Developing Thinking and Reasoning Skills in Pharmacy Undergraduate Students

Sound reasoning and thinking skills are necessary for pharmacists to accurately identify and resolve patients' drug-related problems. To prepare students for practice, the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences has clearly articulated curricular outcomes related to these skills. However, while acknowledged as important to acquire, the cognitive operations and processes necessary to execute these skills have not been identified, therefore the teaching of these skills may or may not be effective. This proposal aims to identify the reasoning process and thinking operations that will support our students to competently identify and resolve drug-related problems, determine the effectiveness to which our students use these operations and identify where in the curriculum these operations are being sufficiently taught. Ultimately, we will develop teaching tools to encourage acquisition of particular thinking operations that are not supported by the curriculum. Teaching tools developed will be shared with pharmacy faculty members and others across campus.

Ingrid Price, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences