Availability and Perceived Value of Bachelor of Science Programs in Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management in the United States

Several academic institutions across the United States offer Bachelor of Science degree programs in Pharmaceutical Marketing and/or Management. In general, these programs are designed to provide students with stronger foundations and a broader understanding of the business side of pharmacy. The purpose of this study was to explore the availability of the Bachelor of Science programs in pharmaceutical marketing and management in the United States. Internet search was conducted in order to collect information about the programs of interest. Results showed that a total of 8 schools and colleges offer the Bachelor of Science degree programs. The total number of credit hours for each program ranged from 122 to 130 All these schools/colleges were located in only 3 States, namely Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Massachusetts. Tuition and fees were markedly different across these programs. Additionally, salient differences between these programs were evident with regard to career paths expected for their graduates. These programs have gained more attention over the past few years as fewer numbers of pharmacists work in pharmaceutical sales jobs, leaving such jobs almost exclusively undertaken by graduates of Pharmaceutical Marketing and/or Management programs. In the future, we expect changes to take place in these programs’ curricula in order to equip students with more skills to assume certain jobs, such as insurance management, industry, or sales

Assessment of Texan pharmacists\u27 attitudes, behaviors, and preferences related to continuing pharmacy education

Background: Whether the available Continuing Education (CE) programs meet pharmacists’ continuously increasing needs and preferences is open to question. Objectives: to investigate pharmacists’ perceptions and attitudes concerning available CE programs, evaluate the pharmacists’ choices with regard to selecting among different CE programs, and investigate the factors that are associated with preference to utilize online CE programs. Method: A 17-question survey was developed and mailed to a random sample of 600 Texan pharmacists. In addition to collecting basic demographic information, the survey investigated pharmacists’ choices with regard to delivery and content of CE programs, motivations to participation in CE programs, and pharmacists’ preferences for future CE programs. Results: A total of 161 pharmacists completed the survey and mailed back their responses. Excluding the 75 undeliverable surveys, the response rate was 31%. Approximately 83% of respondents found that currently available CE programs met their educational needs. The most important factors influencing pharmacists’ choices with regard to CE programs were the scope programs, the location where programs are held, and the cost associated with enrolling in such programs. Online CE was the most preferred mode of CE among participants. The factors that were associated with pharmacists’ preferences to complete 50% or more of required CE through online programs were previous use of online CE programs, preference to limit the duration of CE programs to 1 or 2 hour-long, and perceived ability to find adequate CE programs among currently available CE programs. Conclusion: The findings suggest modalities for CE programs providers on how to improve CE programs in the future in order to meet the preferences of local pharmacists

Specific and complete human genome amplification with improved yield achieved by phi29 DNA polymerase and a novel primer at elevated temperature

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Backgrounds</p> <p>Whole genome amplification (WGA) is a practical solution to eliminate molecular analysis limitations associated with genomic DNA (gDNA) quantity. Different methods have been developed to amplify the whole genome, including primer extension preamplification (PEP), degenerate oligonucleotide primed PCR (DOP-PCR), and multiple displacement amplification (MDA). Each of these methods has its own merits and limitations.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Effects of primer length and composition on amplification quality and quantity were explored in this study at two different temperatures (30°C & 40°C). New primer designs combined with elevated amplification temperature has significantly improved MDA as measured by amplification yield, genome coverage, and allele drop out (ADO) analysis. A remarkable finding was the comprehensive amplification, at 30°C & 40°C, of the human whole genome via the use of GGGCAGGA*N*G hotspot recombination consensus primer. Amplification was characterized by Affymetrix 10K SNP chip analysis. Finally, the use of new primer designs has suppressed the template-independent DNA amplification (TIDA) both at 30°C and 40°C.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The use of new primers in this study combined with elevated incubation temperatures in MDA has remarkably improved the specificity, amplification yield, and suppressed TIDA.</p

Isolated ileocecal valve atresia

Ileocecal valve atresia is a rare variety of gastrointestinal atresia. There have been only 10 cases reported in the literature. In this paper, we report the case of a 4-day-old male preterm, who presented with signs of neonatal intestinal obstruction. Contrast enema showed microcolon with no reflux of the contrast into the terminal ileum. Exploratory laparotomy showed an isolated ileocecal valve atresia. The atretic segment was resected and an ileocolic anastomosis was performed. The histopathological report confirmed the diagnosis of ileocecal valve atresia. The postoperative recovery was uneventful.Keywords: atresia of ileocecal junction, ileocecal valve atresia, intestinal atresia, neonatal intestinal obstructio

