Pharmacist perceptions of new competency standards

Objective: To suggest revisions to the Thai pharmacy competency standards and determine the perceptions of Thai pharmacy practitioners and faculty about the proposed pharmacy competency standards. Methods: The current competency standards were revised by brainstorming session with nine Thai pharmacy experts according to their perceptions of society’s pharmacy needs. The revised standards were proposed and validated by 574 pharmacy practitioners and faculty members by using a written questionnaire. The respondents were classified based on their practice setting. Results: The revision of pharmacy competency standard proposed the integration and addition to current competencies. Of 830 distributed questionnaires, 574 completed questionnaires were received (69.2% response rate). The proposed new competency standards contained 7 domains and 46 competencies. The majority of the respondents were supportive of all 46 proposed competencies. The highest ranked domain was Domain 1 (Practice Pharmacy within Laws, Professional Standards, and Ethics). The second and third highest expectations of pharmacy graduates were Domain 4 (Provide pharmaceutical care) and Domain 3 (Communicate and disseminate knowledge effectively).Conclusion: The expectation for pharmacy graduates’ competencies were high and respondents encouraged additional growth in multidisciplinary efforts to improve patient care

Can knowledgeable experts assess costs and outcomes as if they were ignorant? : An experiment within precision medicine evaluation

Objectives The purpose of this study is to evaluate the validity of the standard approach in expert judgment for evaluating precision medicines, in which experts are required to estimate outcomes as if they did not have access to diagnostic information, whereas in fact, they do. Methods Fourteen clinicians participated in an expert judgment task to estimate the cost and medical outcomes of the use of exome sequencing in pediatric patients with intractable epilepsy in Thailand. Experts were randomly assigned to either an “unblind” or “blind” group; the former was provided with the exome sequencing results for each patient case prior to the judgment task, whereas the latter was not provided with the exome sequencing results. Both groups were asked to estimate the outcomes for the counterfactual scenario, in which patients had not been tested by exome sequencing. Results Our study did not show significant results, possibly due to the small sample size of both participants and case studies. Conclusions A comparison of the unblind and blind approach did not show conclusive evidence that there is a difference in outcomes. However, until further evidence suggests otherwise, we recommend the blind approach as preferable when using expert judgment to evaluate precision medicines because this approach is more representative of the counterfactual scenario than the unblind approach