PQ APRIL 2014 | Issue 06
5
Compared to previous years, I was surprised that
despite the 2% incentive, there was not as much
involvement in the Community Education Program. I
feel like the majority of first year students who did
not participate did not fully understand the point of
the program. They probably just saw it as a one-‐way
exchange: volunteering and giving up their time to
help educate others, which is why they chose not to
do it due to other priorities, time constraints and
were too busy. In addition, a few of those who did not
participate were scared of public speaking, so these
were the students who would have benefitted from
partaking in this opportunity the most.
However, the students who participated felt like it
was a worthwhile opportunity and learned a lot from
the experience. Despite the incentive being the
motivator for the majority of these students, they
realized they were able to strengthen and acquire
important skills as future pharmacists by
participating in this program.
convenient for students as well as for future
Community Education Directors.
Next Steps for Fall 2014
1. Centralize Materials
Currently, the first years' orientation powerpoint
presentation, checklist, school requests, and sign-‐up
are on eClass. Dr. Guirguis is in charge of the sign-‐up
on eClass. The materials for certain topics, such as
powerpoints, training podcasts, documents, and
requirement checklists are on myapsa.ca. The focus is
to put everything on myapsa.ca to increase
convenience and access for students as well as
increase efficiency of the process since the
Community Education Director will coordinate
everything. Community Education Director will work
with IT Officer to make a Google sign-‐up form on
myapsa.ca.
2. More Organized and Clear Process
I would like future first year students who participate
in the program to realize how beneficial it is for them
as well as their audience to be engaged in this
program. In order to do this, future Community
Education Directors should promote the program
more, such as letting the students know that it can be
a lot of fun and that the schools really respond and
appreciate these presentations. This will also help
increase student involvement.
It is important to make sure everything is clear and
organized with how everything is set up. One of the
ways to do this is by making the whole process of
signing up for a presentation dummy proof by
sending out reminder emails as well as having canned
email responses. In addition, during the orientation
presentation and for canned email responses, it is
important to differentiate the roles of the
Community Education Director and student.
By discovering what the first year students listed as
barriers to participating in the program as well as
improvements, it was very interesting and insightful
to see, and I believe this feedback is very crucial in
narrowing the gap between teacher requests and
volunteer resources for future years. This information
would probably be relatable to second and third year
pharmacy students, so this could be considered as
new initiatives are started as well.
3. Community Education Director to work with First
Year Class Rep
Along with Dr. Guirguis, I plan to show how this
program relates and can impact our future role as
pharmacists in society by overcoming identified
barriers in order to increase involvement. The
following are recommendations to improve the
program in order to make it easier and more
The First Year Class Rep will work closely with the
Community Education Director because as a physical
presence in their class, he/she will ensure classmates
complete the program through reminders as w