[Prioritization of healthcare programs by pharmacy students from France and from Quebec, according to the perceived impact of a decentralized pharmacist].

Introduction: Healthcare decision makers need to establish priorities and their decisions must be justified. However, few data is available on the prioritization process of the healthcare programs that should benefit from decentralized pharmacists.
Patients and Methods: The main objective was to prioritize healthcare programs according to the perceived impact of a decentralized pharmacist for outpatient and inpatient clienteles. The secondary objective was to compare the prioritization made by pharmacy students from two Quebec universities and from one French university. Two different approaches were developed (perceived impact according to three indicators and according to the global impact).
Results: The majority of healthcare programs with a high evidence based literature quality score (5/6 outpatient programs and 5/8 inpatient programs) were highly prioritized by at least two out of three cohorts. The median rank that was attributed for each healthcare program was significantly different between the three cohorts for 8/17 (47%) of outpatient programs and for 10/18 (56%) of inpatient programs.
Discussion: A higher rank was attributed to healthcare programs when the evidence based literature quality score was high. The prioritization was also influenced by the difference in pharmaceutical practice between France and Quebec (e.g. sterilization and medical devices in France).
Conclusions: This study presented two approaches for the prioritization of healthcare programs that should benefit from a decentralized pharmacist, according to students from France and from Quebec.
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