Evaluation of a Four-weeks Practical Hospital Training Curriculum In the Case of Takarazuka Municipal Hospital

A four-week practical hospital training course for undergraduates at Takarazuka Municipal Hospital has been conducted since 1998. The curriculum at our hospital consists of three elements, i.e., lectures on hospital pharmacy, the dispensing service and the clinical pharmacy service. Regarding the clinical pharmacy service, a case study had token a long time for the purpose of learning the actual services. In this study, we compared the results of the new curriculum with those of previous curriculums to establish a more effective and practical curriculum for undergraduates. Our curriculum showed no significant difference with the findings of other reports. Next, we investigated the student' s awareness by questionnaire. The results showed that most students developed on increased awareness of the pharmacist' s daily practice by the end of the practical training course. However it also showed a tendency that their interests in pharmacy practice differed according to their future courses and the university they were studying.From these results, further progress therefore appears to still be obtainable by increasing the cooperation between pharmaceutical universities and hospital pharmacies. In addition, it was considered that our curriculum should be further improved by better meeting the needs of students during the practical training course.