Faculty experiences developing and directing a novel multi-campus medication therapy management introductory pharmacy practice experience

Background and purpose

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the emergence of telehealth, showcasing feasible and scalable ways to deliver remote patient care services during and beyond the pandemic. This underscores the need to equip students with the requisite skills to engage in telehealth patient care services and navigate the evolving landscape of healthcare delivery. Literature reveals that students recognize the critical role of medication therapy management (MTM) in patient care and education and desire more training to develop proficiency in delivering these services. Integrating telehealth MTM training within pharmacy experiential education curricula aligns with education standards and evolving needs of the profession, enhances student competencies, and offers practical exposure to real world MTM application and patient care.

Educational activity and setting

An innovative MTM introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE) was developed and implemented by The University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Pharmacy in partnership with AdhereHealth. The course provides students with hands-on, real-world telehealth patient care experience. It allows students to address patient medication adherence and social determinants of health (SDOH) and communicate with patients and healthcare providers to optimize medication outcomes for thousands of patients across the country with a Proportion of Days Covered (PDC) less than 80%.

Findings

From 2021 through 2023, the novel MTM experience has provided MTM telehealth training for 390 s-year students across the three COP campuses, leading to over 6500 completed targeted medication reviews and SDOH assessments and over 154,000 total patient outreach attempts across the United States. Assessment data suggest that the innovative MTM IPPE improves student self-efficacy and efficiency in delivery of telehealth patient care. Additionally, both MTM in general and this specific IPPE can be effective in addressing SDOH. The authors list factors believed to contribute to successful operation of a telehealth MTM IPPE for consideration prior to implementation, including offering the experience in dedicated call center space on campus, providing a clear orientation to the MTM IPPE expectations, resources, and purpose, a personalized precepting approach, appropriate technology and regular tech support, and structuring student assessment to emphasize focus on learning and skill improvement, not the grade.

Summary

The MTM IPPE demonstrated feasibility and effectiveness as a means for purposeful integration of MTM telehealth and SDOH exposure within experiential education. The experiences and resources shared demonstrate that an MTM IPPE can be successfully scaled and implemented at other institutions.