An Exploration of Preceptor-provided Student Feedback During Early Practice Experiences

Objective. To explore and evaluate open-ended feedback provided by preceptors on Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) to students on the first practice experience. Methods. Upon successful completion of the first professional year, student pharmacists complete a two-calendar month practice experience in community or health-system pharmacy. Preceptors evaluate student performance using a validated EPA framework. A retrospective review of the qualitative data collected from preceptor evaluations of student pharmacists was completed. A codebook was developed around the EPA framework and sub-coding accounted for positive, negative, or neutral assessment within each EPA. After several rounds of coding consensus was reached for all coding by two investigators. A dependability audit was implemented to ensure trustworthiness. Results. Preceptor evaluations of 153 student pharmacists were utilized with 80 students (52.3%) completing a community experience and 73 (47.7%) completing a health-system experience between May and August 2018. Preceptors from both settings provided overwhelmingly positive feedback on all EPAs. Optimization opportunities for preceptor-provided feedback were identified. Feedback provided by preceptors in health-system and community practice settings focused on knowledge and behavior, respectively, with both emphasizing skill-based performance. Conclusion. Results from this study suggest that preceptor-provided feedback may provide valuable insight into the opportunities to provide training and support intended to enhance the provision of optimal written feedback on EPAs. Deeper analysis employing focus groups or structured interviews are suggested to further explore the collective implementation experiences of preceptors regarding EPA assessment in real-world practice settings.