OPINION & KNOWLEDGE OF NEW AND UPDATED TREATMENT GUIDELINES: A SURVEY OF SENIOR DOCTOR OF PHARMACY STUDENTS

Healthcare profession students are expected to update their treatment guideline knowledge regularly to provide efficient patient care. However it is not sure how many of those healthcare students actually update their knowledge of treatment guidelines regularly. The objective of the study is to determine knowledge and opinion of senior doctor of pharmacy students in keeping up with new or updated treatment guidelines. The target population was senior doctor of year pharmacy students of Howard University and 35 (57.3%) of them participated. A survey consisting of sixteen questions with ten “Opinion Questions” and six “Knowledge Questions” were administered. The mean score for knowledge question section was 3.17 (52.8%) with a range of one to five. About one out of five (17.1%) of the participants said they were not familiar with the term treatment guideline. Although 77.1% said it is important to update themselves on new guidelines, only 48.6% of them said they are able to keep up with new guidelines. About three-fourth (71.4%) of them said the length of the guidelines discourages them from updating their knowledge. Overwhelming majority (94.1%) of the students prefer to have instructors include treatment guideline updates and 54.3% said it is the responsibility of the professors to update the students. Lack of familiarity with treatment guidelines (17%) and lack of self-initiative to update their knowledge (54.3%) prevents students from effectively keeping up with new treatment guidelines. This apathetic attitude can negatively affect the students’ ability to provide effective patient care after graduation.