Exploring the Desirable Attributes and Competencies of Pharmacy Clinical Preceptors: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Background: Experiential learning is a vital component of health-professional education. It provides students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge in real-life settings before becoming licensed practitioners. Preceptors (i.e., practice educators) play a crucial role in developing students’ professional skills and competencies, as well as shaping their attitude during their clinical training. Ensuring preceptors’ quality and preparedness is a key aspect in students’ experiential learning due to the important impact of the provided training on the quality of the students’ learning experience. There is a knowledge gap about the desired attributes of pharmacy preceptors in the Gulf region, specifically Qatar, highlighting the need to explore preceptors’ views on this topic. Purpose: The aim of this scoping review is to identify the available tools in the literature to explore the desirable attributes of pharmacy preceptors as clinical educators. The objectives are to explore the reported desirable attributes of clinical preceptors in the published literature and select and utilize an appropriate tool to identify the desirable attributes of pharmacy preceptors in Qatar. Methods: The scoping review was designed to identify the relevant original research articles, which were published in English language, utilizing CINAHL, ERIC, ProQuest, and PubMed databases. Key concepts were preceptorship, attributes, pharmacy, and tools. Quantitative and mixed-methods study designs were included. The included articles were summarized according to their design, setting, population, and outcomes. The validity of the used instruments in these studies was reported. Results: A total of six articles qualified for inclusion into the full screening and were used to inform the results of this review. Skills like being a role model, assessment, and feedback expertise were of the highly important attributes to different populations (i.e., students, graduates, and preceptors). The review revealed the need for more validated tools in pharmacy research to increase the knowledge about the desired qualities of preceptors. Finally, a list of the most reported attributes in the literature was created after grouping all the reported attributes into five categories: (1) knowledge, teaching, and presentation skills; (2) professionalism and developmentskills; (3) communication skills; (4) supportive mentoring; and (5) enthusiasm and interest. Conclusions: the top three identified attributes were related to communication, assessment and feedback, and professionalism. The results of this review demonstrated a lack of well-designed and validated tools in pharmacy research that can be used to explore the desirable attributes of pharmacy preceptors. This necessitates further research to develop and validate a new appropriate tool to ultimately understand the perceptions of pharmacy preceptors on this topic. Including more databases in the research could have enriched the findings.