The need
to ensure the future pharmacy workforce demonstrates professionalism
has become important to both pharmacy educators and professional
bodies.
Objective: To determine the extent to which Schools of Pharmacy
have taught or measured student professionalism.
Methods: Review of the healthcare literature on teaching of professionalism
at an undergraduate level
Results: Two-hundred and thirty one papers were retrieved but
only 45 papers related specifically to pharmacy. Of these a further
25 were narrative in nature and did not report any findings. Nineteen
papers were reviewed (one was excluded as it reported the same
data). Papers could be broadly categorised in to those that have
tried to create a tool to measure professionalism, those that
are in effect pedagogical evaluations of new initiatives or longitudinal
studies on student perceptions toward aspects of professionalism.
Conclusion: A growing body of literature exists on pharmacy and
professionalism. However, to date, very few Schools of Pharmacy
appear to formally teach it let alone assess students’ acquisition
of professionalism.
