Cross-Sectional Analysis of Taiwanese Pharmacy Students’ Experiences and Perceptions of Transitioning from In-Hospital Internships to Distance Learning Due to COVID-19

The introductory pharmacy practice experiences (IPPE) in Taiwan, which are traditionally conducted in physical hospital settings, incorporated up to 30% distance learning from May 2021 due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). A web-based cross-sectional survey was adopted to investigate pharmacy students’ experiences and perceptions of transitioning from in-hospital internships to distance learning due to COVID-19 in the pharmacy department of a university in Southern Taiwan. We analyzed the results to discover factors that significantly affected students’ perceptions of transitioning from in-hospital internships to distance learning. In total, 81 interns from the university’s pharmacy department responded to the questionnaire. Approximately half of the participants felt happy when they learned, before the internship began, that the internship would be partially replaced with distance learning. The overall satisfaction rate was 67.9%, and no significant differences was observed in students’ satisfaction between hospital size or distance-learning time. However, more students in the medical center felt they had insufficient time to finish assignments compared to those in the regional hospitals, and the students who had 11–15 days of distance learning felt that they interacted more smoothly with their peers compared to those who had other durations. Program designers should make distance internship courses more student-centered, with a focus on increasing interactions between students, teachers, and peers to compensate for the lack of physical presence