Establishment of Drug Information Training Program Based on "Model Core Curriculum for Practical Training" : Small Group Discussion by KJ Method and Debate in Simulated Meeting of Pharmaceutical Deliberation Committee

In the present study, we established a practical training program for drug information involving active participation based on the "Model Core Curriculum for Practical Training". Our subjects were 20 third or fourth year students from 8 universities who underwent practical training at the Department of Pharmacy, Mie University Hospital from February through August 2006. We used small group discussions based on the "KJ method" devised by Jiro Kawakita and simulated meetings of the pharmaceutical deliberation committee in which debate took place. A questionnaire using a descriptive format was administered to evaluate student opinions just before and after the training and a ten-grade VAS (Visual Analog Scale) was applied to the evaluation obtained just after the training was completed. Achievement of individual objectives was 18% in consideration of the number of training hours compared with those specified in the Model Core Curriculum and 92% in consideration of numbers of objectives. Based on questionnaire responses, understanding of the details of objectives tended to be better after the training that before it. VAS scores for satisfaction with the training as regards content and hours were 9.0±1.1 and 7.0±2.0 (mean±S.D.), respectively. The small group discussions based on the "KJ method" were helpful in obtaining the opinions of students and summarizing them in a short period of time and were useful in achieving drug information training based on active participation. The combination of small group discussions and active debate with drug information training enabled the training objectives to be comprehensively achieved