# Assessment of Student Pharmacists’ Co-Curricular Professionalization Using an Impact Scale

## TL;DR

This study evaluates how co-curricular activities help pharmacy students become professionals and introduces a tool to assess their impact efficiently.

## Contribution

The study introduces the Co-curricular Impact Scale (CIS) as an efficient assessment tool for evaluating professionalization in pharmacy students.

## Key findings

- The CIS identified 'authentic learning experience' and 'improved self-confidence' as the most impactful attributes of co-curricular activities.
- P1 students reported slightly less impact from co-curricular participation compared to P2 and P3 students.
- The CIS proved to be an efficient method for assessing the professionalization impact of co-curricular involvement.

## Abstract

Co-curricular participation is a required component of the pharmacy program. Assessment of co-curricular activities has proven challenging due to lack of manpower to address the workload of reviewing multiple critical reflections. This project documented the professionalization impact of co-curricular involvement and secondarily explored the utility of our assessment tool, the Co-curricular Impact Scale (CIS), developed to streamline the assessment process. First- through third-professional-year students (P1, P2, P3) participated in five co-curricular domains: (i) professional development/education; (ii) patient care service; (iii) legislative advocacy; (iv) leadership/service to the pharmacy profession; and (v) healthcare-related community service. For the CIS, 16 questions were developed and mapped to 11 educational outcomes and included assessing the impact of immersing in an authentic learning experience, collaborating with healthcare professionals, and preparing for the pharmacist role. A group of 296 students rated the impact of participation as low, moderate, or significant for five events annually. Based on 717 entries, the two attributes deemed most impactful were: “Activity immersed me in an authentic learning experience” (95% ≥ Moderate Impact) and “Activity improved my self-confidence” (93% ≥ Moderate Impact). P1 students found slightly less impact in co-curricular participation (83.5%) than P2 (88.4%) and P3 (86.8%) counterparts. The CIS proved to be an efficient method to collate impact of co-curricular involvement upon student professionalization.