EZOMO FAVOUR

Background: Clinical clerkship potentially serves as an effective approach to enhance pharmacy students' understanding of and attitudes towards pharmaceutical care. Pharmaceutical care (PC) highlights the importance of pharmacists providing patient-centered care Aim of the study: To assess pharmacists’ perception on the inclusion of community pharmacy in clinical clerkship in Benin city, Edo state. Method: This was a cross-sectional qualitative study across 13 community pharmacies in Benin City, A Face-to-face interview with the 13 selected pharmacists was conducted within the community pharmacy premise. Results: Community pharmacists revealed that they provide a wide range of pharmaceutical services. All the preceptors had positive reception of clerkship program and they described the involvement of community pharmacies in clinical clerkship as a welcome development and great innovation as the experiences of the preceptors with the students have been good and fabulous so
far. The challenges associated with community pharmacies involvement in preceptorship include; Unseriousness of students and interference of students' schedule with normal school work, unwillingness of pharmacists to participate, transportation cost, time constraints, little space for one-on-one interaction etc. Some of the areas of improvement suggested by the various
pharmacist include provision of transportation, adequate time for learning and also educating the students what is expected of them. The student performance was generally rated above average (50%), except for P5 which rated student performance based on confidence level below the average (40%).