Workload Perceptions of Pharmacists: Part of Changing a National Trend

Background: A National Pharmacist Workforce Survey (NPW) survey is being conducted in the US every five years. The 2009- NPW project surveyed 1,391 participants, of which only 12 participants were from West Virginia. Therefore, such a small representation of West Virginian pharmacists may question the validity of extrapolating the results of the 2009 NPW survey to pharmacists in this state. As a result, a separate survey was needed to answer the questions about the perceived workload, work characteristics, and demographics for West Virginian pharmacists. Objectives: The primary objective of this investigation was to identify the pharmacists’ perceptions of workload in West Virginia and compare with the 2009 NPW survey. Materials and Methods: A group of pharmacists in West Virginia were surveyed for the perceptions of current workload, the changes of workload over the past year, the impact of workload on personnel satisfaction, and the quality of providing pharmaceutical services. All licensed pharmacists in West Virginia as of 2011 (adjusted to the total of 1970 individuals) were contacted up to three times. Pharmacists’ perceptions were measured using several items adopted from the 2009-NPW survey. Results: A total of 596 responses were received, yielding an adjusted response rate of 30%. The majority of West Virginia pharmacists believed that the current assigned workload was either high or excessively high. This perception follows the trend of the 2009 national manpower study that reported an increase of 14% (between 2004 and 2009) of pharmacists\u27 workload indicating the above fact. Similarly, nearly 61% of pharmacists believed that the workload has either increased or greatly increased over the past year. West Virginia pharmacists were more concerned about their job security, than those were sampled in the 2009 national manpower study. The West Virginia pharmacists perceive their workload to negatively impact the time they spend with patients, the quality of care provided to patients, and their ability to resolve and prevent drug related problems. These negative points on the patient care perception are found to be more pronounced in the current study on the West Virginia pharmacists than it was reported previously in the 2009 national manpower study. Conclusions: Although there does not seem to be a serious shortage of pharmacists in West Virginia at the present time, pharmacists reported that there are currently more patient care associated tasks need to be completed with the same amount of staffing levels

Consensus graph and spectral representation for one-step multi-view kernel based clustering

Recently, multi-view clustering has received much attention in the fields of machine learning and pattern recognition. Spectral clustering for single and multiple views has been the common solution. Despite its good clustering performance, it has a major limitation: it requires an extra step of clustering. This extra step, which could be the famous k-means clustering, depends heavily on initialization, which may affect the quality of the clustering result. To overcome this problem, a new method called Multiview Clustering via Consensus Graph Learning and Nonnegative Embedding (MVCGE) is presented in this paper. In the proposed approach, the consensus affinity matrix (graph matrix), consensus representation and cluster index matrix (nonnegative embedding) are learned simultaneously in a unified framework. Our proposed method takes as input the different kernel matrices corresponding to the different views. The proposed learning model integrates two interesting constraints: (i) the cluster indices should be as smooth as possible over the consensus graph and (ii) the cluster indices are set to be as close as possible to the graph convolution of the consensus representation. In this approach, no post-processing such as k-means or spectral rotation is required. Our approach is tested with real and synthetic datasets. The experiments performed show that the proposed method performs well compared to many state-of-the-art approaches

Reliability assessment of a peer evaluation instrument in a team-based learning course

Objective: To evaluate the reliability of a peer evaluation instrument in a longitudinal team-based learning setting. Methods: Student pharmacists were instructed to evaluate the contributions of their peers. Evaluations were analyzed for the variance of the scores by identifying low, medium, and high scores. Agreement between performance ratings within each group of students was assessed via intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). Results: We found little variation in the standard deviation (SD) based on the score means among the high, medium, and low scores within each group. The lack of variation in SD of results between groups suggests that the peer evaluation instrument produces precise results. The ICC showed strong concordance among raters. Conclusions: Findings suggest that our student peer evaluation instrument provides a reliable method for peer assessment in team-based learning settings

Frequency of common HFE variants in the Saudi population: a high throughput molecular beacon-based study

BACKGROUND: Hereditary Hemochromatosis (HH) is an autosomal recessive disorder highlighted byiron-overload. Two popular mutations in HFE, p.C282Y and p.H63D, have been discovered and found to associate with HH in different ethnic backgrounds. p.C282Y and p.H63D diagnosis is usually made byrestriction enzyme analysis. However, the use of this technique is largelylimited to research laboratories because they are relativelyexpensive, time-consuming, and difficult to transform into a high throughput format. METHODS: Single nucleotide variations in target DNA sequences can be readily identified using molecular beacon fluorescent probes. These are quenched probes with loop and hairpin structure, and they become fluorescent upon specific target recognition. We developed high throughput homogeneous real-time PCR assays using molecular beacon technology, to genotype p.C282Y and p.H63D variants. Representative samples of different genotypes for these variants were assayed by restriction enzyme analysis and direct sequencing as bench mark methods for comparison with the newly developed molecular beacon-based real-time PCR assay. RESULTS: Complete concordance was achieved by all three assay formats. Homozygotes (mutant and wildtype) and heterozygotes were readily differentiated by the allele specific molecular beacons as reported by the associated fluorophore in the real-time assay developed in this study. Additionally, these assays were used in a high throughput format to establish the allele frequency of C282Y and H63D in Saudis for the first time. CONCLUSION: These assays may be reliably applied as a diagnostic test or large scale method for population screening