ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE:

To describe APPE students’ most memorable clinical interventions and their perception of the impact those interventions had on the lives of patients and on the students’ own professional development.

METHODS:

Semi-structured interviews were conducted on a one-on-one basis with students upon completion of an acute care internal medicine rotation. An inductive approach was used for data analysis. The transcripts were coded and divided into groups of similar themes to identify patterns.

RESULTS:

Eight students were interviewed about their experiences on rotation in acute care internal medicine. Six themes emerged from 40 unique codes. The themes in order of most frequent occurrence are prevention, skills, team, role, growth, and apathy.

CONCLUSION:

This study demonstrates that fourth-year APPE students on rotation in acute care internal medicine are valuable to the healthcare team and that APPEs, as a whole, are beneficial to pharmacy students in multiple aspects. However, it was discovered that APPEs are lacking in helping pharmacy students to connect how the recommendations they make day to day impact a patient’s quality of care and affect a patient’s life.