Quality Assurance and Improvement Practices of Experiential Education Programs within US Schools of Pharmacy

Objectives: To identify common practices for measuring quality of preceptor performance, experiential sites, experiential coursework, student performance and achievement of student learning outcomes at the US schools/colleges of pharmacy.Method: In-depth semi-structured phone interviews were conducted with directors of experiential education, or their equivalent, to identify elements of experiential education (EE) quality assurance (QA) processes. To ensure representativeness from all fully accredited programs, purposeful sampling was used for participant solicitation and enrollment until both code and meaning saturation were reached. Participants were asked questions in six domain areas (preceptor and student performance, site quality, role of site visits, coursework and achievement of learning outcomes). An iterative data coding and analysis process identified themes and notable practices within each domain area.Results: Interviews were conducted with representatives of 29 programs. All participants rep...