felt more comfortable with dealing with certain diabetes patients and situations.

Conclusions: Pharmacy schools vary in the amount of diabetes content taught in their curriculum. Students were split between feeling they received enough diabetes education or too little; students who received more content reported greater comfort in dealing with most diabetes patients and situations. This information is useful for pharmacy schools looking to evaluate their curricular diabetes content.