Curriculum reform and trainees' perception of the pharmacy educational environment: a modified DREEM study

Objectives: An undergraduate pharmacy curriculum reform was undertaken to meet the future healthcare demands of the people in Singapore. Understanding how educational reforms affect the learners' perceptions of the learning environment is important for quality assurance. The primary aim of this study was to investigate how pharmacy trainees perceive their educational environment before and after curriculum reform. The secondary aim was to evaluate the strengths and areas for improvement of the educational environment in the new curriculum.

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of pharmacy trainees in Singapore. A modified version of the Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (mDREEM) was used to assess the pharmacy educational environment. Univariate analysis was used to compare the responses of trainees from the old and new curricula.

Key findings: The sample comprised 523 (93.7%) responses from the old and 677 (94.6%) from the new curriculum. The global mean scores for the mDREEM survey in the old and new curriculums were 150.4 and 156.2, respectively (P < 0.001). These results indicate that there was an increase in satisfaction with the new educational environment. In the new curriculum, the perceived educational environment varied across different pharmacy settings, and trainees rated their educational environment after graduation lower than that during their undergraduate training.

Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that curricular reforms can alter trainees' perception of their educational environment. In our subgroup analyses, trainees' perceptions of their educational environment changed as they progressed from the undergraduate to the postgraduate training phase. Further work is needed to explore the cause-and-effect relationships between curriculum design and implementation and the resulting perceived educational environment.