Critical thinking in the context of clinical practice: The need to reinvent pharmacy education

Abstract

In order to understand how pedagogical practices influence pharmacy students’ development of critical thinking skills, we used critical ethnography and the methods of participant observation, focus groups and in-depthinterviews with students and faculty from one of the top ten Colleges of Pharmacy in the United States. The results that emerged from two semesters of fieldwork engagement suggested that the traditionally taught pharmaceutical knowledge isn’t enough to prepare pharmacy students for clinical practice. Besides the ability to retrieve information, pharmacy education can benefit from the incorporation of experiential learning and the pharmaceutical care philosophy and theoretical framework into the curriculum to prepare pharmacists to provide direct patient care. The knowledge that emerged from this study will allow educators to design learning activities to more effectively develop these essential skills in our future care givers.