Abstract
•There is shortage in teaching the pharmaceutical health outcomes subjects among the universities in Arab countries.•Pharmacovigilance and patient safety subjects were the lowest taught subjects compared to pharmacoeconomics and pharmacoepidemiology.•Most of pharmaceutical health outcome subjects were taught in the last year of the college currucilum and not many of these sibjects have included in the internship year which is the training year.•There is an urgent need to revise the current curriculum among the pharmacy colleges and perhaps other health colleges and include these subjects because of the need of healthcare system in specialized healthcare professionals in these subjects.
Health outcomes and policies is a growing areas that is needed in the healthcare culture. This study aimed to examine the availability, extent and type of teaching curricula (pharmacoeconomics, pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacovigilance, patient safety) in Arab countries.
A retrospective observational study was conducted during the period of November 2019 to January 2020. The collection strategy was performed by listing of pharmacy colleges in each country and then reviewing the institutions’ websites that met the inclusion criteria. Five criteria were utilized to assess the availability of these courses: full-time mandatory, full-time elective, partial mandatory, partial elective, and not offered.
One hundred ninety-one academic institutions were screened during the study period. Of those, 151 (79.1%) institutions were included in the study and their curricular descriptions were retrieved from their electronic websites. Pharmacoeconomics was the most taught subject among the four subjects. It was offered in 89/151 of the colleges among Arab countries. Among these 89 colleges that offered pharmacoeconomics, 74/89 offered it as a mandatory. While, Pharmacoepidemiology was offered in 51 colleges, with 44/51 offering the subject as a mandatory, and 6 out of those 44 list it as a full-time mandatory, while 38 out of those 44 offer it as a partially mandatory. Only 22 of the colleges offered pharmacovigilance, with 14/22 offering the subject as a mandatory. Finally, there was only one institution that offers the subject of patient safety. Moreover, most of the four courses investigated are only taught in the final two years of study.
The study found a clear shortcoming in the teaching pharmaceutical outcomes. More efforts are needed by academic institutions to adopt and teach these subjects to ensure they meet the work needs and advanced pharmacy practice transformation.