Pharmacy from the perspectives of other health professions: An intervention to foster professional identity among freshmen pharmacy students

BACKGROUND: Professional identity is crucial for the development of pharmacy students’ professional confidence, learning motivation and future career choices. However, how to develop students’ professional identity in pharmacy education is an underdeveloped field of research. The critical component of professional identity has been considered formed as a result of stepwise socialization. Therefore, pharmacy professional identity might be influenced by associations with other health care professionals, such as physicians and nurses, who are involved in health care collaboration with pharmacists. OBJECTIVES: This work aimed to investigate the effect of a student-led interview intervention called “Pharmacy from the perspectives of other health professions” as an intervention on pharmacy freshmen’s perceptions and positivity toward the pharmacy profession. METHODS: In this prospective pre/postintervention study, the effect of the interview intervention on students’ job preferences as well as attitudes toward the pharmacy profession and pharmacists’ role in health care was evaluated among 70 first-year pharmacy undergraduates equally divided into intervention and control groups using a self-developed questionnaire. RESULTS: Compared with the controls, the numbers of respondents reporting no specific reasons for selecting the pharmacy profession and stating that they were unclear about their preferred post-graduation work sector were significantly reduced after the intervention. Participating in the intervention increased the number of students who agreed or strongly agreed that they would have a fulfilling and socially respectable career. Significantly more students in the intervention group agreed with the pharmacists’ role in health care as well as the current situation of pharmacy human resources than in the control group. CONCLUSION: This student-led interview intervention could be applied as an effective tool for improving students’ professional identity and positivity in pharmacy education.